This was such a thoughtful way to explore prayer without trying to define it too tightly. I love how you hold both the comfort and the frustration of it with so much openness. The story about Evvy stays with you in a way that speaks to how love shows up through action, not certainty. It made me think about how many forms connection can take when words fall short.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. Words often fail me when it comes to love, prayer, action, god, this world in general. I do appreciate — often marvel at — the connections that are so often more eloquent.
Well, there IS a direct line to God. But you have to pay for it. Jewish joke: A distraught man wanders into a Catholic Church and says he needs to talk to God. The priest points to a phone booth. "That's a direct line to God, but it will cost you a thousand dollars." The man shrugs: "I don't have that kind of money." He walks a couple of blocks to a nearby Protestant church, where he tells the minister of his need to talk to God, and gets the same response: "Use that phone booth over there. The toll is a thousand dollars." Now desperate, the man enters a synagogue and pleads with the rabbi: "I must talk to God. It's urgent." She, too, guides him to a phone booth. "Just put a quarter in the slot, and God will come on the line." The man is flabbergasted. "But at the Catholic and Protestant churches, they told me it would cost a thousand dollars!" The rabbi replies, "Yes. But from here it's a local call."
Often on my early morning drive to work I thank God for my loved ones and all the wonder in my life. I try to thank and not ask. (I loved the clip from Jason Reynolds.) I am not even sure I believe in a god, but the habit of prayer dies hard. I describe myself as a "doubting atheist," a phrase I heard somewhere and loved.
I think perhaps we mortals cannot understand god at all, and the spiritual is something closer to the beliefs of the native people or the ancient Tao and Buddhists.
That clip from Jason Reynolds is so so powerful. And yes, the habit of prayer dies hard. In another response to a comment from Jolene, I mentioned a few prayers that still trot back to me. There is a little book about atheism and spirituality that you might appreciate: The Little Book of Atheist Spirtuality - Andre Comte-Sponville (Author) Nancy Huston (Translator). It found me years ago as I was trying to figure things out. Still trying!
This was an evocative, personal post, Betsy. And, timely - I feel scarred by the ICE shootings thousands of miles from me and am very worried about the future. Perhaps it is time for me to turn to prayer. That, at least, is doing something - and it will ease my fretting.
I totally believe in the power of prayer. It gives people a sense that this universe may contain something magical. By just putting it out in the universe for angels, God, energy. Whatever people believe in.
I have been thinking about that -- writing as a kind of prayer -- since I saw your comment yesterday. It feels close to that when I'm writing something without knowing where it will go. When I put it out there, there is an element of hope and faith that go with it.
I imagine that in your hospice work you have experienced that current of communication that can run from the dying person into those around them and how grieving itself can be a kind of prayer.
This was so good to listen to! It's been years. And now it is chasing Madonna out of my brain. Like a Prayer has been earworming its way through my brain for days now. I'm listening to this now as I write these words. Thanks a lot for writing and sharing...that line about 20 churches in a 10-mile radius and not being able to agree how to do "god" is dead on.
My father describes himself as a recovering catholic and I was spared the distressing conflicts of adherence to any religion growing up, even the word prayer is something I cannot claim due to association. While prayer isn’t a word or practice I can fully claim for myself, I recognize what you’re reaching toward and wrestling with here. I also cannot define my own quiet internal hope for safety and wellness for others.
Like you, I attempt to transcribe in tangible, actionable ways to the extent possible. Your reflection on presence, care, and showing up, especially through Evvy, landed deeply.
As always, your writing is beautiful, honest, and quietly powerful.
I love this "I was spared the distressing conflicts of adherence to any religion growing up"! I was also spared all the above. Thank goodness our parents suffered so we wouldn't have to!
I think of all you have done and continue to do that touches so many lives and leads to hope through action and community. In your search to translate your hope for safety and wellness in others, you have created hope among those of us who may have wanted to sink into despair. Thanks for your kind words about the post. I appreciate them. And you.
