Standing alone, together

 There's something about a prayer that's magic (H/T SOB).

Every few years, I like to visit Israel because I like to visit the Kotel, the Western Wall. I use those moments to recharge my spiritual battery. I go up to the wall and I close my eyes. I turn on all my other senses and I try to soak in the experience, planting memories and feelings that I will tap into for the next weeks, months and years when I pray elsewhere. It is sort of like my version of Tintern Abbey. 

There is a tension I have noticed in prayer, but not a bad one -- the role of the individual and of the community. We try to pray with a minyan, a quorum, so that we can unite as a congregation and petition God as a force. But our central prayer, the Amidah (standing) [also called the Shmoneh Esrei though that only really applies to the weekday version, and even then, in the breach] separates us from the collective. We stand silently, We retreat into our own personal cocoon of prayer. The community, abuzz with the sounds of prayer turns silent. And when you close your eyes, or cover yourself with a tallit, or look down into your prayerbook intently, everything else disappears and you are now alone, standing in front of the Creator, using your own voice to plead. I close my eyes and I'm in front of the Kotel again. No matter how crowded the room, when I close my eyes, I'm alone -- just me and the big guy. Brutal honesty and no one else is there. The room is empty.

But then, in the words of my prayers, I notice something. Though I am alone in the presence of God, I pray in the plural. It isn't all about me. I'm still part of the collective even in my most private moments. An entire room of inviduals, silently standing before God, pleading for the group. I love that moment because it ties together so many opposites. This prayer symbolizes, to me, the reconciling of theoretically mutually exclusive concepts which then allows me, the finite, to connect with the infinite.

It is a beautiful feeling to so lose yourself in singular prayer that you forget that you are part of a united force of ten or more, all actually praying together, unaware of each other's existence.