The Beginning of Prayer

Prayer is where we speak beyond words, connected in a state of interdependence we rarely notice. This is where we encounter the sacred, not exclusively but surely most frequently. Every moment of pure being is a prayer—an act of faith. We do not watch the sunset, we experience it, the laying down of another day. Standing on shore observing the running tides, the silvery fish and racing birds is to be at one with creation in its entirety, because we are not excluded from it. 

Our bodies register this, all of it in the same way the bear and wild boar or your dog or your cat. The birds we watch depart and return year after year. Have you ever noticed how foggy and out of balance we are every year when the dreaded spring forward/fall back is upon us? Standing in the light of day sets our clocks on a biological level, on a subtle yet necessary one. We are timed and wired and charged by the world around us, and all it requires in this simple presence—just being, like the prairie dog or the mirkat, standing in the sun—like your dog—the magnetic frequencies, the seasonal pulses, the moon—the tides, the effects of gravity, rotation and the radiation from the sun that keeps our world alive resetting your inner wiring—the wiring doctors and science cannot get to. Standing in the light today, before the clouds returned with my laundry bag slung over my shoulder I stopped for a moment to look down the street, down to where the Chapel of Saint Amaro keeps watch and my eyes filled with all the possible light, the buildings running down the street, down the slow hill to the chapel, and the luminous silver sky above. I stood, thinking nothing—clean laundry in hand, a break in the torrent of To Do's. Just a breath and another and the chapel and the smell of rain and the neighborhood on a drizzly November day. This is prayer. 

This is not the only type of prayer—to calmly abide—but to my mind, praying for things is a petition, a bargain rather than a prayer. We may beg or barter with any number of entities or attributed higher powers, we may light candles as we beseech Saint So-and-so for the house, the job or the lover—we beg and beseech divine intervention, but these deals we make with Saints and gods come with a price. What happens when you lose the house, the job, the lover? Do you turn to prayer—to stillness, your place in creation—do you turn to your oneness with all that surrounds you, rejoice in the joy of another’s life even as your own is colorless? I grew up hearing about people of weak faith, and for the longest time I thought I knew what it meant, but I see now that it has nothing to do with doubting the whims of an invisible and all powerful creator—it is the inability to reconcile the losses in life with the blessings, neither of which last forever, and both of which we will, ultimately, leave behind.

I believe it is Mary Oliver who said that attention is the beginning of prayer. I think this as I walk through the falling leaves—this is prayer. Washing the dishes, folding the laundry; waiting in line while someone counts out eight ninety-five in coins; sitting in a chair, watching the light change. Being. Simply and only being. This is our vastness, our divinity—the seed of enlightenment—here, always patiently waiting for our attention.

Sundial, Teatro Romano de Lisboa.