Reverend Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

May 26, 1996

"Does Prayer Work?" The title seems a little crass, I admit. But the truth is that my religious faith is a very practical one. I believe because that relationship gives me a kind of grounding from which I go about my living; it quiets my fears, gives me hope, suggests possibility, provides richness, stirs the pot. And prayer? I could hardly escape it. My mother took me to kneel at the altar at Holy Name Catholic church as soon as I was old enough to walk, and my So. Baptist grandmother "prayed without ceasing." I pray because it's in my blood. I pray because I need to pray.

And it appears that a lot of other people do, too. Gallup polls for over 40 years have shown little change in their reporting on the number of Americans who pray--about 9 out of 10. The Americans, along with the Irish, are the most praying people in the modern world. In both these countries, some 80 per cent of respondents claim to pray at least once a week, and 57 per cent of Americans say they pray daily. The vast majority of do at least some of their praying while performing other activities, such as housework, jogging, or driving. Women are more likely to pray than men, older persons than younger persons, blacks than whites, and less educated persons more than better educated.

I don't know how many Unitarian Universalists pray. But I suspect because of our socio-economic level--which is the highest of any religious group, except for the Reformed Jews--I suspect we do not pray as often as other Americans. Prayer assumes some degree of humility, calls for relinquishment, and, you see, we Unitarian Universalists tend to be uncomfortable with these concepts. We are a privileged and a prideful people. Why should people as smart and capable and self-contained as we are, pray?

But many of us do, I can tell you that, and some of us also have mystical experiences occasionally. I know this because people tell me about these experiences in hushed tones, as though they are slightly embarrassed and are afraid that they will not be believed. We are sort of in the closet about these matters. I think that is interesting--that as a religious people we are out of the closet about sexual orientation and in the closet about prayer. I was talking with a pastor from a Presbyterian church recently, and she said that their church Board always starts Board meetings with an hour of prayer and Bible study. An hour of prayer and Bible study! Somehow, I can't quite imagine suggesting that to our Board. But what would it be like if we started all our committee meetings with meditation and or with a prayerful reading? What difference would it make in the tone and focus of our meetings?

Again, I suppose, I'm asking the question, "Does prayer work?" Maybe we need to refine the question, even as we answer it. Yes, it works--but we're not sure exactly how. And it doesn't "work" in a mechanistic, cause and effect fashion. In other words, you can't put your quarter in the jukebox and get the tune you wish from the big DJ in the Sky.

Physician Larry Dossey is the leading authority on the efficacy of prayer as it can be measured scientifically. I've been struck by his work, and I want to share with you today some of his conclusions. Dossey came out of medical school believing that prayer was mere superstition, but after years of medical practice, he was taken aback to discover scientific evidence of the healing power of prayer. Unsettled, he then embarked on a lengthy study of the relationship between prayer and healing. He says, "I'm not interested in proselytizing. . . . I don't belong to anybody's formal religious group and I just want to emphasize that prayer works, and we have scientific evidence that it works. . . . People are free to do with this information what they need to do." It is clear to me that this man is no wild-eyed whacko. He is the former Chief of Staff of Humana in Dallas and is the current co-chair of the newly established Panel on Mind/Body Interventions at the National Institutes of Health.

I first heard Dossey on PBS, where he was being interviewed about his new book, Healing Words . When I tuned in, he was telling about the kahuna "death prayer," a Polynesian tradition which spread to the Hawaiian Islands. It seems that the kahunas taught that all people should be kind and loving, and they believed that people who willfully hurt others should die. (There is a clean simplicity to this that I like.) To rid the community of such a person, the shamans would come together and pray the death prayer--without the knowledge of the individual in question, nonlocally, at a distance--and the victim's response followed a typical pattern: a numbness would begin at the feet and travel upward until the legs were paralyzed, and this would be followed by a general collapse and death. I was fascinated by this study, and wanted to learn more about Dossey's work.

