Prayers of an Atheist

I wouldn't have expected it the day I dotted the last "i" of Faith, but Sunday morning I told a story about prayer to a group gathered for a book discussion at Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord, Mass., not a far drive from Peter's house in Cambridge. Before our presentation, the associate rector Nick Morris-Kliment offered a prayer -- something he seems expert at -- that put the group in the right mood; he asked for God's blessing on our talk, and hoped that our friendship might be somehow useful, a reflection of God's will for his community. A little embarrassing, 100% flattering, and, we hope, at least somewhat true. The rector, Tony Buquor, whose son was married by Peter in a civil ceremony that, he noted, was remarkably religious, introduced us just as kindly.

Before taking questions, and before I told my story about prayer, Peter and I read two short essays about our friendship and the process of writing the book. (These will soon appear on Jbooks.com.) I stumbled over myself for a moment -- blurting quickly, "ah, you'll excuse me for this" -- when I mentioned that seminary had seemed a terrible cockblock during my early days in New York. (This seemed less bad, somehow, than reading the phrase "handjobs on floors" from the book at a Lutheran church in Chicago a few months ago. I remain somewhat prudish, I guess.)

I forget exactly the question that brought my story to mind, but the moment it was asked, Peter turned to me and said, "Tell them about your prayers." So I did.

In Faith, I write, "[E]xcept when they come to mind involuntarily like all-time favorite pop songs, I've more or less stopped saying personal prayers. The transition's been slow. Since those early, comforting night improvising prayers that always began with "My dear Lord God" and ended with the affirmation "Amen" -- meaning basically "Yes, I believe You can do anything" -- I've run the gamut. ... Nowadays, though, the Father isn't there to listen to me silently meditate on the Lord's Prayer, and the Holy Mother doesn't intercede with her Son each time I call her to mind with a Hail Mary. I'd always really understood church petitions to be prayers for miracles. Now, outside of its context within a community able to act on it, a prayer asking God to care for the poor floats away unheard. Kept to myself, any prayer for the sick is just as ineffectual."

In a sense, this is just as true as ever. I still can't imagine praying for miracles. Yet, this, I've learned is a severely limited conception of personal prayer, and not at all what Peter ever means when he talks about his own devotional life as a theist.

So, finally, the story: About a month ago, near the end of research (if that's the right word, which it really isn't) for a new book project, I hit what I considered then to be a snag. Like "research," "snag" is certainly the wrong word, but for our sake here, imagine it as a really big, really painful snag, something really damaging. Consider it a heartbreaking snag. (I provided more details to the community at Trinity. I'm being less forthcoming here, for my own reasons. It's important to know, for our purposes, that I was heartbroken.)

What happens in my life when heartbreaking things happen -- when a dad dies, when a relationship ends, when I hit a snag -- is that I call Peter. (The book contains a moment when the reverse happens: Peter's heart is broken and he calls me. Why am I being so mysterious?) So that morning I did. He'd never heard me so crushed.

He knows very well -- better than anyone else -- that I've given up prayer. He knows very well how horribly it went the last time a friend recommended I pray. But he said it anyway: "Maybe you should pray about it. You know, at a moment like this, you really have to go into the belly of the beast." This is how Peter sounds when he really means something. And he never means that a miracle can happen, or even that God is looking out for me.

The belly of the beast, where we go when we pray, it turns out, is within me, within all of us. It's the unselfconscious place where, as they say, you turn your life -- your heartbreaks -- over to God. You stop being embarrassed and stop, if only for those meditative moments, being self-critical. It's the irrational place in us, where we feel. It's where we hope from. And probably also where we love from. This is not how I usually sound when I really mean something. But that advice was the best Peter had for me, and actually the very best in the world.

It's not easy to pray when you don't believe in God. Fortunately, from what Peter tells me, it's not easy to pray when you do, either. But it seems worth trying.