Nobody knows
with anything verifiable, quantifiable, or certain, that prayer has any efficacy.
But, but,
"I know in my heart,"
my mom has said often enough.
"The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."
Psalm 14:1, King James Version
I do not know this God my mother trusts so implicitly.
"Be still and know that I am God"
Psalm 46:10
The Psalmist, King David, left me with a lot of memorable words and ideas. And so I internalized his vision of God. I continue to pray and sing hymns of adoration and gratitude to a loving Creator who allegedly makes all things work toward some greater good.
We do not get to know if our prayers and sacrifices have any effect on the way the world works.
Efficacy
Every funeral, every tragedy, people say they're praying for those who suffer.
Do they just say so, or do they really, earnestly, cry out to God for mercy and hope?
Nobody "knows" if prayer changes anything, or if there's life after death, but we can hope and believe.
Today, an acquaintance on Facebook posted a lone lament, in Latin.
De profundis clamavi ad te Domine
Nothing else - just those words.
In the comment section, we learn that his wife is fighting cancer, and her pain levels have been hellish.
Of course I looked up the Latin:
Psalm 129: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine:
1 Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord:
2 Domine exaudi vocem meam fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae:
2 Lord, hear my voice. Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.
Next, I came across this Arvo Pärt video:
Okay, my five minutes ended quite some time ago.
To finish off the theme, I'll repeat that "nobody knows" if my prayers ever alleviated anyone's misery. We simply do not get to know. Still, some part of me believes. Other people sense the presence of lost loved ones. You Tube is filled with videos from people who were clinically dead, got to "heaven," but got sent back to their bodies.
And now it's time to head out on my daily dog walk.
Before the chiggers, ticks, mosquitoes, and other hazards keep me out of the meadow.
March is almost ever.
"April is the cruelest month"
is the opening line to T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land.
source: quozio.com
Nobody "knows" if prayer changes anything, or if there's life after death, but we can hope and believe.
For me, it's March and November.
It's WEATHER, not calendar dates, that I find so affecting.
Sunny days in March always bring to mind the day of Julie's funeral, when the vivid blue sky and bright, fleecy white clouds seemed so ill-suited to the occasion.
part of my March meadow walk
Missing from November to March...
I've posted about this many times before.
NOT KNOWING is worse than knowing.
Not knowing if she's alive, maybe being tortured, or dead, God knows where.
Spring rains washed her body out of the culvert, along a lonely gravel road.
We buried her in March 1976, age 18.
All these decades later, her killers have walked free.
Lori, Sister #2 of 5, battled leukemia for half her life--27 years. We buried her in September 2021. Two months later we got the news that Sister #3 was soon to follow.
November 2021: Kelly delivered the news of her cancer diagnosis. Another long stretch of praying, hoping against hope, and waiting, November to March, but ****prayer availeth nothing*** in Kelly's case, or so it seemed. The suddenness, the violence, of cancer! And yet it took more than half a year of brutal pain before cancer could take her. On April 10, Kelly was gone.
Thanksgiving was the last day we saw Julie alive on this earth.
Kelly died on Palm Sunday.
The sun rises and sets.
In just two weeks, a whole year of this Kelly-less world will have passed.
How does my mom carry on? In the garden, and with her Bible. Sewing quilts.
"Keep on keeping on" is her mantra.
Me, I walk these wetlands and the woods year after year, always praying as I go, for whoever is in most need, whoever it may be. When people I barely even know (or don't know at all) ask for prayers, I pray. What good does it do? We do not get to know. I like to think our prayers have some kind of effect on the universe, if only on some level of quantum mechanics and entanglement.
Do my sisters walk with me? Do my mom's mother and father, all my grandparents, aunt, and uncles, "watch over us" as so many would assure us?
That, I will never know.
This, I do know:
Oh my! I don't know what to say!
I have chills from this one, so your prayers have affected (effected) me, a thousand miles away.
I believe that memory is time travel, and they are with you, actually with you, everytime you think of them. I feel this so strongly now.
I am so sorry for your loss of so many sisters, two of them recently and very close together.
Spring does always come, and for this we give perpetual thanks.
I love you!
Awww, thank you, thank you, for this.
Niko is very much a part of my prayer life, along with internet friends I've never met in real life (yes, I remember you @myjob and your family and your lost brothers and your busy life in the fishing boat as I meander the meadows with my dogs, feeling useless and unproductive, esp compared to the accomplished and hardworking people like you).
I love your belief that our lost loved ones are actually with us.
And Memory is Time Travel
Now I'm trying to remember where you wrote that before. Was it in a hive post?
Now I'm eager to head off on that lonely dog walk.
Oh wait. It rained in the night. The meadow is off limits for now...
"I believe in the community of saints" - that's part of the daily Rosary.
And I summon them to join me in my walk, in my petitions, my hymns of praise to whatever Creator God may be at work, setting the first atom into motion, making the first electron spin....
Thank you for including Niko in your prayers. I spoke to him about you some. He knew how much I value our friendship for sure. The last couple years have been so difficult for you and your family. I marvel that you still have any faith at all, yet you do, enough to summon saints on your walks. I like that idea, seeing you in a meadow surrounded by saints and loved ones. Julie and Lori and Kelley alongside, all your beloved departed dogs, and a slew of saints. You belong in their company.
Ever since I started thinking of memory as time travel, I have been able to revist old times more vividly. I can be right back there again. That has not always been pleasant!
How are you useless and unproductive?!!!
Ohhhhh Stacey, you make it all sound so lovely - "in a meadow surrounded by saints and loved ones, all your beloved departed dogs, and a slew of saints." And how glorious to hear I 'belong in their company,' whether they even exist or not. To belong! To walk with them! To pray with them. If our souls live on without our bodies tying us down, may we not be many places at once? Could Niko be with you, and when you're busy, might he walk with me through the meadow? How fun to contemplate!
Memory as time travel. I can see where there would be dark places we prefer not to revisit.
Me, useless and unproductive, yes, those are words in my head that I keep trying to ignore, to prove wrong. With social media and so many homesteaders posting their accomplishments, I look like a total schlub. I am a schlub!!!
But you assure me I am more than that, so I will listen to YOU, not the inner critic who never stops finding fault with me and blaming me. :)
THANK YOU FOR THIS Stacey!!!!
Just shared your memory as time travel with three friends (none of them are at Hive).
First One:
I liked that you mention "no one knows" if my prayers ever eased someone's misery. We just don't get to know. Still, a part of me believes, "the important and truly genuine thing is to believe in our God.
Thank you for reading and commenting.
Just heading out again on the morning dog walk, the lonely walk, praying, year after year of this.
More than 20 years in this meadow - the first pair of collies die at age 12 and 13. This pair is age 7.
And after all these prayers, what can I point to, what has me nodding, "knowing," that God heard and intervened on behalf of a cancer victim, a struggling teenager, an unemployed father, a young couple with toddlers in a troubled marriage, or even Susie Larson with her Lyme disease....
I just pray pray pray anyway.
If not, I'll just get stupid songs like Bill Bailey's Goat stuck in my head.
Your username intrigues me: cry over all ...