Sermons
Praying With Our Senses
(This sermon is available in audio format if you'd like to listen.)
Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro
October 9, 2005
© 2005 Michael James Tino
Opening Words #494- from WEB DuBois
The prayer of our souls is a petition for persistence; not for the one good deed, or single thought, but deed on deed, and thought on thought, until day calling unto day shall make a life worth living.
Praying With Our Senses
Even deep in the middle of winter, the beauty of life is evident. Trees, dormant and leafless, are framed in clean contrast against the grayness of the sky. Coatings of ice reflect the dim rays of the sun and bejewel the landscape with signs of warning—letting all beings know that the wind blows cold and that the ground holds no sure grip for foot or wheel. Animals huddle—in tree burrows or on living room couches—seeking warmth and companionship, and waiting for the warmth of spring to unleash all that winter has been holding back.
Amid this landscape there is prayer, and we need only listen to know that it is there. We need only look at our neighbor to understand her connection to us. We need only feel the warmth of a handshake or hug, to taste the sweetness of a bright orange winter clementine, to smell the earthy power of brewing coffee in order to know that the beauty of life is all around us, and that we are a part of it. We need only to live to participate in the prayers of the Earth.
“Each living thing gives its life to the beauty of all life, and that gift is its prayer.”
In his beautiful book, author Douglas Wood tells us all about the lessons he learned from his grandfather about prayer. In deep conversations during long walks in the woods, he learns from his granddad that nature is full of the prayers of the Earth. He learns that prayer unites us all with the sacred beauty of being. He learns that he is connected to the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, and that those connections are greater than any individual, or any moment—great enough to take on unbelievable burdens, or to transcend the pain of grief.
My grandfather, too, taught me about prayer. I like to tell the story of going for walks with my grandpa—unlike Douglas Wood’s walks, mine were through the urban environment of East New York, in Brooklyn. When I was a child, my father’s father would take me and my brother for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner on Sunday afternoons. Invariably, we would stop into the Catholic Church on the corner, where my grandfather would give us each a quarter as a donation in order to light a prayer candle.
He would explain to us that each candle represented someone’s prayer, and that we should say a prayer when we lit a candle as well. It was important, he would remind us, that we pray for other people, and not for ourselves. God, at least to my Grandpa Tino, did not like people who were selfish with their prayers.
Later on, I filtered this experience through my ever-more-complex theology and beliefs. I realized that what I grew up learning was that prayer was not something we did to make our own lives better, but rather it was a way of expressing our connections to others around us. In focusing my prayers on others, I was asking God to recognize how important my relationship with those others was. And so, I came to believe, prayer was not about asking for something, but about connections. Recognizing and celebrating connections.
“Each living thing gives its life to the beauty of all life, and that gift is its prayer.”
So I believe in prayer not as requests from a person in the sky, but rather prayers that express intention and connections to the universe. This is in keeping with my view of God as the potential bound in relationships. It is with this belief that I developed my own prayer practice, centering and calming myself each day with thoughts of my connections to other beings. My morning prayers are silent, not spoken, and intentions and not requests.
Last Fall, I spent sixteen weeks working as a hospital chaplain. One of the hardest aspects of this program was being asked by patients and family members to pray for and with them. It wasn’t the prayer itself that made me uncomfortable. Rather, it was the act of praying, out loud, for something, for someone. The act of asking for intercession in a sick person’s life. I struggled with this. Even knowing that as a hospital chaplain part of my job was to put my theology on the shelf in order to care for people who needed me did not help. I struggled, but I prayed. Dozens of times a day sometimes. I prayed the prayers that people wanted to have said, in a language that I could feel comfortable with. But something didn’t seem right—I was still asking for things.
And then I met John. John’s nurse, without giving me any further details, had suggested to me that though she wasn’t sure if he would be willing to talk to me, she thought that perhaps he could use to talk to a chaplain. Having learned to listen to recommendations like this, I entered his room and introduced myself. I was not sure what was going on, or what I would be able to do.
John—not his real name—was a patient in his sixties who had a progressive disease that was making it harder and harder for him to move and function normally. He was at a point where it was becoming difficult to swallow food, making it probable that he would need a tube inserted into his stomach—at least temporarily—for feeding purposes. John had just moved to North Carolina from the Midwest, and had counted on being able to help support his daughter and young grandson in their life here.
When I met John, he was absolutely despondent. He was not quite sure if he wanted to live. He was struggling with the decision over the feeding tube. He was, however, willing to talk, so we did. We talked about his family, and the grief and guilt he still harbored from his mother’s death years earlier. We talked about his illness, and his reluctance to ask his daughter to take care of him. We marveled at the fact that a good friend of mine works in the small town in rural Wisconsin where he was from. We talked about his own religious beliefs, and the fact that he sometimes questioned the existence of a God who would forgive him for all of the things he felt he had done wrong.
