not long ago i read the book “going bovine” by libba bray. it’s a brilliant book about a sixteen year old boy named cameron who has mad cow disease. while cameron is dying of mad cow disease, he goes on these crazy adventures, perhaps in his mind, trying to find a cure. he encounters all sorts of interesting characters and has all sorts of surreal experiences.
throughout his adventure, he is aided by a punk rock angel named dulcie. she shows up every now and again to give him clues…to help him out a bit along the way. dulcie explains to cameron about ‘the wishing tree’. she tells him that it is a tree that grants wishes. the branches are filled with people’s wishes. cameron questions her…wondering how everyone’s wishes could be granted no matter what. this is dulcie’s reply:
“Well, you have to know what to wish for. Take this one.” She plucks a wish from high on a branch. “I wish I were famous. Okay, first question: Why does this person want to be famous? To be worshiped? Adored? To get noticed? To make gobs and gobs of money? You have to look inside the wish and find the heart. So maybe what this person really wants, the heart of it, is to find somebody who adores her. She goes out to wherever it is people go to become famous and just gets knocked down and out and around like a pinball flipper. And one day, as she’s walking on the beach totally bummed, this person comes along, and to him, she’s a rock star. He adores her, and with him, she feels adored, famous. In a roundabout way, she’s gotten what she really wanted. Wish granted.”
to me, that is how prayer works. in this way, i do believe that all prayers are answered. i don’t believe in a god in the sky making arbitrary decisions based on how hard you pray or whether you do x, y, and z. why would god do that? why would god heal one baby and not another? why would god want to punish us? i don’t think god does or would. i think this is a very human idea. and humans are flawed…wounded…myself included.
when i was a child, i prayed often…even though i wasn’t raised to believe in god. our family wasn’t religious. we never went to church. my parents only saw the hypocrisy of religion. i see that too, but i have always felt very connected spiritually. it is something i have thought about and experienced for as long as i can remember…even as a small child. as this small child, when i prayed…i never ever prayed for something concrete. this made no sense to me. why would god grant me a barbie and not the poor girl down the street? i only prayed for peace and strength. as i got older, i added understanding. and now, i feel like i have all those things, although i can forget that i have them at times.
i think to pray, we have to open ourselves up to the power of the universe…or god, whichever word you feel comfortable using. and this power is for all of us…for all of our higher goods. i think prayer, or setting your intention, is just making the space for the thing you desire. but just like in the book, i think people often don’t know what they are really praying for…i don’t think people often realize what is at the heart of their prayer or wish. christopher reeve could have prayed 24 hours a day to be able to reverse the damage to his body that his accident caused. i don’t believe any amount of praying would have done that for him. but it seems to me, that he found peace…his truth. i think that is at the heart of many prayers.
if someone is losing their house because of a bad financial situation, isn’t the heart of their prayer to feel safe? to be taken care of? is it really about a house? we believe all too often that something outside ourselves will make us happy…and i think that usually we are mistaken. it can feel good to connect and share things with others, to walk the path with someone, but the peace really comes from within us…we just make the mistake of thinking the thing outside of ourselves is what gave us the peace. don’t get me wrong…we need each other. we need connection…but we can’t get our self worth or peace from another person or thing.
time after time in my life i have thought i wanted or needed one thing, only to be heart broken or disappointed when i couldn’t have what i felt i needed. i can’t remember a time that this didn’t turn out to be a lesson for me…i can’t remember a time that i didn’t get what was at the heart of my wish. sometimes it takes longer then we want it to. but i do believe in this way…all of our prayers are answered. we just need to stay open…go with the flow of life. make room for the answers and they will come.
Make room for the answers and they will come.. very true. That book sounds very interesting, how’d you hear about it?
Edwin
http://awkwardlist.com
I have a hard time finding fiction books that I “get into”. Every time I would try to find one, it would either be romance, sci fi, mystery…nothing I’m interested in. My good friend is a librarian at a Junior High, so I asked her to recommend some books. She started recommending teen books, which I have LOVED. There are some really good teen books. “Going Bovine” has been my favorite so far. It’s really good..very funny, smart and, I think, meaningful.
Thanks for your comment. I love your blog. Thanks for stopping by.
Mahra
I think that many times people confuse God with Santa. I don’t think God particularly cares if people are happy. I think we are here to learn to love; real love is a verb. It’s action, commitment, responsibility, and often requires sacrifice. Hopefully love also brings peace, contentment, and happiness…but often it doesn’t. So I don’t think all prayers are answered. The human heart is capricious; one can wish or pray for one’s heart’s desire but that desire is in flux and often unrealistic or unobtainable. I do think that God will give us what we need, in His own sweet time…but as I started with, He is not Santa and there are more important things in heaven and earth than personal happiness.
Feebee I agree that people confuse God with Santa…although Santa won’t give you everything you want either. 🙂 But seriously I don’t think God cares about anything in the human way that we understand care. I think one of the reasons we are here to learn to love…but I would add, I think we are here to learn to love ourselves first. And if I had to say the one thing I think we are here for, it’s to remember who we are. To do that we must look within…and I think when we look within, we will find all that we need or want…and then all our prayers are answered. They just might not be answered in the way we thought they would be, and I also don’t think that God in the sky or in an human form is answering them. God is within us and if we remember our connection and let go of the illusions of this world, we will see that we already have everything we could ever wish for right within us…just not in the outer form we think we need. Thanks for your wonderful comments. I love discussing these things…part of my “writers block” is that I often don’t have time alone…for example as I am trying to write this my four year old is on my lap taking the camera apart. It’s a wee bit distracting. I rarely go 5 minutes without being interrupted and while I am very lucky to be their mother and to be able to stay home with them, on an adult level it is extremely frustrating. BUT soon they will be old enough that they won’t want my attention and I will miss it. So I try to remember that now. It’s all about balance.