In my vision as a human being, I sometimes pray for things that are out
of my control. Isn't that what prayer is all about? Asking for a correction,
amendment, or permanent fixture to a problem? One can pray
once a day, twice a day, only in church, when the spirit moves them, or endlessly. All things sacred and secular can be offered up.
But, where are these prayers going? Where are they heard? I'd like to think that they simply land in the great cosmos—that energy field containing all manner of people's thoughts and feelings; that place without solid form or identified structure.
It is natural to carry on prayer conversations during times of stress or need, but often we vocalize moments of joy within prayer and expect that we will be heard and listened to.
No one really knows where prayers go. But do we really care or even wish to know? Somehow, the mystery makes the process more enticing. A compelling force of human nature enveloped in one word, a sentence, paragraph, or dissertation.
My mother said her prayers every night before she went to sleep. I heard them when I slept next to her in her 83rd year during Christmas vacation. She always sequenced the same: It started with her granddaughter, my niece—may she be safe, not smoke or drink, not fall in with the wrong crowd, not get killed in a car accident. She segued, then, to her younger daughter, my sister—that she would get her life and loves together. Mom ended her prayers with requests for her own health, healing, and a stronger body. I believed she thought she was talking to God and the cosmic forces.
I hoped
to hear something of myself in her whisperings but her words for
me never came and I contemplated what that meant. Did she consider
me just too strong to need celestial help or simply forget she
had another daughter (the mind being what it was at her age)? Perhaps
with me there by her side she felt secure enough to leave me out
of her musings. I wondered when I was not by her side if she prayed for me. Can I pray that my mother will pray for me?
