Power of Prayer

The True Power of Prayer

By John Taylor; 2006 June 05

"One who performeth neither good deeds nor acts of worship is like unto a tree which beareth no fruit, and an action which leaveth no trace. Whosoever experienceth the holy ecstasy of worship will refuse to barter such an act or any praise of God for all that existeth in the world. Fasting and obligatory prayer are as two wings to man's life. Blessed be the one who soareth with their aid in the heaven of the love of God, the Lord of all worlds." (Baha'u'llah, cited in UHJ memorandum dated 15 September 2003)

The world's wealthy fiddle about while solar heat, magnified in the lens of industrial waste gasses, literally burns up our beautiful planet. Any and all who are touched by the power to change things are corrupted by power, changed beyond all recognition; decent reformers become obscene exploiters, self-absorbed, petty and contentious. The wealthy clients of our leaders refuse to be guided by wisdom. Meanwhile a rabid, envious fanaticism spreads throughout poorer regions. It is obvious that global climate change will choke us sooner rather than later, but all discussion is halted by one unavoidable fact. Somebody is going to have to give something up. Changes and sacrifices must be made, not by me of course, by the other guy. Plans will have to be made up, not only macro-economically but also on the micro-economic scale. Every career of each and every worker must change.

Rules, new restraints, must be thought out, devised and enforced. The privileged and underprivileged alike will have to submit, willingly, enthusiastically. They are not used to that, fat cats to obeying, skinny cats to planning and thinking on their own. I am reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse," which portrays early on the microcosm of Easter Island, a society broken into several competing tribes, very like our petty-minded nation states of today. Many find it incredible, endowed with the broader view of history, that the Easter Islanders could have ignored common sense and the signs of the times, chopped down their own forests and self destructed, dropping from a vital civilization of some thirty or forty thousand to, at their lowest ebb in the 1870's, a mere few hundred souls, most of whom were slaves. With bitter sarcasm Diamond writes,

"I have often asked myself, `What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?' Like modern loggers, did he shout, `Jobs, not trees!' Or: `Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood.' Or: `We don't have proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment." (Collapse, 114)

Trees are essential to our survival. They are dying in massive tracts in remote regions of Western Canada, a sign of global warming and the tree killing predators that it unleashes. I briefly met St. Barbe Baker before he died, and if you check his books on the Net you will find that they have mostly gone out of print. But now we know better than ever that what the "Man of the Trees" was saying was dead on target. But what is true of trees and agriculture extends right on up to the top of society. Short term gain must give in to long term benefit. There is no getting around it. Nobody wants to hear that. It is not popular. Austerity is not trendy.

At the heart of this is a reluctance, an utter inability to submit, to obey. Like a spoiled child, the privileged do not want to sacrifice a jot or tittle to the common weal; they do not know what they want but they want it now. Meanwhile the underprivileged long for a quick and simple end to their agony, a tyrant to force them in the right direction. Instead of submitting all kick up a fuss, and, tragically for all of us, they succeed every time in stopping the advance of real progress. Such a state of affairs begins in the family, a basic fact that was well known as early as Ancient Athens.

"...those who have too much of the goods of fortune, strength, wealth, friends, and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority. The evil begins at home; for when they are boys, by reason of the luxury in which they are brought up, they never learn, even at school, the habit of obedience. On the other hand, the very poor, who are in the opposite extreme, are too degraded. So that the one class cannot obey, and can only rule despotically; the other knows not how to command and must be ruled like slaves." (Aristotle, Politics)

So at the heart of it all is the big philosophical question of the 18th Century, freedom and equality: how to act so as to be free and unconstrained while still submitting to the needs of others, of mankind and the planet? How can you be equal and free at the same time? And does not competition, one-upmanship, nullify both of them? And if such values are contradictory, how do you establish habits that will support both? Such quandaries were familiar to Aristotle as well: "But it has now become a habit among the citizens of states, not even to care about equality; all men are seeking for dominion, or, if conquered, are willing to submit." (Ibid) These questions remain unanswered in most minds, even today. The Master, `Abdu'l-Baha, knew the answer. He is the Answer.

"And all this newness hath its source in the fresh outpourings of wondrous grace and favour from the Lord of the Kingdom, which have renewed the world. The people, therefore, must be set completely free from their old patterns of thought, that all their attention may be focused upon these new principles, for these are the light of this time and the very spirit of this age." (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, 253)

The old stumper of how to bring freedom and equality and sacrifice, together -- like combining fire, water and oil -- is right there in the Aqdas. We free ourselves from the condition of the animal but not from the natural constraints of our humanity. The greatest constraint of becoming human is also its greatest freedom, to submit willingly, with love to the divine, which is inherently above us. To sacrifice to this is joy unalloyed. This act of submission that we all will have to face when we meet our God was prefigured in the declaration of the Master. Here, in His own reported words, is how this primal act occurred:

"I am the servant of the Blessed Perfection. In Baghdad I was a child. Then and there He announced to me the Word, and I believed in Him. As soon as He proclaimed to me the Word, I threw myself at His Holy Feet and implored and supplicated Him to accept my blood as a sacrifice in His Pathway. Sacrifice! How sweet I find that word! There is no greater Bounty for me than this! What greater glory can I conceive than to see this neck chained for His sake, these feet fettered for His love, this body mutilated or thrown into the depths of the sea for His Cause! If in reality we are His sincere lovers, if in reality I am His sincere servant, then I must sacrifice my life, my all at His Blessed Threshold." (from the Diary of Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, January 1914, quoted in Esslemont, Baha'u'llah and the New Era, 51)

This primal act of submission to God, for the Master it was to His Father, but for all others it is to our Father in heaven, must be repeated in every heart. This is the greatest effect of the power of prayer, not miracles that affect a few personal fates but changing our ability to save ourselves from ourselves by submitting. Prayer allows us to submit not only to God but to common sense, to wisdom. It gives the desire to sacrifice, which then is reflected in willingness make new plans and submit to rule of law. The location does not matter, the desire to sacrifice does. It takes place everywhere that humans meet, in board rooms and public meetings, at democratic fora, kitchen tables and in classrooms everywhere. Let me close with this, from a recent paper submitted to the UN by the responsible Baha'i body. It portrays the not so glorious field of verbal battle on which the blood of our sacrifice must be spilled:

"We commend the international community for its commitment to democracy and to a freely elected government as a universal value. However, the standard of deliberation and truth-seeking required for the realization of goals set by the United Nations needs to go far beyond the patterns of partisanship, protest, and compromise that tend to characterize present day discussions of human affairs. What is needed is a consultative process at all levels of governance in which individual participants strive to transcend their respective points of view, in order to function as members of one body with its own interests and goals. Through participation and unity of purpose, consultation becomes the operating expression of justice in human affairs. Without this principled anchor, democracy falls prey to the excesses of individualism and nationalism, which tear at the fabric of the community - both nationally and globally." (BIC, The Search for Values in an Age of Transition, paragraph 13)

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com