Prayer. I once heard it said that Christians pray to Jesus, Muslims pray to Allah and Unitarians Universalists pray "to whom it may concern". Prayer is a tough concept for a lot of Unitarian Universalists to wrap their mind around. Some folks in our congregations are allergic to the word, associating it with a negative experience in a more orthodox faith. Some folks just think of it as a superstitious activity that other people do. Yet I am willing to bet that most all of us are likely to make a wish when we blow out the candles on our birthday cake. And I am willing to bet that most all of us have said the phrase, "thank goodness" when someone we know survived a car accident or recovered from an illness or arrived home safe after a long trip. And most all of us will hold a moment of silence when hearing of a terrible loss.

The trick with prayer is that many people believe that the whole idea of prayer assumes a divine being that is active in our lives. Kind of a big concierge in the sky. If praying is talking to God, then you can’t pray with out a God to talk to, right? If you don’t believe in a God, and think that there is no one out there to answer our prayers, then why pray at all. Isn’t that just silly superstition or wishful thinking? You know, I am not so sure I see it that way. As some of you may remember, I do happen to believe in some kind of order and organizing force in the universe which I call God. But I am certainly not convinced that the organizing forces of the universe speak actual English and that the laws of nature are set up to understand my prayers word for word. But I don’t think we should pray because of God. The kind of God I believe in does not need my prayers. I think we pray because of us. I remember once hearing a saying that we do not say prayers because God needs to hear our prayers. We say our prayers because we need to say them. It is good for us to stop and articulate those moments of Thanks, noticing the good things in our lives. It is good for us to be clear about our intentions, our hopes, and our dreams. It can help us to understand what is truly important to us. It is good for us to acknowledge to ourselves, even with no more than the silent universe as our witness, when we are really mess up and know we need to hold ourselves accountable for changing. And I think it is good for us to be in awe sometimes and to hold up that wonder. To notice and appreciate the amazing things in our lives, like a red and orange sunset over the ocean or the happy chocolate covered face of a child.

Many years ago, Niya told me about a cool book called "How Do You Spell God?" In this book the authors say most prayers come under four basic categories. They are, Thanks, Gimme, Oops, and Wow. Prayers of thanks cover what we often do at harvest time. We are thankful for the good things in our life, be they enough food or a loving family, or the chance to live another day. Gimme prayers are often called "petitionary prayers". This is where you ask for a favor. It could be a kid asking "can I have a new bike" or it could be a young wife pleading, "please let my husband be safe in Iraq". Then there the Oops prayers. They are times when we acknowledge that we have fallen short. They might sound like. "I am so sorry I started drinking again. I have messed up my life and my family and I really need to go back to treatment." Then there are the Wow prayers. These are my favorites. This is when you take a walk on a spring day and you notice the flowers and the birds and think, "What an incredible day. I am glad to be here today, taking all this in".

