Faith

C. asked me Friday if I prayed - and if I did to pray for one his friends who had almost been killed by her boyfriend the night before. I don't pray - but in that moment I once again felt an aching desire to be ABLE to.

I grew up Muslim - praying every day, 5 times a day. I woke up at dawn every day of my life from 7ish to 16ish to pray the morning prayer. I prayed at mid-morning, lunch, sunset, and once more before I went to bed. My exclamations 'Yah Allah!' were prayers. My words of hope 'Mashallah' were prayers. My words of gratitude 'Al-Hamidiallah' were prayers. I lived in a world where praying was almost as natural and spontaneous as breathing - and often just as subtle. Ten years of praying daily leaves a distinct impression on how you are as a person - and it strikes me as odd that I am now a person who cannot pray.

I stopped praying when I was around 17 - I was fed up with the artificiality of the people and patriarchy of the religion, and I transferred that anger and frustration towards the trappings of Islam. I stopped praying. I stopped fasting. I stopped wearing hijab. I slowly stopped believing at all. As arrogant as it sounds (and is) I didn't feel like a God who could ALLOW horrors to happen on His world deserved my worship. Rather like boycotting an environmentally detrimental company, or a racist artist, I boycotted a distant and ineffectual God to better merge my mind and the spirit I was developing into.

Through the first few years of college - if pressed I would call myself an atheist. As time went on - I would call myself a neopagan. As even more time goes on - and goes on - I call myself a pagan. But I still can't pray. My gods don't much care about the sufferings of humanity - they figure we got ourselves into this mess and our only hope is to pull ourselves back out. They are just as ineffectual on a grand scale as God has shown Himself to be - but they admit to it and never claimed to be anything more. My gods are caprious - sometimes providing help, other times standing totally mute. My gods show themselves to me only in nature - both in its kindness and its rage. My gods don't demand that I worship them - they offer me no comfort, no surety, no guarantees of a perfect life after death. My gods are the Creators - they provide a sense of connection to everything and everyone and they are far far far removed from the daily excitement I call my life. Whether that connection even exists or whether it is a fiction made up by my own mind - I don't know. All I can say for sure is that is what I believe.

To those gods - I cannot pray. It would be a waste of breath - empty air going out into the void that would have as much effect as asking the sun to change it course. Over the last few months though, more and more I've began to wish I COULD pray. I truly wish I could have dropped to my knees and prayed for C.'s friend. I truly wish that I could spend some time before bed praying for the people in Iraq - whether citizens of Iraq or of anywhere else. I wish that I could pray for SOOO much - but I can't. I would be a hugely hypocritical lie - and one that I would make for no reason other than to try to soothe others by telling them - "Yes - I will pray for you" because it wouldn't soothe my heart or soul.

So instead, I hang my head and tell them that I cannot pray for them - my prayers would be like chaff in the wind. I have no belief, no certainty, no faith in the existence of a God that would listen or care.

i pray
with bated breath
the beats of my heart
counting out the rosary
of my penitence
i kneel
before something so great
it is unknowable
and plead
for what i have not yet earned
i supplicate
the deaf God
of my world
i show
the blind ruler
of this universe
my pains
i entreat
the heartless creator
to free me from its creation
and receive nothing
but
less hope
less trust
less faith
in the god of
my doubting heart.