I was speaking with a friend about prayer in Islam. For him, praying was a way to put the world and all else out of mind – represented in a somatic sense by the placing of one’s hands to either side of the head as if to say, “Get behind me, world”. Then he would stand in nearness to God and lay out praises and supplications.
Personal and communal prayer are interesting things. For many, prayer is a way to communicate directly with a higher power. Others find a meditative state within prayer. I myself still wrestle with the difference between prayer as such and a prayer. The former connotes activity and engagement, while the latter seems more static by definition.
I suppose that the diversity of prayer in the world is a testament not only to our cultural and religious diversity, but to our various personal ideas of communion with something beyond us.
I’m reminded of a piece that I wrote for the Wackerlin Center for Faith and Action’s Monthly Musings archive a few years ago:
I recently invited some friends and colleagues from the Interfaith Youth Core to Aurora University for a planning meeting. Before the meeting, one of these friends, a Muslim woman, asked if she could perform her evening prayer in my office. Naturally I obliged, and pointed her toward Mecca. As I left her and walked back into the Chapel to be with the other meeting participants, someone asked me if we had squared away the prayer situation. I replied in the affirmative and added, “I just hope I got the direction correct, because you know what happens when you pray in the wrong direction, right?” It was a quick joke, and we laughed a bit, but it made me think more about the idea.
The piece went on to speak about there being no “wrong” way to pray, but it made me smile as I thought about how prayer connects us to each other in ways that we might not imagine. We can say to one another, “I may not know how you feel when you pray, but I do know what prayer feels like.” I feel that the universality of this bond needs to be explored by people of faith.
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