January 17, 2011,
I opted to start composing my midterm requirement for my Philosophy 102 class. A phenomenological paper on a keynote of our choice. Persons, events, things, anything. Possibilities are abounding. I just have to fix on one and type my self to phenomenological bliss. Just one. But blank.
January 18, 2011,
after accomplishing typing my lengthy name, section and date of scheduled submission on the upper right-hand corner of a Microsoft word document the day before; I felt the need to have a title now. I kept on brainstorming, jotting down every word that comes to light from my encephalon: topic, mirror, perfume, obedience, socks, fear, ticket, peso, and ironically procrastination. Now I had to fix on one and commence poking keys. But still, blank.
January 19, 2011,
there it was, the star of my desktop, the saddest MS Word document the world has ever seen. The clock is ticking. Literally. I could perceive its taunting tic’s and toc’s, silently giving me provocations. Beads of cold sweat now flown down my back. Couple more hours, I am toast. Oh God! With much fire and desperation, I shut my eyes close, bowed my head down and prayed. “Please enlighten my mind”, I uttered. And right after I delivered my ‘Amen’, like in a corny cartoon scene, I had a witty light bulb moment.
Prayer. It is very facile to do, discrete, intimate and free. It meets a crucial spiritual human need. Praying is communicating with God, in the form of supplication, adoration, praise, contrition, or thanksgiving. The bible tells me that prayer is a divine communication with God. This definition however is not universal. Taking into consideration my religion, which gives a splash of bias. My environment and education, which gave a dash of given fixed definitions in my immediate realm.
Even the primeval insightful humans practiced something that we would discern today as prayer. Prayer is not bounded only to Christians. The world is abundant with other religions; enumerating all would require me to break my backbone. Humans have long prayed in a more or less rigorous manner. The world has wide variety of prayers. Influenced strongly by religion, praying conveys that people recognize the need of some form of transcendent help, cooperation, or spiritual linkage with a powerful unknown force. Prayers come in all forms and all sizes. Still, all are prayers. What then is the essence of prayer?
Prayer is a form of practice that seeks to actuate a connection to some greater power in the universe through conscious communication.
I do not make known being religious, but I pray. As a child absorbing the environment of Alliance Evangelical Protestants, I was taught how to pray. Few were the memorized prayers; my Sunday school teacher taught me how to concoct a prayer using my mind and my heart. I never really asked before why I prayed. It was just inculcated in my head that ‘I had to’. Now lets give my brain cells out for a spin.
It is not coincidence that if not, almost all people have prayed at least once in their lifetime. Despite being taught to pray all the time, I don’t, not all the time honestly. Just usually in instances I badly needed something. Usually when I am in quite a fit. Usually when there is crisis, I seek for divine help.
Summer of 2010, a very beloved person in my life had gotten seriously infirm.
Everyday, he got worse.
Everyday, I increased the length and intensified my prayers.
Everyday, I knelt at the Scared Heart Chapel, shedding tears and noiselessly bellowing out for help.
I could have turned to the counselor, family or to my friends for fortification and console, yet there I was solitary in the Chapel of my God, in the midst of a crisis of uncertain outcome. I poured my heart out in prayers, and I felt like He listened. For at the end of each day, I survived the emotional turmoil.
Prayers in classrooms are of a different experience to me though. It’s usually like this: The teacher strides in, everybody hastily stands up, a prayer leader is requested, everyone turns their gazes away from the teacher’s eyes, one will push the classmate nearest the center-front, he scratches his head, makes the sign of the cross, chuckles, and say “glory be to the Father and to the Son and the Holy Spirit” then in chorus, everyone else will respond “as it was in the beginning and forever shall be. Amen”. Teacher’s plumps down, students plumps down, class commences. The essence of prayer, here I do not feel. Prayer has become nothing but a mandatory magic password that magically allows a class to start.
Prayer, from “trying to actuate a connection to some greater power in the universe through conscious communication”, becomes a banal old tradition of blubbering words. I may not be that religious but this saddens me to some extent. Maybe, prayers do not weight a significant value to each and everyone, so my sadness maybe irrational. Human tendencies are only, as it’s called, just tendencies.
The essence of prayer, I have given. But it’s effectiveness, I am still uncertain. Maybe I was able to nose out a topic for this phenomenological paper not because of the beatific response to my prayer, but of the body and mind setting the act of prayer demanded me to be in. It allowed silence, concentration and ample time, which may have been the contributing factors to how I drew up at the cartoon light bulb moment. Also bearing in mind that praying was a matter of course for me in times I needed something (as mentioned before), so that crashes out a 100% chance of it being divine intervention.
In the summer of 2010, praying made me feel being heard and consoled. Maybe God was there floating above me, taking my pain away, or maybe expressing and pouring out the feelings I had regardless of who the listener was has, on its own, a therapeutic effect. Psychologists had always encouraged finding outlets for negative emotions stirring up within the person to promote the feeling of relief or understanding. Maybe the numerous hours of being alone in a serene setting allowed me to reflect. Allowing me to release tangled up stress within me. Or maybe the psychosomatic effect of what I had for so long already believed in convinced my body and mind to calm down and breathe.
Prayer is a wonder with depths not yet totally understood and explained to great extent by the present logical human mind. Yet it’s presence and popularity will eventually stir up more and more minds. Curiosity is a human tendency. I know I am intrigued.
As a philosophy student, I am supposed to ask myself, “Why still pray?”.
As a Christian I am supposed to say “Prayer is a must”.
And as human I say “Why not?”.