I think of a silent prayer as a kind of "paying attention". Those who follow a Buddhist path refer to this as "mindfulness". Mindfulness is the practice of being fully aware of what is going on around you and inside of you. It is being fully present in the moment. It is said that you can practice mindfulness with out Buddhism, but you can not practice Buddhism without mindfulness practice, since it is so key to this spiritual path and the truths it can bring us. Buddhist scholar and teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn says this about mindfulness, "There are things that are available to us twenty-four hours a day. It depends on us to enjoy them. The fresh air is available to us twenty-four hours a day. The question is whether we have the time and awareness to enjoy it. We cannot blame the fresh air for not being there. We have to look back to see where we take the opportunity and the time to be aware of the fresh air and to enjoy it . One of the conditions that helps us be free to enjoy what is there is our mindfulness. If our mindfulness is not there then nothing will be there. We will not be aware of the beautiful sunshine, the fresh air, the stars, the moon, the people, the animals, and the trees." I believe that when we bring our wants and desires into our consciousness, when we bring our blessings into our consciousness, or our failings, or our strong feelings about an experience we are having… when we do this kind of a silent prayer, we are practicing a kind of mindfulness. We are connected to the world and to truth in a new and more complete way that can open our lives to enlightenment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of our most famous Unitarian ministers, titled his first published sermon, "Pray Without Ceasing". Emerson did not preach that we all needed to be on our knees all day, pleading to be forgiven. Emerson believed that the spirit of the divine was all around us and inside of us. It permeated existence and was more real in many ways than the physical world we experience day to day. For this reason Emerson believed that every conscious thought we held was a prayer, a communication with the Spirit. He said, "We pray without ceasing. Every secret wish is a prayer, every house a church, ever street is a closet of devotion…Every desire of the human mind is a prayer uttered to God and registered in heaven". Emerson also said that he believed that often these ceaseless prayers were answered. This was not so much because God was so busy filling all our constant orders but, as he put it, "what we strongly and earnestly desire we shall make every effort to obtain". For this reason, Emerson cautioned his congregation to "cleanse their thoughts" so their prayers were indeed in keeping with the right path. Kind of the old "be careful what you pray for because you might get it" idea. As Emerson is quoted in one of the readings in the back of our hymnal, "It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming".

The Jewish people have a wonderful tradition of praying and paying attention. They have an amazing assortment of blessings for various occasions. These blessings invest an aura of wonder, sanctity, and thankfulness into everyday life. The Jews say that to live a good life you should bless and thank God 100 times every day. These blessings are a way to make that more than possible. Each time an observant Jew eats bread he prays, "Blessed are you Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth". All Jewish prayers have the same preamble, about blessing the ruler of the universe, and then various endings are tacked onto the end, as appropriate. When one eats an apple the prayer is "blessed is the ruler of the universe who creates the fruit of the tree". When drinking wine the blessing is for the "God who creates the fruit of the vine". Then there are some really interesting ones. Upon seeing lightning and hearing thunder you say "Blessed are you Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, whose strength fills the world". On seeing exceptionally good looking people you say "Blessed is God, who has such things in the universe." When seeing a strange looking animal, like a giraffe, you say "Blessed is God who makes the creatures different." And then there are my two favorite. In the morning, upon wakening, an observant Jew prays, "Thank you, Oh God, for returning my soul to me". And when one hears very bad news the prayer is, "blessed is God, who is the only true judge of whatever happens". I love these daily blessings. You see, when you stop to say a little prayer for the apple, or the bread, or the smell of the flowers, you are in some way forced to notice these things and are less likely to take them for granted in your life. These blessings might be a way to walk through you day with gratitude in your heart, noticing all you have to bless… all the ways you are blessed as you live in this wonderful world.

I do pray. It is a part of my own spiritual practice. I seldom pray out loud, though I do sometimes. My prayers fall into some of those classic categories I mentioned before. I try to maintain an attitude of mindfulness and thankfulness thought my day. I guess that would be a combination of Thanks and Wow. I do kind of a UU version on the Jewish daily blessings. As I take a walk in my neighborhood, I say a silent acknowledgement of the blessings all around me. I see roses and I think, "Wow, that flower smells wonderful. I am so thankful that the universe has beautiful flowers in it and that I get to smell them." I think, "Look at the kids playing in the park. We are blessed that the future generations are here with us." I see chimney swifts that spiral down the school chimney in close formation each fall and I reflect with gratitude on the miracle of how those little birds can work together, flying so fast and close to each other without collision. This kind of thing is a form or prayer and mindfulness. It’s me, noticing the wonders all around me that I did not create. And it is me having a feeling of thankfulness to whatever universal forces did help these miracles come into being.

I have some prayers of the "oops" variety. As they say in the 12 step programs, you admit to yourself and your higher power when you are falling short. Sometimes those two confessions are done with the same action. I have to admit when I have been selfish or petty or jealous. Yes, it does happen more often than I would like to admit. I have to face these things in myself and discern how I can make things right. Admitting these things to myself, clearly and without excuses, is a form of prayer. I bring my errors to my consciousness to be examined in the light of truth.

