Redtree Times

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. … It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

— Mahatma Gandhi (Young India, 23rd January 1930)

I always hesitate in using the word prayer in the titles for my work. I have never had the certainty of belief that faith requires so prayers for me felt like mailing wishes in an envelope without an address on it. It felt to me like a fruitless exercise if the message never went anywhere beyond myself. 

After a time though, I began to realize that prayer was not asking some astral father figure for things and situations that suited my personal preferences in any given moment. It was not about changing circumstances, about personally gaining, about winning battles or defeating enemies or overcoming disease.

No, it was more about finding the peace of mind and the sense of acceptance needed to cope with life as it is.  About finding a path through chaos. About finding stillness amidst the din. 

It was about simply finding an understanding of some sort.

I began then to see that prayer was as much inward as it was outward bound. It was about first affecting the change in oneself in a way that allowed one to feel as part of the light of the grand scheme laid out before us so that it no longer felt like a dark mystery.

It might be called prayer or meditation or ponderance or any number of other words. Anything that expresses, as Gandhi called it, a longing of the soul.

Anything that seeks an answer to the eternal question: Why?

That’s what I gleaned from this new painting, A Prayer For Understanding. There’s more to say, of course, but I am going to leave it right there this morning. You can fill in the blanks in your own words and thoughts, if you so desire.

Art is like that.

For this Sunday Morning Music here’s George Harrison and his hit from 1973, Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth). Seems to fit here.

A Prayer For Understanding is 30″ by 15″ on canvas, and is included in my solo exhibit of work, Guiding Light, that opens this coming Friday, October 17, at the West End Gallery. The Opening Recption on Friday runs from 5-7 PM.