Five Reasons Why I Pray

I love praying. The energy. The rejuvenation. The uplift. The shaking of my soul, psyche, body, and brain. Beyond this connection with prayer, who needs more reasons to daven? Yet, recently I began listing why three times a day, I pick up a siddur, face East (or North since I now life in Southern Jerusalem), and connect with prayer. This is some of what I've come up with so far.

1. Prayer invites me to dream.

Despair is in the air.

Life, with all of its busy-ness, wears me down. The weariness of the daily struggle narrows my vision. All I see is that which lies directly in front. Dreams and plans beyond the immediate future recede behind mountains of exhaustion.

In short, I stop dreaming, becoming entranced in the routines of the day.

And that’s where davening comes in.

One can pray for anything. A convenient parking space or a cooling breeze on a hot day. Davening is also for bigger stuff: Love, money, or a good job. And the Siddur invites me to demand even more: an end to war, wisdom, healing, and the promised redemption.

No matter what it is that I ask for, prayer is an opportunity to set my eyes forward, to dream, to get out of the spirit-draining routinization of the day. Prayer reminds me that I can want so much more out of life.

And wanting something is the first step at attaining it.

2. Prayer helps me discover what it is I really want.

What should I do?
Who should I talk to?
Where should I go?
What kind of person should I be?
What kind of father should I be?

These are some of the high stakes questions of life. When I answer them correctly, a sense of deep sense of fulfillment is the reward. When the answers elude me, frustration and emptiness result.

But where do the answers come from?

We live in a time when no matter what my question or need is, someone has a ready answer. Billboards, Dr. Phil, the back of milk cartons, the guy on the radio…everyone knows what’s good for me. Smiling faces and the warm embraces all telling me what I should do, what I should be.

Yet, as compelling as advertisements and celebrities may be their guidance is lacking. Not because they are self serving or lacking in some way. It’s because of one universal truth: Any solution that doesn’t come from me is bound to fail. Others can make suggestions. Perhaps they can provide an approximate example. Bottom line though, it’s up to me to find my own way.

This brings me to prayer.

Prayer is a uniquely private activity. As much as the outside world tries to make it’s way into my head, prayer helps me shut the door on the din. Prayer invites me into a private, quiet space all my own. It is in this space that I can connect with the best, wisest, most powerful part of who I am. In this space I consider my plans, dreams, needs, desires, fears, and weaknesses. In this sacred space I can find encouragement and just enough energy and hope to continue the journey.



3. Praying helps me stay on course.

Lost. Again.

Starting my day with the best of intentions, I end up in places that I still have no idea how I got to. A bright mood often gives way to exhaustion. Subtle unnamed anxiety hems in my creativity. And of course the unpredictable nature of life often challenges my peace of mind in the most puzzling of ways. It’s a wonder that I ever get anything done.

And that’s where prayer comes in.

Regular breaks for prayer invite me back to sanity and purpose. Like a Global Positioning System that realigns itself with orbiting satellites every second, I must take the time to steer myself back on course towards optimism, tenacity of spirit, joy, and serenity. To pray is to reflect on one’s location in the universe. To ignore prayer is to invite loss of direction.

And who has the time for that?


4. Prayer works and it works outside the tyranny of statistics, odds, and probabilities.


Having read the paper today and listened to the news, I shouldn’t bother leaving my home. The statistics are daunting. Terrorists are lurking about unchecked. Global warming makes it unsafe to breathe the air. Driving a car is a sure fire recipe to get myself killed or maimed. The cells of my body are mutating as I type these words.

Prayer makes it safe to leave the house.

In it’s essential premise, prayer states that statistics are irrelevant. When doctors declare a situation as hopeless, prayer invites me to recall an often forgotten fact of life: no one knows anything. When some seeming immutable fact of life denies me a reason to even try, prayer reminds me that the experts are usually wrong and that numbers mean absolutely nothing (except to give people jobs).




5. Prayer gives me true political power.

Prayer is a intensely personal activity. What threat to the social order could there possibly be in opening a siddur? Yet, just recall how Communist Russia was terrified of the siddur! Anyone caught with even the most basic prayer book was branded as an enemy of the state and sent off to Siberia. Such was the power of prayer feared by one of the world's greatest super nuclear powers.

Why then is prayer so threatening?

On one level, prayer aligns one's wishes with infinite power. The power of prayer is inscrutable; it always will be so. Yet prayer works! Just ask those who've beaten the odds given them by medical doctors, political realities, military power, teachers, bank statements, their bad luck, or their own stupidity.

On a deeper level, however, prayer is the most powerful expression of the individual's political power. Prayer is the most unique expression of individuality. Individuality is political power. Physical tyrants may dominate me physically but as long as I can pray, I remain the boss of my heart and my dreams. Even art in all of its glorious ways can be co-opted and corrupted by the political order. Only prayer uttered in the privacy of one's heart remains truly liberating from repression.

And that’s the greatest power there is.