In fact, when I met him, he was unconscious, with tubes and monitors cluttering his bed. Meeting Ernesto was the beginning of a shift in my feelings on how an atheist might pray. There are other ways I connect to the sublime and the sacred, but without a belief in God, prayer can’t really be one of them.Įrnesto isn’t his real name, for the sake of confidentiality, but this guy changed me. So prayer, I've gradually come to realize, just isn't for atheists like me. The prayers are simply, “help,” “thanks,” and “wow.” I loved the book, and I love the idea of cultivating a deeper practice of interdependence, gratitude, and awe.īut, with no God, what’s the difference between prayer and just reflecting on a concept in the privacy of your own head? And when I need help, or want to express gratitude, it would feel silly to turn to a listening ear I don’t believe actually exists. I read Anne Lamott’s book about the “three essential prayers” she thinks every person should learn. And when I came to terms with my lack of belief in God, I never felt like I was missing out on much by missing out on prayer.Įven the more thoughtful approaches to prayer haven’t gotten through to me. They feel like a kind of casually selfish bargaining, or just empty words without a lot of feeling connected. These aren't prayers that are very meaningful to me. The “please, please, please let me find my wallet,” or “I promise I’ll never I’ll never eat pizza again if I can just have this one thing.” Or the kind of frantic undirected prayers that come when we really want something. Or prayers said at the top of public meetings, a reminder that non-Christians don’t really belong. Prayer, to me, brings up memories of sitting awkwardly at my childhood friend’s dinner table while the family says grace, not knowing the words, feeling like an outsider. It seems so obvious that an atheist does not pray, and like some of my fellow UUs, I take for granted the freedom to pick and choose my religious practice, so if something doesn’t fit with my particular theology, count me out. And until recently I’ve never had to give much thought to the alternative-to prayer. In "a time for prayer OR silent reflection,” I’m the silent reflection. When UU churches set time aside for prayer, there’s always that: “or meditation” included, because it’s pretty much understood that atheists, humanists, even agnostics, don’t go in for that “prayer” stuff.Īnd that's where I always saw myself. It’s a question not just for me, but for our entire, theologically diverse, faith community. Can an atheist pray? Or perhaps more importantly, why would an atheist want to? I don’t know how you would define “prayer,” but I think for most people it includes something like, “talking to God,” or some kind of communicating with the Holy outside of yourself. Given my non-belief, prayer has never meant a lot to me. My love of religion, my commitment to religious community, and my personal atheism exist side by side, deep and unforced, beliefs that I find written into my very bones. I never intended to be an atheist, but here I am. Not because I ever decided those other beliefs were wrong, or unreasonable, or even a bad fit for me, but simply because I don’t believe them. When it comes down to it, I lack, quite simply and sincerely, any belief in God, an afterlife, or anything not earthly, observable. The problem was, when I looked honestly into my own heart, there just wasn’t any “religion” there, in the way I had been taught to think about it.
I coughed through the incense, fumbled the right-to-left prayer books, and soaked in the powerful peace that can happen when faith communities come together.
I went to church, to mass, to Hindu temple, to synagogue, and to my mid-Missouri town’s lone mosque. Growing up Unitarian Universalist, I was encouraged to experiment with prayer, meditation, and spirituality of all stripes. The homily below was delivered at Follen Community Church on July 9, 2017. MDiv candidate and humanist chaplain Sally Fritsche speaks about her experience praying with hospital patients.
0 kommentar(er)
