The power or prayer
Let there be no purpose in giving or receiving, save reciprocity.
My auntie Joy believes in the power of prayer and has prayed for me all my life. These days her prayers for me honour a promise to my dead mother, but they also keep faith with her larger, lifelong conversation with God.
Before she died mum asked Joy to keep praying for me after her (mum’s) death. Like Joy, mum prayed for me all her life and redoubled her efforts when I stopped praying in my early 20s. I stopped because I didn’t believe any more in the Catholic faith I was raised in.
Mum told me non-believers went to hell but through prayer maybe she could save me that fate. In asking her sister to take up her prayers for me, I suppose mum was hoping that I could still be spared from hell. Salvation by proxy I guess you could say. Joy is a Sister of the Good Samaritan order of nuns. She entered the ‘Good Sams’ as they are fondly known, in 1945 at the age of 17.
Some see prayer as weakness or misguided, or a kind of cosmic begging for life to be other than what it is. Others view it as a time of quiet reflection, a time to listen as much as a time to speak to God. Considering the history and philosophy of prayer, I imagine there are as many ways to pray as there are those who pray.
In her novel Eat Pray Love, author Liz Gilbert tells an old joke about a poor man who goes to church every day to pray before the statue of a great saint, begging.
“Dear saint,” said the poor man “please, please, please, let me win the lottery.”
For years, nothing happened despite the man’s daily prayers.
“Finally, the exasperated statue came to life and looked down at the begging man.
“My son,” he said, “please, please, buy a ticket!”
I like this because it suggests that prayer is about participating in the mystery of life. More than that, it says if I want to change my life, be it getting a job, beating a serious health issue or snagging a parking spot, I’m the one who needs to change the way I think and feel and behave.
In this view, prayer isn’t about petitioning God for a miracle. God’s not a genie in a bottle waiting to be rubbed the right way. Sadly, this is the way I was taught to pray as child and was still the way I prayed when I rejected my Catholic God.
In Falling Into Grace, the spiritual teacher Adyashanti writes about his first “true prayer” like this:
“I was sitting in a bus stop in California, in a long desert that stretches between two mountain ranges. I was contemplating my spiritual life, and I suddenly had the impulse to pray. At that time, praying wasn’t something that I did very often, but somehow I felt this impulse.
“I said to the universe, ‘Give me whatever is necessary to awaken. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if the rest of my life is one of ease, and I don’t care if the rest of my life is hellish. Whatever’s necessary, that’s what I want.’
“When I said this prayer, it was like handing the keys of control back to the universe. At that moment, I gave my illusion of control back to a higher intelligence, and sure enough, I did get everything I needed to really open my consciousness.”
But controlling my life, controlling outcomes, be they near or far, is a something many of us want, right?
I want this, not that, goes the mantra. On time, on budget. With a smile. Our ‘consumer-is-always-right’ culture bows to the command of giving me what I want, when I want, in any flavour. We’re a consumer species. We’re on the take. And we take what we want to fill our bellies and all our other countless ‘needs’.
I see now how this mantra had bled into the way I prayed as a child without me getting much further.
Long before the modern era, reciprocity was the shining jewel at the heart of the ‘gift economy’ and the cultural practices of many pre-historic civilisations. It continues today in many traditionally-based, sustainable and indigenous communities.
As humans, we can never repair or repay the debt of being a consumer species. Sustaining our species costs the earth and our swelling numbers and ways of consuming mean we’re imposing unsustainable costs on nature and the biosphere. This is our unique position as humans (always has been), and today we must find a way to live and consume in harmony with natural systems or else the ecological and climatic bases for our lives and that of countless other species will fail.
So, reciprocity means a big change-up. To begin, it means acknowledging the reality of give and take in a modern market economy. It means paying attention to the fact that feeding my life means the death of countless other species, both plant and animal.
Organic chicken? Plastic-wrapped lettuce? Foie gras? Grain-fed beef? Whether we’re shopping for ourselves or a couple or a family, making choices that meet ethical, nutritious and ecologicalbenchmarks is a minefield.
Help!
In the wisdom of the gift economy, practicing reciprocity in my day-to-day life means asking for permission before I choose what I put in my supermarket basket or trolley.
It highlights the wisdom of old ways rooted in attitudes of esteem and gratitude that informed our old hunting and gathering practices. These old ways taught people that they were made of the same stuff as the world and its inhabitants — namely, earth, wind, fire and water.
During those times, people understood that their way of life — and their true nature as humans — were identical to the plants, the animals and the greater world. Their lore said: the world needs you, and it’s your responsibility to care for the world just as it cares for you and the community.
Rebecca Adamson, a Cherokee leader and activist spent her summers in the Smoky Mountains with her maternal grandparents, from whom she learned Indian ways and values in Qualla territory — land held in trust for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Her words illustrate how reciprocity — giving and receiving — is fundamental to the web of life.
Her words are now my prayer.
“Let there be no purpose in giving, save reciprocity.
For to a people whose spirituality lies within Life’s wholeness
Who share the gifts of the sky and the mountains and the seas and the forests
Who exchange abundance in the circle of animal brethren,
Giving is not a matter of pure altruism and benevolence
But a mutual responsibility
To make the world a better place.
Let there be no purpose in receiving, save reciprocity.
For a society whose belief in humanity lies within the interdependence of people
Who hold to the deeply universal good of community values and
Where children are the generation of our People
Giving is seen in the entirety of receiving.
Let the reciprocity of giving lie in a deepening of the Circle of Life.
For as with Life where
The root needs to receive in order for the plant to give fruit
It can be seen that in the honor of giving
As in the honor of receiving
Good is only realized by the contributions of both.” [1]
[1] Adamson, R. The Indian Giver (1991) cited in Berry, M and Adamson, R (2000). The Wisdom of the Giveaway — A Guide to Growing Native American Philanthropy. Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, pp 1–2
Dan Gaffney is a teacher and author. This is an excerpt from his book and podcast series, ‘Journey Home — Essays on Living and Dying’.
