Prayer

 

I was watching a student who is, unfortunately, currently saying kaddish. He was there, in davening, and he said kaddish with a reverence and a fervor which was admirable. But when he wasn't saying it, he was also wandering around and schmoozing. So I admire his dedication, but only when he is dedicated.

I have seen a similar issue with other students. They seem as into their prayers as one should be, swaying and rocking, standing and sitting and poring over the text. But then, during the in-betweens, laughing with their friends, talking and acting like there is nothing else to do.

The problem, I figure, is that we teach students from a young age that prayer is a chance to talk to God. This isn't inherently wrong, but it is woefully incomplete. Students take from it a reasonable lesson -- when I pray, I am talking. When I am not praying, there is nothing going on. But that's wrong.

Prayer is, at the least, a conversation, and a conversation requires listening, and active listening at that. It requires paying attention and, if one believes that there is a force listening to the prayer, being able to accept that that other participant also has something to say and it takes even more attention to understand the return message. And no, no one said that this was easy but it is an important context.

And when we pray in a minyan, a collective quorum, we also have to listen when others speak. The prayer leader who speaks on our behalf - if we don't pay attention when he is speaking for us, then how can we feel included? And when the person next to us is spending more time in his personal petition, if we are not trained to help him by staying respectful and quiet, then how can we expect that anyone will do the same for us?

I have, over the years, tried to create all sorts of metaphors to help students understand the place of prayer in their lives so that their behavior befits the moment. They wouldn't show up late to a movie, or talk straight through the film, would they? They wouldn't walk out of a professional sports event with 2 minutes left, would they? Or worse, they wouldn't walk out of a game they are playing in, or even take off the uniform with time left on the clock. They wouldn't make noise during the SATs or a math test, and in a tech-high school setting, no student can make math optional just because it doesn't seem relevant to him. The same is true of prayer in a religious school. Would a student make his case to the judge and then pull out a soda, or chat with a friend while the judge weighs what was just said? Or would he sit on the edge of his seat, silently waiting for the right moment to continue to petition?

But all these allegories never seem to convince students and I think that is because the baseline understanding is "I'm in it when I'm in it but when I'm done, I'm done." The fact is, if we are people of belief, then we need to buy into the entire of the event and see our selves as part of a whole. A group petitioning a king speaks as individuals, members respectfully let others speak as individuals, and all listen when the leader of the group speaks. And then all listen quietly for the thin, still voice, recognizing the presence of the divine speaking answers directly to our hearts. If we make noise, we miss all of that and we might as well not be doing anything.

Conversation. Dialogue. Discourse. These are not solitary activities even when others are being quiet. Speaking is balanced by listening. Wishing to be paid attention to requires that we pay attention in return. Prayer is the action which seems self-centered but is actually the most selfless activity in which we engage because it demands that we put ourselves aside even when we can't (in a traditional sense) hear anyone else speaking.