And then he asked me to pray. So I did. I prayed that he be surrounded by unconditional love. I prayed that he feel strength and comfort, and that he make peace in the relationships he was worrying himself about—with his deceased mother, with his living daughter, with himself. After I finished, a broad smile made its way across his face, and his eyes lit up with gratitude. He thanked me out loud, and I left, promising to stop back by the next day.
When I did that, I found a different man than the one I had seen just 24 hours before. John told me that my visit had changed his outlook on life, that he believed that God had sent me in his time of great despair. He told me that he had already discussed his treatment plan with his daughter, and they had agreed that he would have the tube put in. He not only wanted to live, he saw in his life some of the possibility that had existed before the diagnosis: the possibility that he could contribute to the lives of his daughter and grandson, and not be a burden on them, the possibility that he could love and be loved, the possibility that someone needed him—or wanted him—to be there.
Maybe it was a good night’s sleep that he needed. Perhaps it was just some time to think things over. I prefer to think that what he needed was prayer. Now, I’m not going to claim that an intervening God came in and changed his life. Nor am I, certainly, going to take credit for doing what any person willing to be present with John could not have done.
But as I was praying with my words, John was praying with his ears. He was listening, and in receiving the prayer that I had offered to him, he understood that I had been there with him—that we were in relationship in that moment. He understood his connection to his daughter and grandson, and the connection that death could not break between him and his mother. He was praying with his ears, and I was answering him.
My visits with John changed my outlook on prayer in the hospital. No longer was I petitioning to God for my patients and their families, but I was talking to them. Showing that someone cared enough to listen. Giving them strength to face their illness or injury, or the illness or death of their loved one. I was not, in fact, the one that was praying at all—they were. I was just the one who was speaking.
Here, in this Unitarian Universalist community, prayer is understood in many different ways. Each of us filters things through our own experiences, our own outlooks on life, our own theology. In this diverse community, there are certainly those who are humanist, atheist, pagan, Christian, Jewish, and many more things—and from those different theological viewpoints come sharply different ideas about what prayer is. No doubt some of you are just plain hostile to the very idea of prayer.
So I want to be really clear—I don’t believe that prayer requires us to believe in a certain theology. And I absolutely don’t believe that prayer requires us to be theist.
What I believe that prayer requires from us is a recognition that something exists that is greater than we are. It doesn’t have to be God—it can be the forces of the universe that we don’t understand, or the mystery and wonder of nature, or, quite simply and profoundly, the power of relationship between two human beings.
I believe that while many people pray with their mouths, many more prayers happen with our senses. While we might have been taught to pray out loud, we need to re-learn prayer as something we take in. As this community prepares to discuss the meaning of covenanting together to be in right relationship with one another, we must endeavor to understand that prayer is as much in the listening as in the speaking.
So stop for a second. Listen closely. Feel your senses at work. What is it that you hear, see, touch, smell, taste?
(long pause)
Do you hear the gentle breathing of your neighbor? The distant sounds of life outside our place of sanctuary? Do you taste your morning coffee still on your tongue? Do you smell the battle between muggy summer and crisp fall that wages outside our doors and windows? Do you see the flicker of our candle flames as they respond to the motion in the room?
Do you feel connections, relationships, community? Do you sense what you need in order to change yourself? To change the world? Stop, listen, look, breathe, take in what is around you.
(another long pause)
And what about those prayers that do happen with our mouths, or in our heads as we form silent words to express our pain, our struggle or our gratitude? Are those prayers really their own answers, as Douglas Wood’s granddad would have us believe?
I believe that it takes community to answer prayers, that it takes relationships. I believe that prayers are answered by those with whom we connect each and every day.
In those moments when circumstances seem overwhelming, our prayers can help us realize all of the connections we have that ground us, that keep us going, that provide us support.
In those moments when the pain from grief or loss seems to great to bear, our prayers can remind us that those we have lost are still with us in our hearts, reminding us of connections that never will be broken. Our prayers can let us know that we are still alive and must go on living.
In those moments when our gratitude spills forth into words, our prayers can remind us of our obligation to make that gratitude real by building relationships and seeking justice in a hurting world.
I believe that together, we answer each others prayers.
Douglas Wood’s granddad taught him that “each living thing gives its life to the beauty of all life, and that gift is its prayer.”
So I ask you today: what is your prayer? How are you giving your life to the beauty of all life? How are you contributing to relationships with all that is around you? How are you listening for the prayers of the Earth? What are those prayers telling you? And, most importantly, how are you going to respond?