I don't believe in God. I don't belong to any organized religion. I have Buddhist leanings, but don't attend dharma or retreats any more. I do however still pray to the goddess Kuan Yin. Not that I believe she will grant my requests, but it allows me to fervently articulate my needs or wishes (usually for my daughter or grandkids). I believe we all return to pure energy when we die.
My dad believed the same thing, about energy. He was a protestant but never really practiced any religion in his life. I sometimes think I feel his particular energy around me and my brother's too. I find myself thinking that now they are part of everything and that makes me feel closer to them.
Thank you for this. Your post turned up in my emails this morning with that randomness I am coming to expect of Substack. Your very personal reflection on 'maybe prayer' (was it a prayer, and if so, was it answered?) set me thinking about this year's post-Christmas Epiphany story, namely the one about the wise men and their long Journey westward to find the one 'born King of the Jews'. We might think of them as astronomers, astrologers or just star-gazers. They even paid attention to dreams! Like many, they looked up into the night skies with wonder, with a special sense of some connection to an unfathomable universe. In a special star, they found a signposting that led them eventually to Bethlehem.
So many questions! I wonder if they were changed by their encounter with this baby King, one who looked nothing like their expectation of Kingship. Did they look back, in decades to come, on their strange pilgrimage? Did they wonder about the progress of the one whom they had worshipped and to whom they have given their valuable gifts? Was it real? Maybe, some thirty years later, travellers on a silk road, and visiting their taverns, would tell of a 'King of the Jews' who had been executed. And others might speak of their encounter with an unkinglike king who had changed their lives. Would they have listened, remembered, smiled and prayed?
Thank you for having the courage to write about this, for me, thorny issue. I struggle with prayer, too---whether and how it makes any difference. C.S. Lewis said prayer doesn't change God, it changes us. That I believe. I also believe in meditation as prayer, rather than "asking for things". I grew up in a fundamentalist church, and I rejected those beliefs early on. But I missed the community and the music deeply. The Episcopal church has been my church home for more than 20 years. There I have the freedom to pose questions, and a priest who doesn't give easy answers. Also I'm comforted that a variety of beliefs and doubts exist within the members of my church. My husband sincerely believes in the power of prayer, and he is active in a prison ministry. So we are different but both people to whom faith matters. I think music is actually my religion. It is bigger than words and logic. It also may be "prayer."
Bless you for what you do, and how honest and brave you are.
Thank you for sharing this, Carol. My son was baptized in the Episcopal church at age four (covering all the bases:) In any church, I found, it is possible to find people who don't give easy answers and who share their own struggles. Two priests along the way, offered me words that made a huge difference in how I thought about some events in my life that I'd long struggled with. Another priest fired out from the alter one day about the hypocrisy of focusing solely on abortion or euthanasia when talking about right to life. He listed all the ways in which "right to life" means taking care of the people right here, right now. Another priest told me: "community offers both comfort and challenge". Some people reject the latter part.
C.S. Lewis was right, I think. There is a prayer someone gave me years ago (from my little church group) intended to be said for a friend who is sick. There is a line in it that goes something like, "let us be medicine for each other's wholeness." When I think about it or the prayer to St. Francis, or the serenity prayer which are often uttered in more secular situations. Taking time to say the words leads to thinking about what they mean and that meaning can evolve over time, I think.
Betsy, as I have said before, things just are and life just is. I am a ‘hope’ person like Cuauhtemoc. If any one word sums up my life it is ‘serendipity’. I did like your description of prayer. Dare I say the best I have ever heard. I love your ‘holding hands in the dark’ metaphor and probably describes what we do at times - reach out - your Evvy being a near perfect example of the act. She was lucky you came along, perhaps you both were. If either happened to me I would think of it as serendipity. You were a saviour of sorts and she gave you much to write about. A story for sure. I do not follow many on substack, but you are there for a reason, and this post is one them!
P.S. Have you had red cabbage with chestnuts, apples, red currant jelly and caraway seeds yet? We had a portion each at lunchtime today and thought of you, now locked into my memory box as you are. I wish you and your readers many happy surprises during 2026 to help dampen the gloom and foreboding that I hope will end soon.🐰
I was no savior, Robert. At best I was a companion for a little while, and yes, we both were lucky to have entered each other's lives.
