On Prayer

 "God will support him on the bed of illness ..." Ps. 41:4

Rav Dimi taught, “All who visit the sick infuse them with life.  Ana all those who refrain from visiting the sick bring about death.”  Nedarim 40a

Does Rav Dimi’s teaching mean that prayers contain the power of healing to make people well?  When we offer our prayers on behalf of the ailing do they shoot straight up to God and cause the Hand of the Universe to move saving them from their affliction?  

Are prayers that powerful?  Do they also prop up the living to the extent that people die from lack of people praying for them?

Perhaps those who are so unfortunate to have no one pray for them are forgotten by God?  Or maybe if they are too ill to pray for themselves and no one will pray for them they will die a silent spiritual death?  The universe will not note their passing.

Rav Dimi may also mean that prayer galvanizes the dwindling spiritual energies of the sick.  With our added words and focused prayers they become stronger as their prayers ride on the backs of ours.  Could this be true?

It may be that our prayers reinforce their waning strength.  The real power of prayer would then be that it sends to the weak an invisible message of hope that enables them to surmount the obstacle of illness.  Prayer is almost a tactile weapon that directly impacts the person prayed for.

So which one is it?  One of the above?  All of them?  None?

 

I suggest it does not matter.  The only thing that counts is it changes both the one who prays and the one who is prayed for.  What else matters when prayers said for another are enough to change lives?

Healed

One of my favorite expressions: “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.”  It’s from the Talmud. 

Words develop a life of their own.  Once uttered, they become infused with all kinds of real and imagined energy.  They change people.  For life. 

Also, as everyone has experienced, once spoken…there is no taking words back.  Apologize as much as we want, the damage is done and, as the Good Book Proverbs says, “there is no way to make straight the crooked.”

                                                   *

Most of us, thank God, will never be called upon to kill another being.  Reading the account of one Ranger thrown into Mogadishu, Somalia during the US attempt to arrest warlord Mohammed Farrah Adid, some twenty years ago, the solider said, “When war starts, a solider wants like *!@!!  to be there, but once he’s there, he wants like !@!!. to come home.” 

Many of us may imagine ourselves to be a Schwartzennegger, blasting away all the bad guys.  To be truthful, we are on the battlefield every day of our lives –rushing to be the first to the bank teller, to be first in line at the checkout, to be in front of one more car on Forest Drive, to make more money than the next guy.  The excitement and the adrenaline produced by such encounters is the stuff of imagination, not reality.  In fact, it is as painful to be the one cut off, as it is to be the one doing the cutting off. 

The wars we usually wage are where we feel ourselves pitted against the person next to us.  Our weapon of choice?  Words.  They level opponents.  Reduce them to sniveling creatures.  They exaggerate and weigh mightily against the enemy while reinforcing us.

Inasmuch as words raze and destroy, they are also great healers, givers of life. 

Recently sent to me was the following exchange:

As I ate breakfast one morning, I overheard two oncologists conversing.  One complained bitterly, “You know, Bob, I just don’t understand it.  We use the same drugs, the same dosage, the same schedule and the same entry criteria.  Yet I got a 22 percent response and you got a 74 percent.  That’s unheard of for metastatic cancer.  How do you do it?”

His colleague replied, “We’re both using Etoposide, Platinum, Oncovin and Hydroxurea.  You call your EPOH.  I tell my patients I’m giving them HOPE.  As dismal as the statistics are, I emphasize that we have a chance.”

Life, regeneration and love are all waiting to be given voice.

The Cat's Meow

We know one another reasonably well. We ought to, after years together. One of the things I try to impress time and time again is the need for dialogue, healing, and love within the family. We can’t expect to find harmony in the community, or the world if there is no harmony in our small, micro orbit.

     When, years ago, a small plaintive sound was heard on my front step I knew something ominous was about to occur. I just didn’t know how life would change so quickly.

     It turns out that a small black kitten had found its way to our home. Making tiny throaty noises it painfully asked for food and succor. We gave both, in abundance.

     The kitten moved into the house bringing with it a litter box, countless toys, sheds of once venerated fabric on chairs and couches, smelly open cans of cat food and the most strange noises next to my head around four a.m.

     Not that I am complaining. The fact that half my family remained allergic to cat dander has nothing to do with this article. Nor does the fact that a bunch of kids and one cat makes for some unusual reactions in my house around 6:30 each evening. A new love object entered our lives.

     I happen to be a big fan of animals. I love dogs. Had quite a few of them over the years. They were my best friends growing up.( Did you know that my first pulpit was in a small English town called Barkingside? No joke.)

     What worried me was that the cat becomes the equivalent of a house member. I have had more than a single argument with members of the congregation on the differences between a human and an animal. Some tenderhearted, well-intentioned people are under the misapprehension that animals and people have the same value. Oy.

     It is a disturbing fact that only a little “ t “ separates a rabbit from a rabbi. And secretaries seem not to keep the two distinct even with spell check. As Alfred E. Neuman once said,  “What? Me worry? “