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On Being Asked To Pray

By Sian Gibby
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2001, at 12:13 PM ET

Well, this discussion has so far focused on the question of the role of our Israel policy in the recent attacks, and I don't have anything to say about that now, but the intro graph up there says this is about the conflict in general, so I will add my contribution, which is not about Israel or about religion, but it is about prayer.

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The other day I was having brunch with a few non-Slate friends, talking about the attacks and the aftermath, and they all of them complained about how much people on TV had been talking about God, particularly right after the disaster. "They keep saying, 'Go out and pray.' Well, I don't pray; what am I supposed to do?" said one woman. "It's alienating," added another friend. They looked a little abashed mentioning this in my company, since they all have a pretty good idea, I think, that I am a religious person.

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(Let me just interrupt myself here with a small disclaimer: Some people here at work seem to think I am a rabid Christian because at one benighted point, long ago, I suggested that Slate inaugurate a religion column. I'd like to state for the record that I am not a Christian. I do, however, practice Quakerism--which is a strictly Christian sect, but in which they don't make a lot of hue and cry about standing up and saying that Jesus is your savior. Which I couldn't do in good conscience because I don't believe it. But I believe in God, and my God is the God of the Jews and also the God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims.)

So, these wonderful friends of mine were looking at me sort of funny, complaining about being asked to pray in light of the deaths and the pain and sadness.

I went home and have been thinking about prayer ever since. I do pray, but now I asked myself why. It seemed natural, but did I think it actually achieved anything?

Prayer to me means blessing someone. And blessing someone means giving them love and wishing them well, but taking yourself out of the equation while doing so. So, for example, if I told my boss, Copy Chief June Thomas, I loved her, or Deputy Editor Jack Shafer, they would no doubt look at me as though I were nuts. But if I bless them, they just get the love and the well-wishing and the thoughtful concentration on them, and I don't enter into it at all, really. Blessing love is not expressing something about a relationship. It is about giving someone something without any expectation of return, and with no certainty that it will do any good. It's some kind of loving leap of faith. I want to give them something, but it doesn't have to do with me. I just want them to have it.

Quakers sometimes call praying for something "holding it in the light," as in asking someone "Please hold my Aunt Irma in the light today--she is undergoing chemo." The light, in this case, being what Quakers consider the evidence of divinity in every person, essentially the best part of you; we all have it (even you, Jack Shafer)--it's the spontaneous loving part, the gentle part, the generous part of all of us. And so holding someone in that part of you, the best part of you, means thinking of them lovingly and with special intent to bless them, to wish them well, to focus on them with your heart and hope--illogically--that it does some good somehow.

In the 1600s, when Quakerism was nascent in wild and primitive England, George Fox and his small group of fearless followers (most of whom were murdered for their beliefs: for example, that no one needed priests to intercede between them and God, or that women had souls, stuff like that) practiced this kind of prayer, sometimes to startling effect. Fox's autobiography tells the story of one town he and his group visited that had a problem: There was a madwoman living there who made everyone's life hell. She spat and cursed, she was filthy and obscene, she was violent and wild and everyone hated her. The townspeople thought she was possessed by a demon. George Fox looked at her and said, "Possessed, maybe, but not by demons." So, he and his small group of Friends (Quakers are also called Friends because they think of themselves as friends of Jesus. I can go along with them that far, certainly, as can many Jews and Muslims) brought this wild woman to a house where they were practicing Meeting for Worship and lovingly placed her in the center of the room and held her in the light for some time. The Friends all sat around and focused on her and held her in the best, warmest, most pure and well-wishing part of themselves. And eventually she started to cry and she got up off the floor and said she felt better. And after that she was calm and just as happy and sad as anyone else, but she was no longer out of control, and people welcomed her back into the community, and she got a job and the whole nine yards. Remember: This is in the 1600s.

Now, certainly there are any number of psychological explanations for this, and they are all true, probably. But the fact is that the tool this little community used was what we call prayer. And in this case, anyway, it had a dramatic and beneficial effect.

So, am I helping anyone when I pray? All those countless grieving, scarred relatives, children, friends, parents, lovers, and neighbors of those who died--do I help them if I pray for them, if I hold them in the light? The wild woman was physically there; does it work long-distance? How? Am I only maybe helping myself feel better somehow? Good questions. And I can't say for sure. However, one thing feels absolutely true to me: Doing so, holding those countrymen and friends in the light, sending them love and wishing them well, hoping their pain goes away, does not feel like a waste of time. And that is the most I can say about it, but I can say that with conviction. It is not a waste of time. Which doesn't mean everyone should do it. But I'm glad it is getting done. It can't hurt and it might help a great deal. Who knows? A plus about praying: If I try it and fail or get embarrassed or something, no one needs to know.

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