And no, I haven't made the cabbage dish yet! It's still something to look forward to. I fear that my return to my novel-in-progress may impact my ability to venture into new cooking for a while. I will keep you posted!!! BTW - do you think cranberry jelly might work instead of red currant?
Susan says ‘Definitely’. Sometimes the briefest of contacts can feel, and last, like a lifetime, especially on the occasions when the thought of such moments sends a warm glow through the body! 🐰
Okay, first, there's this weird thing where the actual Madonna song, "Like a Prayer," is in SEX OF THE MIDWEST and then I realized the other day that it shows up in my current WIP, too. So, I'm not sure what's happening there. I mean, it was a pretty ground-breaking song and music video--so controversial at the time--but I didn't know it was so deep in my consciousness.
Second, out of the blue my current WIP is dealing with all these issues of religion and faith and prayer that I had no idea I was interested in and am a little afraid to write about, but there you go. I guess it's the zeitgeist, as it certainly is a hard time to have faith in much of anything.
The song was in the back of my mind the whole time I was writing this post. It's back now, probably will be an ear worm for a few more days.
I'm fascinated by where you are headed with your new WIP. Tackling these questions in fiction (is it fiction?) can be really challenging. In the draft of my current novel, that question rises without really being addressed head on. I noticed it when I went through it again over the holiday hiatus. I realized my characters were experiencing what you've mentioned here: it is a hard time (not the first) to have faith in much of anything.
It is fiction. And I did not at all intend to be writing about faith and religion, but maybe I did, because one of the main characters is a priest. And I’m very intrigued by what motivates people in 21st century America to choose that life. To give up so much and dedicate themselves to an institution that is problematic in a lot of ways. Who does that? What is that life like? How do they see the world? Maybe these questions would be less interesting to me if I grew up Catholic. Maybe not.
I do not believe in the power of prayer, but I believe in hope.
My mother, who recently passed, believed in the power of prayer and the Catholic Church, and had a long list of names on her daily prayer chain. Names were added when requested and removed, after prayers failed to save them from death by a cancer or some other malady. It didn't save someones marriage, nor did it get anyone employment.
Doctors save lives; god doesn't. Prayers don't help victims of mass shootings; comfort and gun legislation does.
I recently had a surgical procedure (endarterectomy) & I asked that no one send me any prayers. My surgery was successful, thanks to Doctor Chia, my surgeon.
I look back many years to my childhood and still feel the great disappointment; I had prayed fervently for a white Christmas and didn't get one; I think that was the beginning of my non-belief in prayer.
The above being said, if anyone gets comfort by reciting a prayer, good for you, but it isn't any better than HOPING for the best possible outcome.
Hope, perhaps, is a kind of prayer too? I totally agree with you: god doesn't save lives and prayers feel especially empty in the face of the murder and violence around us but action helps. Action gives hope. Sometimes I mediate or pray for the strength of character to do something. I, too, believe in hope because it is a choice, right? Despair is a choice, too, and I want to choose hope and spread it when I can. Thanks for making me think about this.
Thanks, Jolene. I only made it through four years of Catholic school before we moved to New Hampshire and there was nothing like that nearby. Still, there was CCD, Sunday mass, all of it. To this day, my first thought when things seem really really hopeless I should head for St. Jude and the novena that goes with him. Ditto for St. Anthony when I lose something. Sometimes I actually do that novena or prayer and then smile because it is a bit like touching base with my mom and grandmother and that feels good.
This was such a thoughtful way to explore prayer without trying to define it too tightly. I love how you hold both the comfort and the frustration of it with so much openness. The story about Evvy stays with you in a way that speaks to how love shows up through action, not certainty. It made me think about how many forms connection can take when words fall short.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. Words often fail me when it comes to love, prayer, action, god, this world in general. I do appreciate — often marvel at — the connections that are so often more eloquent.
