The First Prayers of the Soul

Last year, I was forced to recognize that I wasn’t equipped to get through what was coming because I was not equipped to get through what was already here. There was an absence I could not move across, a gap unbridgeable despite my many resources. Antidepressants weren’t doing it. Being in love with a wonderful husband wasn’t. A supportive family and happy home full of adored animals wasn’t either, nor dear friends, nor worldly success.¹ Having good opinions, good politics, was extremely not. Even activism and civic participation, seemingly, were not what was required. Was this sense of incompleteness the product of greed or weakness, a false problem caused by my own deficiencies? Maybe. But I was convinced I’d overlooked some tool or knowledge, an existing asset that I wasn’t using or didn’t yet have. I thought the missing element was probably spiritual sustenance.

So I went to Buddhism, which I’ve long thought of as the sole religion² available to me, all others being full of inanity, dogma, and (usually) cruelty, violence, hate. And Buddhism helped. In my experience, Buddhism always helps. But early into the assault on Gaza, I became increasingly aware that for as much as I appreciated its wisdom, gentleness, and goodness, Buddhism was not what I needed most.³ Truly, I needed God, and this was a big problem, possibly an insurmountable problem, because I can’t believe in God. Instead I believe, reluctantly but also ineluctably, that consciousness is a byproduct of the organization of matter, that there isn’t an enduring soul but just the electrical activity of an organic and temporary brain, that we’re destined to pass away without ever learning why we existed, nor why anything exists, why there is something instead of nothing, because there is no why: the whole of the universe is just a giant, dull-eyed shrug.⁷  

Periodically throughout my adulthood I would recall how ardently I loved Jesus when I was a child and this memory surprised me every time, having lived for so long with the self-evident “there is no why” theory-masquerading-as-fact. I spoke of that love wistfully but wryly, like a youthful romantic affair that had to end because of its encounter with an uncompromising “real” world. Sure it would be nice if death wasn’t final, if heaven was promised, if there was ultimate justice for bad people and recompense for the wronged. But these are the dreams of cowards and children. God is a comforting fantasy for people too stupid or too afraid to face the truth. My ego mocked my desire.

But then here were the people of Gaza crying out to God, having lost everything, deferring to God, not infrequently praising or thanking God while leaking blood, carrying a martyred family member, stumbling away from their leveled home. I would not call these people juvenile or weak; to speak or think any word against them was inconceivable, profane. On display was what I barely dared to hope for: a faith that could withstand anything. I started wondering how many of my ancestors⁴ thought they had—or did have—a relationship with God, how many of them pursued God ecstatically, exclusively, and how many died before they realized that calling. What if I was supposed to continue? What if my pride was squandering what they’d done?

I thought about Catholic Daniel Berrigan’s uncompromising anti-war activism, Quaker pacifism, and Christian clergy’s abortion access efforts before Roe. I googled Christian anarchism, wondering if this were something that exists. (It is.) I remembered that in Ravensbrück, Jehovah’s Witnesses were offered their freedom in exchange for renouncing their faith and every last woman refused. They also refused most forms of labor in the camp on the grounds that it was “war work,” and when the Nazis tried to break their solidarity by separating them across various blocks, the women started converting others, so they were put back together. The commander of the camp complained that the “hysterical hags” could not “be broken,” not even when they were deprived of food, beaten, forced to stand for hours in ice and snow, locked in total darkness for weeks; he hated them more than any of the other prisoners, including Communists and Jews.⁵  

I wanted to be like that. But my fear, essentially, was this: what if I let myself believe something untrue merely because it offers me the most beautiful, meaningful life possible? Like, oh no, what if I look foolish, what if people see me looking foolish, wanting fortification, comfort, improvement, admitting that I am weak?⁶ Yeah, oh no! Imagine being foolish, a thing I’ve never been before and would otherwise never be! Imagine me risking one wrong thought, one wrong conviction because I found a proposition appealing. Imagine if I became the first human being to die with a wrong belief in her head or heart. I’d look like such an asshole.

“We each tread a path according to our own capacity,” writes Sholeh Wolpé, who translated “The Conference of the Birds”:

“It evolves as we evolve. Those who are trapped within their own dogma, clinging to hardened beliefs or faith, are deprived of the journey towards the unfathomable Divine, which Attar calls the Great Ocean. The Great Ocean does not turn away any soul. Some arrive at it as pure drops of water, enter, are absorbed, and become one with the Ocean; others arrive trapped inside themselves, egos intact, and enter the welcoming Ocean as well. However, they sink to its depths and remain there, knowing only themselves, never the Ocean.”

It’s absurd to have spent so long trying to convince myself that a search for God, i.e. a search for meaning—an instinct and propensity as old as our species—is too embarrassing for me personally to entertain. Juan Mascaró says that longing and sorrow are among “the first prayers of the soul” and I’ve had plenty of that lately. I prayed all the time as a kid, not out of intimidation or obligation but because I loved it. I did it my own way—nobody had to teach me. I really missed praying. Who was I impressing by refusing to try? When I considered what was at stake—peace; strength; joy—the denial was the embarrassment. And I don’t want to be in denial anymore.

1  You might ask yourself, what does this bitch know about worldly success? Well, I know what I need to know, which is that the lifestyles of rich people are not satisfying or interesting after the initial smug rush of having momentarily acquired them. Luxury becomes boring very quickly and its first and best pleasure is not comfort—plenty of modest goods and situations are comfortable—nor even beauty, since so much expensive shit is hideous, offensive to the eye and to the spirit, but simply the feeling of being better than. As for fame and public attention, arguably I haven’t received these in quantities large enough to render a well-founded verdict and there’s no reason to believe I ever will, thank goodness They sound dreadful, and if the approval of institutions could ever masquerade as meaningful, surely that moment has passed, just as the amorality and poor to non-existent standards of most legacy publications has been and remains on full display.

2  Feels worth pointing out that, as with Stoicism, people disagree on whether Buddhism is a philosophy or a religion. I think trying to parse one from the other is a fool’s errand and also I don’t really care one way or the other.

3  I have to write more about Western Buddhist institutions’ failures in this moment—and about Buddhist Zionists—because it deserves much more attention than I’ve seen it get anywhere, but Plum Village has completely broken my heart in their (worse than) silence about the genocide. If you want to know more now, this account might be useful.

4  One side of my family is Persian and (recently) Muslim—further back, who knows?—which made this prospect more compelling to me than I think it would have been if I were stuck with only mongrel whiteness and Christianity. For one thing, I think of Muslims as more sincere in their practices and beliefs. The most devout person I’ve ever known within my family was my great grandmother, a hijabi who prayed multiple times every day. (We planned our visits around it.) I also tend to think of Islam, rightly or wrongly, as more compatible with mysticism.

5  Around the same time, in the US, Jehovah’s Witnesses were met with violence for refusing to salute the flag and sign up for the draft.

6  To return to my earlier question as to whether my deficiencies create a false problem: all the Christian literature I’ve read so far insists on the fact that our deficiencies are a very real problem that cannot be addressed without the help of God.

7  Strictly speaking, I suppose this version does not preclude some omniscient force or presence. But it insists on meaninglessness and unintentionality, which raises the question of whether such a God is worth knowing.