Praying without believing in a theistic god

“Theism” is as ambiguous as theos (god in Greek) from which it derives, but today it expresses the belief in a god which is a metaphysical supreme being, omnipotent creator and external to the world, in which it intervenes when and how it pleases. A god in which an increasing majority of our society cannot believe and to which they cannot pray. Neither do I believe in that god nor do I address prayers to.

But, what is “to pray”? what is “a prayer”? Prayer comes from the Latin precari (to beg, to plead, to request) which, in turn, goes back to the Indo-European root prek (to beg). Precarious is derived from this root, too. In Law precarious is used to refer to a power that is only exercised thanks to a revocable authorization and in ordinary language it is synonymous with unstable, ephemeral, passing. Language does not confuse us. We are and we feel radically precarious: unstable, transient, in need of another. That is why we request, beg, pray prayers. That is why we pray in a wide sense.

All beings are precarious, contingent, dependent. And we humans are acutely aware of being so. We depend on the air we breathe, on the water we drink, on the fire that warms us, on the earth that nurtures us, on the hand that holds us, on the look that gives us confidence and consoles us. We depend on the entire universe, and everything in the universe depends on everything, from the wave of the particle of the infinitely small to the countless stars of countless expanding galaxies of the universe or multiverse. Every being is and exists thanks to another one, but that one is to a certain extent thanks to the one that makes her/him be. Children are thanks to their parents, but parents are also thanks to their children. In fact, we all are thanks to everything that is. Precarity is an aspect of the universal communion of the grace of being.

This awareness (in a wide, universal, not exclusively human sense) of dependent precariousness translates into a prayer of supplication and gratitude, of recognition and complaint, of celebration and regret. Prayer is the multiple expression of the infinite network of interdependency that constitutes us. Every being express itself in its own language. Remember that the Latin term for pray is orare –where oratory comes from- that derives from the root or-, and its first meaning, with no religious connotation, is to speak, to say, to perorate … To pray is to say in depth our precariousness and our constitutive universal interrelationship. Existence becomes a chain of universal prayer

Everything that exists prays –or recites or says, we could also say-, expresses the grace of being thanks to all beings and the need of each being to be oneself. The silence of the desert and the whisper of the wind in the forest pray. The sun during the day and the moon at night and all the stars and planets of the universe pray. The mountain spring and the river that flows in the valley pray. Birds and all animals on Earth and on other inhabited planets pray. Children of Haiti and mothers of Gaza pray. Words, body gestures, deep silence pray. And every prayer springs from the silence and leads to silence, and in its depth we listen and respond to ourselves.

Do we pray to God? It depends on what we understand by God. We do not pray to a supreme being god asking for something to happen which will not otherwise happen, or to prevent something from happening which will otherwise happen. That prayer contradicts our deepest being in communion. But countless believers have prayed and continue to pray to god, asking for opposite things: one prays for the sun to shine and the one beside her prays for rain, one prays for the victory of his army and another one prays for its defeat, one thanks him for having cured her from the illness that ended up killing her neighbour (abandoned by god?). And endlessly so. Such a prayer is meaningless to someone who does not believe in a “theistic” god, an omnipotent external god with a changing will who sometimes intervenes and other times does not. Many persons who pray deeply, even though they shared a cultural theistic imagery, felt compelled to overcome such theistic prayer. For example, Jesus said: “when praying, do not get lost in words… your Father knows what you need before you ask him for it” (Mt 6,7-8). And Master Eckhart (about 1262-1328) taught: “When I pray for no one and ask for nothing, that is when I pray more truthfully”. Full silence is the deepest experience and its fullest expression.

With or without words, whether we know it or not, all our being prays to everything. But not only that. Everthing that exists, whether it knows it or not, is pure expression of its being interrelated with everything. Everything prays to everthing. Being, deep down, is a prayer. All beings are praying to us: thanking, begging, trusting, invocating, calling. The living community of the Earth and the entire cosmos are an endless prayer in all its forms. Boundless Reality is, deep down, a cosmic liturgy that extends from the heart of the atom to the endless universe/multiverse. The entire universe is a prayer, an eternal intercessory communion. Our deep prayer, beyond all narrow petition prayer, consists in uniting our precarious and praying being with the precarious and praying being of the universal reality. We could also say that the universe is a poetic prayer or a liturgic creating poem (poiein means “to create” in Greek), just like the poem of creation in Gn 1: “God said: ‘let it be done’ And it was done”.

And God? God as a Fontal Ground, Vital Breath, Creative Relationship or Relational Creativity is the profound prayer of all that exists to all that exists. God prays us in everything. Basically, our prayer consists in uniting ourselves to the voice and the poetic, creative silence of God’s prayer. And thus our prayer becomes creator of the God that creates us.

Aizarna, January 25, 2024
(published in French in Témoignage Chrétien, n° 4045, February 8, 2024, p. 7)

Translated by Mertxe de Renobales Scheifler