Again, in his own words, "I had an incredible experience back in 1988; I came across a study at San Francisco General Hospital called the Randolph Byrd Study. Basically it involved about 400 heart attack patients--200 of whom got prayed for, 200 of them didn't. And it looked like the people who got prayed for had been given some sort of miracle drug. I was stunned by this study. It looked like terrific science, and I wondered if this study stood alone or if there was anything else out there to support it. . . . My search led me to over 130 of these studies. The information is just there. I'd never heard of these studies, I didn't know they existed. They aren't taught in medical schools." (It should be noted that the Byrd study was a randomized, double-blind experiment in which neither the patients, nurses, or doctors knew which patients were being prayed for and which were not.) Other experiments showed that prayer positively affected high blood pressure, wounds, heart attacks, headaches, and anxiety.

Why do doctors fail to recognize these studies? Dossey speculates: they are trained in the scientific paradigm, which has no place for healing at a distance, has no place for nonmaterial forms of healing. So if it's unthinkable, it doesn't exist. Many scientifically oriented people are afraid of the mystical, are afraid of being lost in the mystery that has no discernible edges. The mystic sees the void as the Source, the non-mystic fears drowning in the sea of nothingness. Also, the image of the faith healer in this culture is disreputable--they are considered kooks or religious nuts.

Dossey tells a true story that exemplifies the apprehension that medical institutions have in regard to spiritual healing. Several nurses from a hospital became interested in learning more about Therapeutic Touch, a variation of the ancient practice of laying-on of hands. This practice has been scientifically studied in carefully controlled experiments, but when these nurses went away one week-end to learn more about it, they returned the following Monday to find a large sign on the bulletin board in the nursing department, apparently placed by the director of nurses. The sign read: THERE WILL BE NO HEALING IN THIS HOSPITAL!"

Larry Dossey--for one, however--believes that one day doctors will advise their patients to go to bed and take two prayers. Not that they will stop conventional treatment, but they will add the spiritual dimension--or be sued for malpractice!

Dossey emphasizes that being spiritually enlightened is no foolproof insurance you won't get sick. He says, "There's no guarantee that just because somebody is on their path, becomes closer to God, that they're going to be spared ill health. There are too many exceptions to the contrary. . . . I tell people, 'Look, don't beat up on yourself unnecessarily with this sense of failure when you get sick.' A lot of very high powered mystics and saints get sick, and if it can happen to them, it can happen to you. . . . I think spiritual attainment, spiritual realization can give its own reward. If it happens to be correlated with good health, well, that's even better."

Dossey emphasizes that there is no one "right" way to pray, and that the sort of praying you do depends upon what feels authentic for you. He says, "I think most people growing up in our culture get locked into a particular image of prayer which is basically talking out loud to your idea of a personal, usually male God who prefers to be addressed in English. . . . But I think prayer is richer and broader than that. I think there are deeper qualities that bridge all these different ways of praying, <and> the most important is just love. We can put our particular, personal religious spin on it any way we wish, but love I think unites all these methods." Indeed, the studies on prayer have in common that strong feelings of compassion are the crucial element in healing.

Yes, it's not the method, it's where the heart is. I am reminded of St. Paul's advice to just take our "inarticulate groanings" to the Spirit. We do it anyway we can do it, and trust that the message will get through. Once I had a memorial service to do for a family that had tragically lost a two-year-old. The mother was a Unitarian Universalist, and the father was a Jehovah's Witness. Both of us ministers were there at the hospital, and as the child neared death, I suggested that we do the memorial service together. He said, "No, I couldn't do that. We don't pray to the same God." I didn't say anything, but my internal response was, "That's what you think."

Both Dossey and another writer David Steindl-Rast make a distinction between prayer and prayerfulness. Directed prayer is prayer that goes after a specific goal, like curing the cancer, for example. Telling the Universe what to do. Non-directed prayer is open-ended, it is a willingness, a longing, to be close to the Mystery of our being, and within the will of that Great Mystery. It is accepting of any outcome, is not afraid of death, and doesn't blame. Prayerfulness is accepting, but not passive. The heart of it is gratitude.