Well, there IS a direct line to God. But you have to pay for it. Jewish joke: A distraught man wanders into a Catholic Church and says he needs to talk to God. The priest points to a phone booth. "That's a direct line to God, but it will cost you a thousand dollars." The man shrugs: "I don't have that kind of money." He walks a couple of blocks to a nearby Protestant church, where he tells the minister of his need to talk to God, and gets the same response: "Use that phone booth over there. The toll is a thousand dollars." Now desperate, the man enters a synagogue and pleads with the rabbi: "I must talk to God. It's urgent." She, too, guides him to a phone booth. "Just put a quarter in the slot, and God will come on the line." The man is flabbergasted. "But at the Catholic and Protestant churches, they told me it would cost a thousand dollars!" The rabbi replies, "Yes. But from here it's a local call."
Often on my early morning drive to work I thank God for my loved ones and all the wonder in my life. I try to thank and not ask. (I loved the clip from Jason Reynolds.) I am not even sure I believe in a god, but the habit of prayer dies hard. I describe myself as a "doubting atheist," a phrase I heard somewhere and loved.
I think perhaps we mortals cannot understand god at all, and the spiritual is something closer to the beliefs of the native people or the ancient Tao and Buddhists.
That clip from Jason Reynolds is so so powerful. And yes, the habit of prayer dies hard. In another response to a comment from Jolene, I mentioned a few prayers that still trot back to me. There is a little book about atheism and spirituality that you might appreciate: The Little Book of Atheist Spirtuality - Andre Comte-Sponville (Author) Nancy Huston (Translator). It found me years ago as I was trying to figure things out. Still trying!
Thanks! I will check it out for sure.
This was an evocative, personal post, Betsy. And, timely - I feel scarred by the ICE shootings thousands of miles from me and am very worried about the future. Perhaps it is time for me to turn to prayer. That, at least, is doing something - and it will ease my fretting.
I understand why you feel scarred, PJ. Trying anything that may help navigate these days is important.
I think that recent events played a role in my choice to write this post
I totally believe in the power of prayer. It gives people a sense that this universe may contain something magical. By just putting it out in the universe for angels, God, energy. Whatever people believe in.
I also believe that writing is a type of prayer.
Your insights are amazing. This is why I love your posts.
I have been thinking about that -- writing as a kind of prayer -- since I saw your comment yesterday. It feels close to that when I'm writing something without knowing where it will go. When I put it out there, there is an element of hope and faith that go with it.
I imagine that in your hospice work you have experienced that current of communication that can run from the dying person into those around them and how grieving itself can be a kind of prayer.
I think a lot like Prince ~ 3 questions ~ hear here: Anna Stesia from One Nite Alone...Live!
https://youtu.be/VXf_rWwdeVA?si=3FJ7ZSAfK4S38t5U&t=317
This was so good to listen to! It's been years. And now it is chasing Madonna out of my brain. Like a Prayer has been earworming its way through my brain for days now. I'm listening to this now as I write these words. Thanks a lot for writing and sharing...that line about 20 churches in a 10-mile radius and not being able to agree how to do "god" is dead on.
I appreciate this piece and you.
My father describes himself as a recovering catholic and I was spared the distressing conflicts of adherence to any religion growing up, even the word prayer is something I cannot claim due to association. While prayer isn’t a word or practice I can fully claim for myself, I recognize what you’re reaching toward and wrestling with here. I also cannot define my own quiet internal hope for safety and wellness for others.
Like you, I attempt to transcribe in tangible, actionable ways to the extent possible. Your reflection on presence, care, and showing up, especially through Evvy, landed deeply.
As always, your writing is beautiful, honest, and quietly powerful.
I love this "I was spared the distressing conflicts of adherence to any religion growing up"! I was also spared all the above. Thank goodness our parents suffered so we wouldn't have to!
I think of all you have done and continue to do that touches so many lives and leads to hope through action and community. In your search to translate your hope for safety and wellness in others, you have created hope among those of us who may have wanted to sink into despair. Thanks for your kind words about the post. I appreciate them. And you.
