On Prayer

The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable

Prayer at the calamitous annunciation? 

- Eliot

In the gospel of Mark we are confronted with a difficult story. On the night Jesus is to be betrayed he goes out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. This scene paints the extraordinary difficulty involved in praying. In desperation, Christ calls out to God - no response. Three times he goes up to pray, and the ominous silence only deepens.

This is prayer. The struggle. The cry of, "Kyrie Eleison!" The desperation. The return to the familiar litany, "not my will but thine be done".

I would say that I cannot pray. I fumble for words and try desperately to veer around christianese cliches; yet despite all of my attempts at eloquence, I hear the words bouncing back off the wall, reaching no ears other than my own. In trying to pray the unprayable, I am left in an uncomfortable holy silence - as silent as the grave. My words fall dead to the floor, and in the silent, devastating aftermath, I hear the voices of the saints rise up from the ages. Adding my voice to theirs I cry out - or perhaps more accurately - pathetically whisper,
             "Our father, who art in heaven..."