In another church where I ministered, I had two women who both happened to fall gravely ill with liver cancer at about the same time. One was a hard-driving, aggressive business woman, an intellectual, a woman of some privilege. She said to me, "Well, this proves it. There is no God. Else why would I have this cancer?" She fought her illness in desperation and in anger, alienating her friends and severely trying her husband. She had found the one thing she was unable to control, and she died with a bitter heart, leaving her loved ones a legacy of despair. The other woman was an usher in our church, an African American woman who loved to dress in bright colors and who had a smile like the sun. Everyone liked to be greeted by her on a Sunday morning, and if the church was crowded, she would march down the center aisle in her red high heels, visitor in tow, to find that person a good seat. I visited this woman in the hospital, too, where she was experiencing a tremendous amount of pain. She smiled at me, and we talked about our grandmothers, both of whom came from praying traditions. We talked about the old hymns we both loved from our Fundamentalist days. And she said to me, "You know, I don't believe in God. But I want you to know that whether I live or whether I die, it will be all right." I thought she would never leave the hospital alive, but she did. She had another year of life, another year of ushering and smiling at newcomers, before she succumbed to the disease. She lived a life of gratitude, a life that was prayerful.

David Steindl-Rast puts it this way: ". . . prayer is an attitude of the heart that can transform every activity. We cannot say prayers at all times, but we ought to "pray without ceasing" (I Thess 5:17). . . . . This means we ought to keep our heart open. . . . Gratefulness does this, moment by moment. Gratefulness is, therefore, prayerfulness. Moments in which we drink deeply from the source of meaning are moments of prayer, whether we call them so or not. There is no human heart that does not pray, at least in deep dreams that nourish life with meaning. What matters is prayer, not prayers. . . . prayers are the poetry of prayerful living."

I am reminded of the story of a monk who understood this distinction. He and a fellow monk were both smokers, and they were tiring of the long times of prayer during which they were not supposed to smoke. So one monk wrote to his Father Superior, "Father, may I have permission to smoke while I'm praying?" and of course he received back a curt letter of refusal. But the other monk took a different tack. He wrote to the Father Superior: "Father, is it all right to pray while I smoke?" He, of course, was praised and given permission.

Cultivating a spiritual discipline and setting aside time for it is important in developing depth and maturity in your spiritual life. On the other hand, sometimes you may find that the prayer you recite sticks in your throat, or your sitting meditation is reduced to the endless chattering of the monkey mind. And then later, unbidden, prayerfulness lights upon you. You may be watering your flowers, and you notice the bright blooms, the glistening leaves, and your heart involuntarily leaps up. You fill with gratitude. You want nothing more in that moment. You seem to become one with the beauty you behold. That is a sacred moment. That is prayer. Watch for these times. Tune yourself to their coming. For it is then that you get God's blessed hint: you are a part of all that is, and a part of you will never die.

The poet Mary Oliver knows this when she writes

"Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?"

I don't know how prayer works, but I believe it does work. I believe that having one's being open to the spiritual power that animates all of life will lead to peace and wholeness. It may or may not lead to a cure for the body; it will, however, be a balm for the soul. I covet your prayers for me as I put my hand to this hard work of ministry. Pray also for your church leaders. And enter each day anew in prayerfulness, thankful to have been given the gift of a new day, eager to use it well. Look upon the world and its beauty, and welcome the rain as easily as you welcome the sun. Notice your food, and eat thankfully, as you nourish yourself, and know that eating is a sacred act. Know that each person you look upon is part of the body of God. And as you come to the end of the day, breathe deeply and take in the color of the sky, the lights of the city. You are not alone. You live in beauty, and you will die in beauty. All is well with your soul.
So be it. Amen.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope I will never lose that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

from Thoughts in Solitude
-- Thomas Merton

Copyright © 2000, Reverend Dr. Marilyn Sewell. All rights reserved.