Praying with nothing to believe in

A brief guide to falling into the world

‘I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass...’
—Mary Oliver, ‘The Summer Day’

‘We usually don’t look, we overlook.’
—Alan Watts

Photo by Bogdan Dirică

Dear reader,

This rarely goes according to plan. I write down ideas, create timetables, mould imagination into a deadline. But I’m not the sort of person for whom all that will pan out. Creation is too fruity, too willful; although there are mechanics to it, you can never count out the magic, the mischief.

Or it might just be that I’m not very disciplined.

All that is to say that while I endeavour (sometimes) to have a structure to this newsletter, often some words will arrive that just feel like they have to be shared. This is one such occasion. It’s a poem that fell out of me over the weekend. It’s about prayer, and what it might mean to live well, and carrying on when you’d rather not.

I hope it blesses you.

Gideon.

Witnesses

1
Not much is certain. There are a hundred ways you could pray
and you wouldn’t be wrong.
Some cast their eyes down in the old buildings
and say the old words—
the comfort of utterances that have been carried
through the ages; stones that know the pleas,
the longings of generations.
Others might crumple in a lonely room
burying their heads in a pillow
hurling desperation from their chests
in the thinning hope that something will catch it.

I’ve tried many things. None of it
all of it works, depending
on what you’re expecting from the outcome.
I carve petitions of sorrow in a journal, invocations
to angels of change, remembrances of love
and wonder. The last of these
often answers the others.

Not much is certain. The best prayer
could be a life well-lived,
which is no perfect thing,
which encompasses everything,
which is what holiness might mean.

2
A few signs that someone has found
what might (but doesn’t have to) be called God:
they’re helping others;
they can stare for hours
at a meadow, or the clouds, or the lucent silence
of the stars; they have learned the hard way
that sadness must be woven into the fabric
along with all the other threads.
They have caught the fragment
of a secret, and it has made them walk
a little more softly.

Life’s lessons will never cease—
it’s impossible to arrive
when we’re already here.
Deliverance relies upon us forgetting
what we want; it’s only then that we can see
everything else that’s going on.

It can’t happen to you all at once,
though you may in the slimmest moment
stumble upon a glimpse of something
that till startle you forever.
Heschel said that there are no proofs for God,
only witnesses, so keep looking around.
For our attention to be stolen
is to have our prayers taken
before they can leave our lips.

3
To be saved from death
is to realise that it’s coming for you
no matter what;
to be saved from sin
is to realise that we’re all soaked in wounds.
Be graceful, therefore. Justice
is repair, not revenge.

If you can see a need then you have a purpose,
even if it’s just to water the hydrangeas,
or to prepare a meal for hungry mouths.
Your hands aren’t here for nothing;
don’t fold them in sanctimony
when they could be kneading the dough.
Work (to make something new, to marry flesh
and imagination and sweat)
is a beautiful prayer.
The more you let a machine do it for you,
the less it has been done.

Not much is certain;
but today, my daughter and I
are feeding sunflower seeds to the hens
and I am answered in liberation;
in the fields, we pick strawberries, broccoli, cauliflower
and raspberries and there is a peace
that passes understanding.
I am lifted however briefly from the pit
by listening to the rapture of skylark song;
the prayers are all ongoing—so go on.

©Gideon Heugh

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A little note to say…

I won’t be putting The Green Chapel behind a paywall. I believe that poetry and ideas about God and other beautiful things should be as accessible to as many people as possible. Having said that, I am an independent artist, so I need all the support I can get. If you’re able to make a small contribution, I’d be incredibly grateful—it will help me to keep doing what I’m doing, and keep it free. Just click the button below. Thank you, GH.

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