I don't really know why I am writing today. There is no real discontentment or triumph that I feel like sharing, nor did you need to know that... But alas, here I am, and there you are.
What do prayers mean to you? You know, I can't really bring myself to pray for outcomes. There are so many factors that collide and bounce off of one another in each and every day of my life. I can't kid myself, or God for that matter, and pretend that I have a good suggestion as to how these factors should bounce off one another. I was horrible at physics in high school.
Usually a prayer is, to me, pounding the pavement. Earbuds in the ears, hands in the pockets, and my well-worn New Balance sneakers plodding along some puddily Provo excuse for a sidewalk. I think about my life, the gift that everything is, and above all I have a hope in my heart: that everything will turn out for the best.
It's the most earnest, honest prayer I can give. Oh, and there is always one pet blessing that I dare ask for... and that's the request the I be happy while I'm sorting through this beautiful mess.
I have this image in my head, a tableau that popped into my head when I was reading Russian literature a year ago. She's an old woman with a wizened, wrinkled face shrouded and draped in a gray and tattered thing. She is sitting on a stone, rocking an infant-sized stone as if to put it to sleep.
She sings to it, and it comes to life. A form of a little child, gurgling and laughing happily. The old woman rocks the image, laughs with it, makes faces with it and loves it.
I assume when the old woman goes home, she ends her enchantment and places the lifeless little stone where she found it. I imagine her coming back daily to the place where a little trick provides her infinite happiness.
I don't know why I shared that, or what exactly it means. It makes me a bit melancholy, really. Is she wrong for loving something that isn't real? She could be neglecting more real and alive people. Or, is she right for reveling in a dream? Is she creating her own beauty in a life that sees very little beauty outside her own? Maybe it's both; these options I just thought of aren't mutually exclusive.
Ha! Maybe these thoughts reflect me :) Hopefully they have amused you!
Hmm, that's quite the different post, there.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it was intentional, but I see a very clear connection between prayer and the old woman, at least in the context of, perhaps, struggling to believe in the practical efficacy of prayer or of what it "really is." I can kind of relate to it in that context, and I think the old woman should return to that rock whenever she wants, guilt-free, and enjoy it!