I pray. When I say “I pray” what I mean is I pay attention. I try to be still, listen and notice. Often when my eyes are open in prayer and I’m looking at a cloud, the sky, a tree or a kookaburra I soften. “Oh wow” I say, and that is my praise. When my eyes are closed in prayer, my thoughts often gather like a storm and threaten to dominate the quiet dark. But after a while, if I stay that way long enough, there comes a stillness – just like in the eye of a storm. That stillness has a weight to it; a quiet presence. When that takes over I say, “I am home”.
A man in a cafe started speaking to me and asked me what I was writing about. Then he said “Do you think religion is still relevant today?” He told me about his mother who is 96 and has been devoutly religious all of her life. Her house is full of icons, rosary beads and other devotional trinkets. But she is utterly terrified of dying. He used that word, “terrified”. That means she is afraid and living her last years with complete dread. He told me that she also prays. She prays in the morning, evening and at night.
It made me wonder what her prayers are like. They sound so different to mine. I thought about a person with a life-long faith who feels terror as life draws to a close. Maybe his mother has seen things, awful things, I haven’t. I wondered who or what she thinks she will encounter when the time comes for her final breath. Does she fear punishment?
Once when I was praying I held my breath and I imagined what it would be like if that were my last breath. There was only silence. And then there was a stillness. And then there was that quiet presence, as often happens. And the words “I am home” came to mind again. I wasn’t terrified; it was a velvety dark, a luminous night-blue softness that enveloped me. But this was just a mini practice run. I don’t know what it will be like, that final breath.
What I want to do is take this woman’s hand in mine – this terrified woman with a terrified faith, this old woman who has lived a devout life, a woman I don’t know, and I want to sit with her. In stillness. And I would “pray” (and what I mean by pray is that I would listen and take notice) and I might say to her “It’s going to be ok”.
Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski, Mission Catalyst – Formation and Fresh Expressions, Uniting Mission and Education. Karina also blogs at An Ordinary Mystic.
