Typically I'm not a church goer. I have nothing specifically against it, although I did for a while rage against it and organized religion in general during periods of my youth, in the way that only young people can needlessly rage against things. I've since grown out of that, but still the whole thing doesn't resonate with me the way it seems to resonate elsewhere.
I'm fine with that. I have my own set of things that I believe in, and my own understanding of what's going on with existence that makes sense to me, but that's not the point here.
My wife and I have a wonderful daughter who is now nine and curious about all things in the way that both delights and frightens me; the former in that it is so much fun to experience the world again through fresh eyes, and the latter in that much of what I know she'll experience is horrible and disappointing. This can't be helped, of course.
My wife grew up with church in a way that I didn't, and it is important to her that our daughter learn about it. We had a few awkward conversations about this, revolving primarily around my unwillingness to tell our daughter that what she learns in church is absolutely true, given that I don't tend to believe it myself. I do however agree that it would be ridiculous of me to tell her that it isn't true, given that what the hell do I know. So the two of them go, and occasionally I go too in an attempt to be supportive.
If I were really adamant about this approach to learning, I would take her to every church and really get the full picture. I'd have to include all the various denominations of every faith though. I don't even know what they are, only that there are a lot. Let's just say that I already feel like I'm being a responsible dad for going to just the one church, so I'll ask that you cut me some slack on this.
So we go sometimes. I never received first communion, so I have to awkwardly sit alone in the pews while the rest of the congregation lines up for that. That sucks and feels a bit judgy, but maybe I'm just projecting that. I did receive communion several times at various intervals throughout my life before learning that I wasn't allowed to. So I screwed that up, but whaddyagonnado.
Anyway.
I say all that to say this.
At one point the little old man up front said "Let us pray" and everybody stood up, so I stood up too. Everybody bowed their heads and so did I, but I peeked around a little. Some people held their hands out to the sides as if to hold hands with invisible people nearby. Some people who had non-invisible people nearby held hands with those people.
Together we prayed that God would look after a variety of folks who need looking after. The guy tried to cover all the bases, the sick, the lonely, the mentally ill, those effected by war, etc. etc.
Anyway, I had my head down and was listening to the guy ask God to help out all these various groups of people, and I had an epiphany moment. Maybe it's something that has been obvious to a lot of people this whole time, but it wasn't obvious to me until that moment.
You might say that having such a moment while in a church is evidence of God talking directly to me, or working through me, or whatever. You might say that that's what this blog entry really is.
You might not say that, I don't know.
What suddenly made sense to me is that praying for these things doesn't cause God to show up and fix them. It's not God who shows up and cares for sick people, it's people. People are who can start or stop wars, people are who can visit the lonely, bring care and comfort to others, and all that. God isn't going to look after anything. Either we do it, or nobody does.
Essentially I felt as though all the people praying around me were doing it wrong.
Here again I'll admit that it's entirely possible that I've just been stupid about this the entire time and that everyone but me has understood this, and weren't doing it wrong at all. Maybe not though.
When you pray for something, it's not so much calling out to some higher power to come and fix your problems; it's calling out to your own power to fix them. It's calling your own consciousness to focus on that problem and to do something about it. It's drawing your attention to it, and if you're praying collectively it's drawing a collective consciousness to it.
Asking God to fix things and then expecting that they'll be fixed is a bit of a cop-out from having to do them yourself. That's not the point of prayer at all. It doesn't even make sense to think about it that way, now that I consider it. It's not like all these people are suffering out there, and God is somewhere doing nothing and just waiting for a room full of mumbling white people in New York to ask for intervention before swinging in on a vine and fixing everything.
We're it. We're him. He's us.
So it's one thing to decide you're going to help someone and then physically go and do it. The message from every church I've ever been in has included that sort of overarching theme, that you should go forth and be a do-gooder. This is true of lots of religions, not just Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Taoism or Hinduism or whatever, they all (in my experience) seem to have a common thread of basic do-goodery embedded in them. It's one thing to walk yourself to a place where there are people who need help, and to help them. .
It's another thing to consider that we can effect change remotely, and to endeavor to do that.
There are lots of ways that people throughout history have described humanity's ability to effect change from a distance, including prayer, astral projection, positive vibes, you name it. To me it seems like evidence of a universal interconnection of all things.
It begs the question: Can focusing on something and drawing positive consciousness towards it can effect a change, despite great distance?
Clearly we already collectively believe that it can, which is why why people send hugs, good vibrations, thoughts, prayers, etc. We must believe that we're able to make a difference just by thinking about these things.
With that in mind, here's something specific to think about: How many school shootings have happened in the U.S. in the last few years? What happens every single time? Thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends, to those who were killed or injured, an outpouring of love and support from the greater community as it becomes aware. This outpouring diminishes after a while, until the next time it happens. Then we get a whole fresh outpouring of prayers and hugs and thoughts.
What about this: If we can in fact effect change from a distance with this or that variety of projected consciousness, maybe right now is the time for those thoughts and prayers, and maybe we should aim them at the troubled individuals who have not yet followed through. Right now, they're the ones who need it.
We can't physically intervene, as we can't know who or where these tormented people are.
But we can be proactive instead of reactive. This epidemic of school shootings is a heartrendingly frustrating problem to try to solve. The best we can seem to come up with is to try to put obstacles in the way of those who would perpetuate these atrocities.
That leaves us with thoughts and prayers.
If we can agree that there is such a thing as universal interconnection that transcends distance and physicality, however we choose to go about establishing that connection, isn't it worth a try?
And what's the message we should try to send? Any thoughts on that?
