On Prayer - from Nonsense for Smarty Pants - copyright 2010 by G.D. Lafontant

I've been examining why I used to pray. My first prayers were rote: grace, church, bedtime, for the poor and sick, etc. I think my first personal prayer was the repetition of 'oh god, please god.' I think I used to pray for four reasons - all similar, one explicitly selfish, and one passsively selfish:

1. To regain control of myself (this is not the selfish one). I think this is the most effective form of prayer because it works without god. The repetition of a mantra - oh god, please god, the multiplication tables, or whistling in the dark - can serve to calm and focus the mind. My father used to always say: "The fastest way to drown is to panic. The second is to not swim." So, of course, you don't just need to calm yourself and focus - you then need to act. But you cannot act effectively if you are not calm. It is not dissimilar from an autistic person's need for ritual to remain calm in overwhelming circumstances. "Wapner at eleven. Definitely."

2. To attempt to control an outcome in my favor (slightly different than 1.) I might pray hoping for the kind of luck that lets you get away with a mistake or misdeed. Or, perhaps, to win a competition, to garner unearned wealth, or for misfortune to befall an enemy. This is the explicitly selfish one. To the degree that remaining calm and focused in a lie, a denial, or a competition - it sometimes helped. But this one has a plausible deniability clause for god in the case of ineffectiveness - god didn't want me to get away with it or have an unfair advantage.

3. Helplessness; especially for a positive outcome for someone in dire straits. My friend is really sick and I can do nothing to affect the outcome. While I can visit and try to be a comforting presence and I do, I pray because there is little else to do. This may help me remain calm for my friend.

4. Unhelpfulness disguised as helplessness; this would apply to praying for the children of Haiti without doing anything to help - not even giving a few dollars to a relief organization. This is passively selfish and, frankly, puzzling. Nowadays, it takes almost no effort to send a few bucks to a relief organization. Nevertheless, I have heard from people who, I'm certain, prayed for the Haitians in their church for more than one Sunday, who were then heard during the week complaining about them 'immigrating' to the U.S.

I still practice a version of 1. and may apply it to 3. But I write poems for these times - sometimes at these times - that help me calm down, focus, and prioritize. I've found that 2. & 4. are absent from my 'repertoire' and, I feel, I am a better person for it. Sure, in order to function, and to the degree that I am thoughtless, I display apathy to the less fortunate in a moment to moment context. But, I find, I am a far more generous person in ways that are effective than I used to be when I believed prayer, in and of itself, affected outcomes.