We may feel big, like the most important thing in the Universe, re-shaping the planet and living in worlds of technology and invention. We have been to the moon and back; we could, in a fit of international rage, make the planet unlivable (we came close during my lifetime, and might again). We have created an industrial system that is currently making the planet unlivable, but being like gods, we are sure that we can continue to live anyway. 

But some of us don’t feel so big, at least on a collective level. Sure, we sometimes make the mistake of grandiosity as individuals, but we aren’t convinced that we have special rights to convert our world into the exclusive garden of Homo sapiens. We feel a relationship with the living things around us that includes respect and relatedness. We may be consumers, but we’d rather it not be in the industrial sense of consumer and product. 

Many of us seek connection with something bigger than we are. Sometimes we sit and look at the heavens and see something so big that it reminds us of our true size. We might experience awe and gratitude. At such times, we might have a desire to relieve suffering or add to the goodness of the world. Could we describe those feelings and that intentionality as prayer?

Practitioners of forest therapy sometimes ask the woods for permission to enter a particular spot. Treating trees, rocks, or rivers as sentient, as beings whose wishes need to be considered, also appears in some Native American cultures and in ancient Japanese Shinto practices. A person might wade into a stream and say “thank you for your cool, clear water.” They might silently say, “May my presence here cause no harm.” 

Are such things prayers? I don’t know the answer, but I do greatly value our experiences of awe, of gratitude, of stepping outside of ourselves to connect with something greater. I wish that those things, along with humility and acceptance of the limits of our understanding, were more common.

Like many of us in the U.S. I grew up periodically attending a Christian church and learning the basic stories. I was of course taught it as outright history, not as myth and metaphor. No one questioned how Noah collected pairs of all the world’s animals or got them all on a handmade boat. We learned that praying was talking to God, imagined as an old man like in the Renaissance paintings. Maybe talking but usually asking – for forgiveness or for rescue from danger and disease. Or maybe for stuff we wanted. 

I’m not promoting that, and I would go along with those critics who point out that throughout the ages, organized religion has been a great source of misery for many (and a malignant source of personal power and enrichment for quite a few). Jesus’ teachings described a radical love for all, envisioning a society turned upside-down, with the high and privileged brought low and the poor and humble elevated. All this was quickly transformed into a religion in which the right beliefs allowed us to escape eternal torture. Popes dressed in splendor and wielded immense power; so much for the privileged being brought low. 

And now we have prosperity gospels claiming that being rich is a reward from God (and therefore being poor must be a sign of failure). So much for elevating the poor. Christian Nationalism is a movement seeking essentially to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, welding the beliefs of the church onto the power of the state. No wonder Christianity is losing ground. A Pew Research Center study finds that fewer people in the U.S. identify as Christian, and 29% say that they are atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”

So should we throw away the idea of prayer, along with the rest of religion? Even when the prosperity preachers and dominionists have gone away, our capacity for awe and our tendency to believe that there is something bigger than us will remain. Many of us will still seek a connection beyond ourselves.

Some might consider prayer to be very abstract, a process of opening oneself to the beauty and symmetry of a flower or the immense dome of the sky overhead. There is awe and gratitude in those moments, transcending oneself and feeling a part of such things, of all of creation.

Others may pray in a very direct and personal way, such as Willie Nelson describes in one of the songs from the album, Spirit:

“Remember the family, Lord?

I know they will remember You

And all of their prayers, Lord

They talk to You just like I do”

– Willie Nelson, “Too Sick to Pray”

A famous prayer of St. Francis, the “Canticle of the Sun,” expresses gratitude to the Lord for Brother Sun and Sister Moon, as well as for the wind and air, the water, and Mother Earth. There is also gratitude for those people who forgive and endure trials in their lives. He saw all of creation as a wonderful gift, and all the parts of it – including ourselves – related like siblings. 

That brings to mind the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga Nation of Native Americans. Some of us first encountered it in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass. Is it a prayer? (Kimmerer says it is not.) From the descriptions I have read, it is a powerful way to affirm the group’s identity and values, its gratitude and the relationship of reciprocity between the people and the rest of nature. Participants in a meeting or students in a classroom recite words beginning with these:

“Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people. Now our minds are one.”

Subsequent portions of the Address express thanks to the Earth, to the waters, the plants, animals, and ultimately “to the Creator, the Great Spirit.” Each time, there is the refrain, “Now our minds are one.”

Chanting, singing, or reciting something in unison can be a powerful way of transcending oneself. Joining our voice with those of others, we are more than just our individual selves, and perhaps we become something greater. And perhaps that is like prayer.

“To whom do you pray,” some might ask, wanting to know what deity we recognize. But there is more than one way to conceive of the divine. One can have a spiritual life without personifying God as a human-like figure modeled after fathers and kings. Neither does God have to be personified as a mountain or a flower; maybe the Creator need not be personified at all. Maybe it’s all much more abstract than that, and maybe it’s unknowable.

It’s not like I have answers. I’m just thinking out loud, into the keyboard, pulling in the bits and pieces that I’ve read and heard and imagining that prayer is broader than what most of us heard in church as we grew up.