Prayer’s promises

“What have you been promised?”

That was the question posed in my morning meditation. After a few minutes of reflection, I didn’t have an answer. Which was not necessarily a negative result – just an honest appraisal of my general awareness.

What have I ever been promised?

Over thirty years ago, my wife and I shared vows before both a judge and a priest. Those count, for sure. Others?I’d like to think that my children will never disconnect from my best attempts at love but there is no guarantee of that, especially given the experience that I have seen other parents encounter.

Shortly after my birth, an aunt and uncle stood before my parents, a priest, and the Almighty and promised to complete my religious training should anything happen to my parents. I don’t recall the event of course but, having served a similar role for a nephew and niece of my own, the oath, while important, is a blend of ceremony and cautious commitment.

Other examples? Upon completion of medical school, I swore an oath related to my new profession – but that was a promise I made to a set of principles, not an assurance extended me on behalf of or by those principles.

Has the universe ever offered me any clear and credible pledges?

I cannot recall any, at least none that I have understood as absolute guarantees. There have been plenty of explanations and relativistic arguments, most based on a Judeo-Christian ethos and western moral tradition. I don’t begrudge or belittle those perspectives: they sustain me, to be honest. They offer me respite from the anarchy of a restless mind. They provide ballast in the sometimes stormy seas of uncertainty, disappointment, and despair. However, none would qualify as something that I could proclaim as an unequivocal promise. Never has a voice audibly spoken to me from outside the bounds of expected sensory experience. At no time has a representative of this world, the next, or any existence enfolded between the two tapped me physically on the shoulder, looked me directly in the eye, or taken me actually by the hand and offered me a promise that my actions today are directly correlated with something later, that everything and everyone I care about will be “ok”, that my time here, now, with you, is meaningful.

I am embarrassed by that statement, not because isn’t true but rather because it somehow doesn’t seem like the full truth. I feel exposed. I am sure that I am wrong. It’s just that I cannot be certain about my error. What am I missing?

If your answer is faith, I must object: faith is from me, not the Godforce. While enormously comforting, and often inspiring, my belief in a spiritual power greater than myself seems best construed as an oath made be me – not the other way around. The Creator is under no obligation to heed my prayers. And heaven knows that I have, in the course of my decades, offered my fair share of them. Many for others, plenty for me, a smattering for general precepts such as peace and common decency – I have dropped ample wishes into the well of unspoken offerings. Although a goodly number have seemed to reach a kindly cosmic ear, I should not interpret that apparent success with any assurance of future results. My vision into how the world works is miniscule. My gathering trust in the grace of God and the hands of their mercy cannot be confused with any sort of assurance extended to me. A cell on a finger typing these words can sense that something grand and marvelous exists outside its walls. That cell cannot possibly understand its role except by being that role.

Enter a memory. The writer and theologian C.S. Lewis once offered perspective on prayer in a beautiful four stanza poem. The essence of Lewis’s perspective on prayer is that God does not engage us in dialogue when we pray. There is no you, hey there, God and me, over here, human. Because, as Lewis explains, “while we seem/ two talking, thou art one forever, and I/ no dreamer but thy dream”.

Lewis’s poem on prayer speaks to me now. Am I, when I open myself to the divine, the expression of that divine? I honestly do not know the source of my ideas. Long ago, I stopped trying to explain where a thought might arise, especially if that thought was of someone or some thing that just appeared within me and, when noticed and acted upon, such as a phone call or text to a friend, encountered the response of “I was just thinking about you!”. That example seems trivial, I realize. Yet it is part of my everyday experience to ask for help on some issue and, usually, at some point in the not-too-distant future, to receive that help. The assistance often comes in unexpected forms, some of which are not without discomfort and pain. But the ask-and-receive pattern is noticeable. I may not like the medicine I receive when I ask for help. I do, however, receive it – especially when I ask without a specific outcome in mind.

So what have I been promised?

My fingers hesitate over the keys. There is a sense within me, somewhere, without place, of what I want to – what I need to – type. It is just this: promises offered are promises made. If I can make a promise to open to the Godliness within and behind and suffused through our world, I am, somehow, the recipient of that promise. My witness to the beatific is an audience with the holiest of vows. My oath to the divine is, somehow, inextricably, the divine’s promise to me.

You and I – we may be bound by, released to, and cradled within our pledges to the sacred gifts of kindness, forgiveness, and love.

It seems, after all, that I have been promised much.