I don't believe in God. I don't belong to any organized religion. I have Buddhist leanings, but don't attend dharma or retreats any more. I do however still pray to the goddess Kuan Yin. Not that I believe she will grant my requests, but it allows me to fervently articulate my needs or wishes (usually for my daughter or grandkids). I believe we all return to pure energy when we die.
My dad believed the same thing, about energy. He was a protestant but never really practiced any religion in his life. I sometimes think I feel his particular energy around me and my brother's too. I find myself thinking that now they are part of everything and that makes me feel closer to them.
I love that.
Thank you for this. Your post turned up in my emails this morning with that randomness I am coming to expect of Substack. Your very personal reflection on 'maybe prayer' (was it a prayer, and if so, was it answered?) set me thinking about this year's post-Christmas Epiphany story, namely the one about the wise men and their long Journey westward to find the one 'born King of the Jews'. We might think of them as astronomers, astrologers or just star-gazers. They even paid attention to dreams! Like many, they looked up into the night skies with wonder, with a special sense of some connection to an unfathomable universe. In a special star, they found a signposting that led them eventually to Bethlehem.
So many questions! I wonder if they were changed by their encounter with this baby King, one who looked nothing like their expectation of Kingship. Did they look back, in decades to come, on their strange pilgrimage? Did they wonder about the progress of the one whom they had worshipped and to whom they have given their valuable gifts? Was it real? Maybe, some thirty years later, travellers on a silk road, and visiting their taverns, would tell of a 'King of the Jews' who had been executed. And others might speak of their encounter with an unkinglike king who had changed their lives. Would they have listened, remembered, smiled and prayed?
I'm glad you appreciated the post, Peter. Thank you for sharing where the post led you!
Thank you for having the courage to write about this, for me, thorny issue. I struggle with prayer, too---whether and how it makes any difference. C.S. Lewis said prayer doesn't change God, it changes us. That I believe. I also believe in meditation as prayer, rather than "asking for things". I grew up in a fundamentalist church, and I rejected those beliefs early on. But I missed the community and the music deeply. The Episcopal church has been my church home for more than 20 years. There I have the freedom to pose questions, and a priest who doesn't give easy answers. Also I'm comforted that a variety of beliefs and doubts exist within the members of my church. My husband sincerely believes in the power of prayer, and he is active in a prison ministry. So we are different but both people to whom faith matters. I think music is actually my religion. It is bigger than words and logic. It also may be "prayer."
Bless you for what you do, and how honest and brave you are.
Thank you for sharing this, Carol. My son was baptized in the Episcopal church at age four (covering all the bases:) In any church, I found, it is possible to find people who don't give easy answers and who share their own struggles. Two priests along the way, offered me words that made a huge difference in how I thought about some events in my life that I'd long struggled with. Another priest fired out from the alter one day about the hypocrisy of focusing solely on abortion or euthanasia when talking about right to life. He listed all the ways in which "right to life" means taking care of the people right here, right now. Another priest told me: "community offers both comfort and challenge". Some people reject the latter part.
C.S. Lewis was right, I think. There is a prayer someone gave me years ago (from my little church group) intended to be said for a friend who is sick. There is a line in it that goes something like, "let us be medicine for each other's wholeness." When I think about it or the prayer to St. Francis, or the serenity prayer which are often uttered in more secular situations. Taking time to say the words leads to thinking about what they mean and that meaning can evolve over time, I think.
Betsy, as I have said before, things just are and life just is. I am a ‘hope’ person like Cuauhtemoc. If any one word sums up my life it is ‘serendipity’. I did like your description of prayer. Dare I say the best I have ever heard. I love your ‘holding hands in the dark’ metaphor and probably describes what we do at times - reach out - your Evvy being a near perfect example of the act. She was lucky you came along, perhaps you both were. If either happened to me I would think of it as serendipity. You were a saviour of sorts and she gave you much to write about. A story for sure. I do not follow many on substack, but you are there for a reason, and this post is one them!
P.S. Have you had red cabbage with chestnuts, apples, red currant jelly and caraway seeds yet? We had a portion each at lunchtime today and thought of you, now locked into my memory box as you are. I wish you and your readers many happy surprises during 2026 to help dampen the gloom and foreboding that I hope will end soon.🐰
I was no savior, Robert. At best I was a companion for a little while, and yes, we both were lucky to have entered each other's lives.
