Your thoughts on Prayer (for healing).

Imagine what might happen if the ‘Secular Party of Great Britain’ is elected to power.  One of the first things they do is to ban the use of ‘religious’ language.  We can no longer use the word ‘prayer’.  What word would you use instead?

“Let us...

Ø  talk to our Creator, 

Ø  listen to our Creator ,

Ø  commune with our Creator?”

The reason the word exists is revealed. It covers many things.

What do I believe?

I believe that we were created, as part of an incredible universe.  We were created as a community, but we also have an ‘I’.  Each of us is known, unique and cherished.  The best analogue is to reflect on how I know my children; the Creator knows all that is created, over all time.  I also believe that the Creator always intended this connectivity between the creation and the Creator.  It was to be a massive interaction, like the neurones of a brain firing in collaboration.

But we observe this paradox around us, the ‘Yin and Yang’ of life; good and bad.  The question comes, “is the Creator, ‘Yin and Yang’, at the same time, loving, benign and uncaring?”  Like other things we see in creation; the ocean, vast, beautiful, but with the flip of a boat, it will easily kill you.  Or the mountains, with inspiring views.  One slip on the scree and you are flung to your death.  Or the dog that is so loyal, “man’s best friend”, but then it mauls and kills a baby.

I trust that my Creator knows and loves me, both as an individual, but also my part in a community.  I believe this because this is my experience.  My relationship is based on the sort of evidence that helps me believe that my wife is still in love with me, and our marriage is sound.

I understand that this world is not how things were intended to be.  It’s a world that has had a ‘brain haemorrhage’.  Every muscle in its body is affected.  It requires a ‘journey’ of recovery. 

So at one level, this is not how it should be, but on another, “This is how it is”.  It’s a bit like I chose to have children, not expecting them to hate and reject me.  But children do do this, and our hearts are broken.  We should not be surprised.

As a friend of a friend said, who has struggled with MS for forty years, “when I think ‘why me?’, I also think “why not me?  People suffer all around us in more ways than we know, and I am one of them."

When the Creator took out that great spinning top, the universal, and with ‘clapping hands and mighty boom, said ‘let there be life’, the Creator knew what was coming, that the seed of a worm had also been sown into the universe. Perhaps if there was anyone else around to hear, a slight groan might have been detected.

I do not believe in a Creator

·         who deliberately makes people suffer, because it’s ‘Good for them’.

·         who responds to the prayers of some great preacher, rather than the prayers of my mother, who stood by my bedside in hospital for hours when I was recovering from a serious operation.  Or the prayers of two people I know whose own son died in suffering at a young age.

·         who is just waiting for magic word combinations, or is unable to help because my faith is inadequate. 

·         who gives special access to some parts of Creation over other parts of it, due to wealth, race or religion.

·         who needs badgering, or petitioning by ever greater numbers of people before wishes are granted. 
Who 'sends people to Hell!' (cf John Powell)

Please avoid….

Prayers of pity- “I can’t cope with the idea of you being disabled – It distresses me.  Therefore you must get back to how you were because I am uncomfortable and upset.”

My thoughts are that initially this is quite an innocent position, similar to a parental reaction when a child brings home a boyfriend/ girlfriend of an unexpected race or sexuality.  It’s a natural fear.  But it is a position to ‘move on from’.

There is a massive literature about the marginalisation of disabled people.  This is a worldwide problem.  I see that it is based on the abuse of power, as disabled people have their power compromised through access to wealth, and voice.  Also the natural tendency of all people to ‘normalise’, ie to vera to what is felt to be normal, acceptable, and feels comfortable. 

What I do believe about pray.

I recall my daughter telling me about her Philosophy teacher at school asking the children to put their hands up at the beginning of term if they were willing to allow the content of the subject to influence what they actually believed.  My daughter said after some thought, she put her hand up, because she knew her beliefs were ‘living and organic’, able to be attuned, and she had nothing to be afraid of here.  I also feel that my beliefs are open to change, particularly if this is towards what I believe to be ‘the truth’. 

I believe that when we pray, we look to the face of our Creator.  This is like the child who when confronted by a stranger, or testing situation, looks to a parent for reassurance.  There is a famous demonstration of this called the ‘Campo’s, visual cliff.’  Babies can see that they can get to a toy if they crawl over a glass table top.  They are unsure if it is safe.  They look to their parent on the other side of the table.  It the parent frowns, they stay still.  If the parent smiles, they crawl across the glass.

When I pray, the best thing I can do is to feel how my creator feels, and be guided by that.  If I feel encouragement that my loved one is going to survive, and grow strong, I know that it will happen, and prayers are aligned to reality.  I may feel that I am being prepared for loss.  However my pray is not passive.  It’s not like cheering for a football team while watching the telly.  It is being in the stadium and being part of the action.  My prayers, just as the cheering of fans, is part of the healing, part of the plan.  When my team wins, I am deeply affected.  I was there, I was in some way part of it.

I also believe that I am changed in the process.  Being a part of the Creator’s actions is bound to have an effect on me.  It’s like an architect who creates a great impressive building.  The achievement will change their lives for ever.  Or the writer who publishes a book that is greatly acclaimed.  They have a new world opened up to them.  In the same way, when I am part of the Creator’s purpose for people around me, and I see that this is as real as the movement of muscles and limbs, I am a different person.  I see the world differently.

In this way things that are not good.  Where not intended to happen, cause misery and suffering, are used and transformed into wholly positive things that have multiple factors of goodness over and above what was there before.  Without the suffer, may not have existed. 

In Sheffield we visited St Marks’s Church.  This Victorian church took a direct hit by a bomb in the second world war.  After the war a new church was created using the stones of the old.  A new design was allowed that brought a unique light, creativity, and splendour into a building that would otherwise be ‘run of the mill’.  It was fascinating to visit, and I for one would not want it to be returned to the old building.