One of my atheist friends and I were
talking a few years back. I forget the
context, there was enough crap that he was going through, it could have been
talking with bankruptcy lawyer, or divorce lawyer or accountant or the Canadian
Revenue Agency, or getting the results of a lab test. The proverbial shit was flying like he was in
an Alberta blizzard. He and I were discussing the situation and he said, “I
wish I believed in prayer.”
“Why
don’t you pray anyway?” I answered.
“Well,
cause I find it hard to talk to imaginary friends.”
“You
can borrow mine if you want.” I replied.
If
you think that your belief in God is not an act of imagination, you are giving
your intellect way too much credit.
Faith, our access to God, our belief, is an act of imagination. For me that does diminish God or spirituality. I give a lot credence to imagination. I am a finite being, I can hear and see only
within certain ranges, I do not know if God has a taste, smell or texture. I do
know that there is a sensation, an internal response, something akin to how I
feel when I see Wanna at the end of an absence.
I
have had some rather odd experiences with these kinds of sensations, some of
those experiences have been odd, others having been downright terrifying, other
quite funny. Two of them have happened
in Airports. Call it intuition, street smarts, there has been some impressive
situations. And while I am open to the
idea that it is my constantly-in-motion brain occasionally spitting out the
right interpretation of events and probabilities, I have come to give that
inner knowing its proper due. I would
even say that those times might be the voice of the Holy Spirit. So when I say
that God is an act of imagination, I by no means mean any slight or
blasphemy. I am just saying that the
experience of God is not limited to our external senses.
I
am not sure whether my friend prayed or not, and I can imagine him praying
“God, this Joe, Drew said I could borrow you...”
And
part of me thinks that God would listen.
I
thought of this story today. The Policy
Maven was back to finish her job of evaluating the work my group of people and
I do. In the intervening days, 61 to be
exact since we had met, she has come to see value in what we do. This would include an appreciation for the
level of frustration that we experience with the Government, some ideas of how
to handle them, and an appreciation for some of the stuff that we have gone
through.
After
the preliminary niceties, we got down to business. The business was to see if there were
irregularities in the files, and in particular the care giver files. We were better prepared this time, we had two
months to do so, and four panicked days just before she arrived. But finding deficiencies in files is akin
to find dog pooh in the back yard of someone with two dogs, no matter how hard
one tries there will always be some that is found. And this time, her request for documentation
began to get quite far afield. At one
point she requested copies of some correspondence between myself and the
funding body.
It
was while I was copying the correspondence that I prayed. Something about ‘please get me through this’,
‘don’t let me puke,’ some hastily worded petition. I thought of this reflex of asking God so
that I may be comforted. There are so
many hastily thought of prayers. So many
of them go unanswered, that is the person praying does not get what they are
asking for from God. Telling me that the
answer might have been “No” is more than a little of asinine.
People
in much more desperate situations, muttering a few words urgent words, have not
received Grace. That is why I am usually
awkward around prayer, at least prayer for me.
It is not that I doubt the power of prayer, and not that I think God
plays dice with people’s lives, if your pet hamster has a cough, and I will
pray that the one who you swap affection with survives. Not so much with me. But today I did.
We
made it through. Those of you who have
read and prayed and cheered for us will be happy to know that the folks I do
the stuff I do with and I, have been deemed good to go. Thank you.
It is just a matter of the reports to be drafted before we are able to
start taking in more people.
Did
my prayer this afternoon help? I
dunno. I really don’t know. But it did
remind me, that I am not alone. Did the
prayers of others help? I dunno. But they did let me know that this situation has
been the focus of care and concern for many others.
There
is a story of man who had been traveling for a great distance, and as he traveled he grew weary from the weight he had been carrying, and over time his
progress slowed until he became aware that he would have to spend the night in
the wilderness. He stopped and began to
pray. It being late in the day, there
were no travelers that ventured by, and as the evening began to cool he
realized that his fate was set.
And
of course cause this is a parable a traveler even later in his day came by. Seeing the man in trouble, the traveler
carried the man’s pack. Lightened the
man made it to the next town quickly, it had only been a little further down
the road, less than a mile. Had the man
spent his time walking instead of praying he would have made it hours previously,
but he hadn’t.
Was
the answer to the prayer the other traveler showing up? Was it the motivation of the other traveler gave
to continue walking? Was it that the
town was not that far away? Or was the
solace of realizing that he was in the presence of God, the answer to his
prayer?
Today I had one of those moments, where I needed to stop and reassure myself that God
still cared. I get I have different
values and priorities than God. But I
believe that he cares for me, and that the answer to the prayer was realizing
that I can always have that conscious contact.
Today when I prayed I also had the distinct impression that I was
being told to use greater diligence in preparing for this kind of evaluation.
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