A Prayer and a Prayer

In Marilynne Robinson’s Home, the Reverend Boughton has two children: Jack and Glory. Jack was a hell-raising son, demanding all the attention of his parents, and Glory, a quiet daughter, longing for the attention of a distracted father.

As an adult, this dynamic still lingered and Glory needed a way to persevere. “Her father told his children to pray for patience, for courage, for kindness, for clarity, for trust, for gratitude. Those prayers will be answered, he said. Others may not be. The Lord knows your needs. So she prayed, Lord, give me patience.”

That’s a good prayer. “Lord, give me patience.” It’s like a breathe prayer; a prayer you can say as you exhale. Like before you enter a meeting or walk into a room of fighting siblings: “Lord, give me patience.”

The story goes on, however:

She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord, my brother treats me like a hostile stranger, my father seems to have put me aside, I feel I have no place here in what I thought would be my refuge, I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.

I have a little notation in the margins of my copy of Home that I must’ve written when I first read it, “This is the difference between a a mere prayer and a psalm.” A quick aside—I know that psalms are prayers and the difference between the two are not significant but it may be worth paying attention to the tiny difference between the two for a moment.

The first prayer, “Lord, give me patience,” is a prayer that she has learned she ought to pray. But the second is something deeper than a request “give me,” but a lament. More like, “Listen to my cry, O Lord!”

Listen to my prayer, O God,
    do not ignore my plea;
   hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
    because of what my enemy is saying,
    because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
    and assail me in their anger. (Psalm 55:1-3)

Glory, in her potential prayer, she expresses betrayal like the psalms do:

If an enemy were insulting me,
    I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
    I could hide.
But it is you, a man like myself,
    my companion, my close friend,
with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship (Psalm 55:12-14)

There isn’t a moral difference between the two kinds of prayer. We need both. But I would say, we are emotionally impoverished without the second. The psalms often teach us to pray out from where we are and sometimes where we are is “the pit.” Her father taught her to pray for patience. The psalms teach us to pray from the pits.

But these types of prayers require honestly and the capacity to weather difficult emotions, as Glory realized before venturing into the second kind of prayer: “But it cost her tears to think her situation might actually be that desolate, so she prayed again for patience.”

No one said praying the psalms was easy. It’s not.

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I’ve enjoyed walking up to Harlem’s 125th St. subway platform and taking pictures. It’s a small therapy for me right now.

Stay safe out there.

John Starke