And no, I haven't made the cabbage dish yet! It's still something to look forward to. I fear that my return to my novel-in-progress may impact my ability to venture into new cooking for a while. I will keep you posted!!! BTW - do you think cranberry jelly might work instead of red currant?
Susan says ‘Definitely’. Sometimes the briefest of contacts can feel, and last, like a lifetime, especially on the occasions when the thought of such moments sends a warm glow through the body! 🐰
Okay, first, there's this weird thing where the actual Madonna song, "Like a Prayer," is in SEX OF THE MIDWEST and then I realized the other day that it shows up in my current WIP, too. So, I'm not sure what's happening there. I mean, it was a pretty ground-breaking song and music video--so controversial at the time--but I didn't know it was so deep in my consciousness.
Second, out of the blue my current WIP is dealing with all these issues of religion and faith and prayer that I had no idea I was interested in and am a little afraid to write about, but there you go. I guess it's the zeitgeist, as it certainly is a hard time to have faith in much of anything.
The song was in the back of my mind the whole time I was writing this post. It's back now, probably will be an ear worm for a few more days.
I'm fascinated by where you are headed with your new WIP. Tackling these questions in fiction (is it fiction?) can be really challenging. In the draft of my current novel, that question rises without really being addressed head on. I noticed it when I went through it again over the holiday hiatus. I realized my characters were experiencing what you've mentioned here: it is a hard time (not the first) to have faith in much of anything.
It is fiction. And I did not at all intend to be writing about faith and religion, but maybe I did, because one of the main characters is a priest. And I’m very intrigued by what motivates people in 21st century America to choose that life. To give up so much and dedicate themselves to an institution that is problematic in a lot of ways. Who does that? What is that life like? How do they see the world? Maybe these questions would be less interesting to me if I grew up Catholic. Maybe not.
I grew up Catholic and I have the same questions. Its fascinating. I’m already curious about your new book!
Well, that's good, Betsy. Just have to finish it now and hopefully find someone to publish it!
I do not believe in the power of prayer, but I believe in hope.
My mother, who recently passed, believed in the power of prayer and the Catholic Church, and had a long list of names on her daily prayer chain. Names were added when requested and removed, after prayers failed to save them from death by a cancer or some other malady. It didn't save someones marriage, nor did it get anyone employment.
Doctors save lives; god doesn't. Prayers don't help victims of mass shootings; comfort and gun legislation does.
I recently had a surgical procedure (endarterectomy) & I asked that no one send me any prayers. My surgery was successful, thanks to Doctor Chia, my surgeon.
I look back many years to my childhood and still feel the great disappointment; I had prayed fervently for a white Christmas and didn't get one; I think that was the beginning of my non-belief in prayer.
The above being said, if anyone gets comfort by reciting a prayer, good for you, but it isn't any better than HOPING for the best possible outcome.
Hope, perhaps, is a kind of prayer too? I totally agree with you: god doesn't save lives and prayers feel especially empty in the face of the murder and violence around us but action helps. Action gives hope. Sometimes I mediate or pray for the strength of character to do something. I, too, believe in hope because it is a choice, right? Despair is a choice, too, and I want to choose hope and spread it when I can. Thanks for making me think about this.
What a beautiful and honest post, Elizabeth. As a “cradle Catholic” who went to 12 years of a convent school, all of this resonates. Thank you. 🙏
Thanks, Jolene. I only made it through four years of Catholic school before we moved to New Hampshire and there was nothing like that nearby. Still, there was CCD, Sunday mass, all of it. To this day, my first thought when things seem really really hopeless I should head for St. Jude and the novena that goes with him. Ditto for St. Anthony when I lose something. Sometimes I actually do that novena or prayer and then smile because it is a bit like touching base with my mom and grandmother and that feels good.
Good old St. Jude and St. Anthony! Very sweet, I feel connected to my mom in those moments, too,
Thank you, Tom.