Prayer Poetry
I’ve been tuned into the discussion about ChatGPT in recent weeks, wondering what the impact will be of unleashing such a powerful chatbot in the academic, creative, and professional realms. But in one of my more ironic moods, it occurred to me that the AI would be a convenient substitute for pushing through resistance into genuine prayer.
Luci Shaw’s “Sometimes a Prayer” captures some of the struggle I have when I begin to pray:
Sometimes a prayer comes out
half-chewed, like a tough crust
that sticks in the teeth. Or spat out,
the stone from a sour plum.
Then there’s my fear of praying
for something good and beautiful
for fear it will break.
But it’s after these initial resistances that Shaw gets to the doubleness of language, how it can take us either closer to the truth, or further away from it. She asks God,
Do you prize fluid language?
(You know how pleased I am
at the sounds of my own words.)
Do you listen to requests
bitten off for their triviality?
Shaw’s musing eventually takes her to the crux of the matter: not words, but faith.
Does my personal liturgy
mean anything if
the prayer is barren of belief?
If so, remind me to choke it back
and wait for authenticity to voice itself.
From somewhere deeper in the belly,
rasped out, incoherent, heart-felt.
The best words can achieve is to get me to the wordless knot of half-understood anxiety “deeper in the belly” about this stage of life. It has to do with being in transition, finishing some endeavors and developing others, and I want my life to count. But it’s hard to be confident in the midst of change. I think of a wise friend years ago who described times like this as swimming halfway across a lake, then deciding you don’t want to after all. Go forward, or go back? Either way you have half a lake to cross.
Shaw reminds me, comfortingly, that even “incoherent” prayer can be answered. It comes from the heart, or to be more earthy, from the gut, which doesn’t always translate easily into pleasing speech. Yet her words make the path to that insight in this poem. It’s a uniquely human function of language, and it’s a reason to keep praying, even when it’s hard.