Then there is the Gimme prayers or as they are classically called, prayers of petition. I am not one to pray for parking spaces downtown. I have a friend who is a Catholic nun who does that all the time. I have many friends, including some UUs, who pray that they get the job they are applying for or that their concert or class presentation will go well. I tend not to do that kind of praying either. But I did go through a particularly anxious time in my life several years ago where I felt really powerless and frightened. I talked with my UU minister and she suggested I find a way to pray about it. I was not yet a divinity student, but she had an idea this might work for me. So I wrote this prayer to help me through that dark time. It is a sung prayer, because that is what felt right to me. I would light a chalice and sing …

It just seemed to me that if I was going to ask the great divine force of the universe for help, I should do my share of the work and not just wait around for magic. But in praying like this, I was pledging to my self, and whatever forces exist, that I would notice and seek the help of the solutions that were presented to me in this world. I do believe wisdom is all around us, if we pay attention. But we have to be mindful, paying attention, in order to access this wisdom. To use traditional religious language, you have to pay attention in order to hear the answer to your prayers.

I also have a classification of petitionary prayer, with I call "give them" as opposed to "give me". This is where I might pray for peace in Iraq, or pray for a hospital patient who is having a risky surgery, or pray for a friend who is going through a nasty divorce. In these cases I don’t so much as "ask God to look out for them". It is more like I send them my love and warm wishes. To the soldiers, I picture them and fill my mind with thought of comfort, hoping they can be comforted. For someone in surgery I might picture the surgical team and the patient in my mind, imagining the medical staff looking kind and confident as I picture the patient looking strong and resilient. I also do this every time I see an ambulance go by. I hold that image and send thoughts of love and strength. When I think of a loved one in distress I try to take a moment to hold them in a bubble of love in my mind. It is like the song we sing to the children, "We hold you in our love as you go"

Does this kind of praying for others do any good? There have been scientific studies, looking at the impact of prayer on medical patients. Results are mixed. It seems that if a patient does not know they have a team of prayers praying for them, they might do better than their other patients. However if they have been told that strangers are praying for them, they might do a little worse. Perhaps they feel a sense of dread that they are so sick that they had to have the theological big guns brought in. Yet despite this research and very little real proof of results, praying for a positive outcome in hard times is done by people all over the world every day. Prayers of some sort are said by people of all different faiths, including many Unitarian Universalists. It brings a sort of comfort and perspective that many seek on an instinctive level.

Every Sunday morning when I leave my home in Portland to come to Corvallis to be with you, I sing a blessing to my family as I walk out to the car. Very quietly or in my mind, as I lock the door and carry out my bags, I sing the first hymn in our hymnal. I sing, "May Noting Evil Cross this door and may ill future never pry about these windows may the roar and rain go by. With laughter drown the raucous shout and though these sheltering walls are thin, may they be strong to keep hate out and hold love in". It doesn’t cost me a cent. And until I wrote this sermon, none of them ever know I did this little ritual. But it is my way of acknowledging my love for my family, my way of bringing it into my consciousness as I get ready to leave them for a few days. It is my way of knowing that I am not going to be there to look out for them for a few days but that is OK. Other forces in the universe are in place, which stretch beyond my maternal devotion. It is an example of that thing which I call Holy Humility, knowing that I do not hold up with world all by myself and hoping that the forces that do hold up with world will hold up those I love. Is this prayer I say for my family 100% rational? I don’t think so. Will I continue to do it? You bet. I will keep on praying like this just like I will continue to say a silent blessing when I eat my breakfast and when I see the leaves turn color on the trees. As Emerson told us, all our thoughts are prayers and heaven is all around us. Our mindfulness, our paying attention, our prayerful thoughts, can connect us with the ever-present miracles. May it be so.