31 August 2014 | Powerless

I have a co-worker who is fighting a form of brain cancer that will more than likely be fatal. So I started praying for her.

I am one of those people who believes that if prayer really worked, the hospitals would be empty. That people who I know are truly suffering would find relief from their trials. That people like my co-workers would rebound in a way everyone would describe as "miraculous" and she'd be around for a long, long time.

I've always had an ambivalent feeling when I hear people say, "I'll pray for you," or "Pray for the families of..." It could be that I'm too cynical, but as I've got older, I'm seeing prayer less as a remedy and more an expression of our powerlessness. We don't have medical knowledge, we don't have cures, all we have are words. And these words are being used against the thing that we cannot control: death.

Although in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, prayer is mandated to do at certain times of the day, it's still a language of weakness. It's the ultimate weakness, really, not because we are begging an invisible supernatural deity for something (but you can't discount that aspect for lots of people) but because it's how we frame our powerlessness against forces beyond our control. Our prayers are our attempt to impose order on events and things that have no particular order. This is something terrifying, I think, something that's been a part of us since we were able to look up and try to make sense of those lights in the sky at night. Or how the sun appears to change its sojourn when seasons change. We need to figure it out, so we pray to make sense of it all and keep those impersonal, unfathomable forces that can harm us at bay.

My prayers for my co-worker are my way of just being a regular human being who knows he is powerless but still needs to do something. For me, it's not about bringing a change because of *my* particular prayer, but me needing to answer my powerlessness. It's deeply unfair for my co-worker to have brain cancer. It's deeply unfair that she may pass away, no matter what. It's deeply unfair that her family will be left in sorrow. But I can't do anything about that at all; I can only pray for her.

No matter how world-weary I may think I am, or how smart and rational I believe myself to be, I do hope I don't lose this instinct.