A note on prayer

I know we're not supposed to talk about politics and religion, let alone the politics of religion, but I have been thinking about it today so here goes.

See, when you have a sick child you want all the help you can get and kind people offer what they can to make things easier. They offer food, comfort and prayer. This puts me in a difficult position.

If there is a benign (or pissed-off) G-O-D up there I want him to help Wren. I am really keen that anyone who has a relationship with a God ask him or her or it to help Wren have a happy and healthy life. But I also feel guilty about this. I feel that its not fair that I hedge my bets this way when I am a buddhist who believes in a more general life force with less interest in a particular outcome for a particular life form. You know - its all interconnected so when we die our energy and our cells go someplace else. On earth.

Its difficult though. Sometimes the best thing we can offer has a feeling of prayer. I am watching the struggle of Ramona Mae, a little girl born a few weeks before Wren whose mother I met at an online Expecting Club for December babies. She has been diagnosed with a severe heart defect and is still in surgical recovery. Today, they found out she has DiGeorge syndrome - a chromosomal defect - on top of TOF with pulmonary atresia. Its tough. I know they are very religious and my impulse is to write "I am praying for you" but I'm not.

The same thing with my Aunt Rose who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer and has had brain surgery. She is doing well but it would feel better, easier, to write "You are in our prayers" at the end of an email. In various posts and emails to people in need I have written "you are in my thoughts", "best wishes", "hoping things turn out well" and "with metta". And sometimes I have cheated and written "I am praying things turn out well".

The thing is that prayer feels like a gift. Its showing a complete empathy of heart even when you don't actually touch someone. Its full of compassion. I am not sure how one sends metta (lovingkindness for buddhists) but I think it is also like prayer but directed as love rather than picking up a phone to call God. You just kind of send a wireless signal right to them.

I know there have been studies that show that prayer works. I am sure there are also studies that show that meditation works and that metta works. I am not sure that they work the same way or which works best but it feels a good thing to have lots of it going around and let everyone have their own go at it.

I've noticed that buddhists are very general in their metta - its about wishing balance into a situation of pain, of giving love unattached to outcome. Now Christians seem to pray in a very direct way. In Wren's case our prayer would be: "Please could you remove the muscular ridge on the left ventricular outflow tract and please let us see no problems with his mitral valve".

I was talking to our cardiologist today and mentioned that today's outcome was as good as could be hoped without a miraculous recovery but that since we were not devout at anything we hadn't expected that. He is Jewish. He mentioned that his previous patients had been praying about their child and his condition had actually improved... not just remained stable. I started to feel I had let Wren down.

Dammit, I should have been doing all this AND praying.