I cherish the hour we spend weekly in our church's healing prayer group. This group has been meeting for 30 years and is our church’s spiritual heart. About ten people gather to read the prayerful intentions we write down in Sunday worship, to keep silence, and to focus our healing intentions for all whose names are brought to the group.
We often speak of the power in these prayers offered on Tuesday nights. I can feel it as I sit in a circle of people whose intentions are focused on the wholeness and wellness of those whose names are brought before us.
But what is the nature of this power? We live in a culture that puts a high value on power over nature, over people, over institutions. Power to shape reality into the form we desire. We have jobs that are evaluated for our effectiveness in producing tangible results. We are trained to understand power as a consequence of cause-and-effect relationships.
But in prayer we enter a very different realm in which our usual thinking of cause-and-effect does not apply. Prayer is communion of the soul with its Source. It is becoming conscious of the Presence that is closer to us than our breath and our blood, but at the same time is far beyond our personalities, egos, and bodies. In prayer we can experience the realm that encompasses and transcends time and space, past and present, self and other, near and far. It is no longer myself as the cause of certain effects, it is no longer myself exercising power over other people and things, it is no longer a matter of my act of prayer causing the healing of other people from their illnesses. In prayer I enter into the seamless reality that binds together all beings and things, past and present and future. This cosmic unity, known in prayer, is the very essence of wholeness and healing. I don’t cause it, I don’t make it happen, but in prayer I can participate in it and can invite other people, near and far, to participate in it as well.
There is nothing supernatural about it. Since God and Nature are one, there is no point in asking God to suspend natural processes in the special cases we bring to prayer. Instead, prayer includes us in the process of cosmic healing, wholeness, and fulfillment that also embraces those for whom we have special and urgent concerns, with results we may never comprehend. Our prayers connect us to a power that is not our own, with consequences for which we can take neither credit nor blame. Through this power, cuts on my fingers usually heal without my conscious effort and without the intervention of doctors. Through this power, doctors and other healers are blessed with the wits and the perseverance to do their good work when the body cannot be healed from within. Through this power, terminally-ill people can experience fulfillment and wholeness even as they go through the natural process of decay and death.
Prayer is an end in itself, because it ushers us into an ineffable encounter with the divine Love at the heart of the universe. The more of our feelings, concerns, and intentions we bring with us into prayer, the more we can bask in the divine Presence and participate in its perfection. There is often great comfort for the sick and hurting in knowing that a circle of people have lifted up their names and concerns in prayer. In knowing that others are praying for them, they are, in effect, praying themselves – being aware of the prayer of others delivers them into an awareness of God.
And there is another practical power in prayer. The very act of prayer often has strong physiological effects. The calm alertness of prayer oxygenates the body, steadies the nerves, lowers the blood pressure. And this benefits not only the one praying, but others as well. Just knowing that others are bringing your name and needs with them into prayer can bring you a measure of healing relaxation.
But even this immediate physiological effect of prayer is a divine gift, not one for which we can claim credit. For it is by dropping our pride and our shame before God that we are able to enjoy the divine Presence, which is the ultimate power that heals us and makes us whole.