(Forgive me, this is written in unanticipated haste)
 
What does one pray for amidst life’s joys and life’s pain? One sees so much of both. There’s the radiance of young love; the tenderness of tried and tested, reliable affection; the enthusiasm of new friendship and the reliable sensitivity of friends of old. There is the beauty of this world of trees and birds, of snow and mountains (I remember almost running up a mountain path in Scotland to view from the top a different, silent universe of descending slopes of snow to the brilliant sea beyond). There is the wonder of young life discovering its mysteries (like the puppy in the garden trying to master the responses of all four of its legs at once). There is a different kind of joy which often accompanies age, together with its frailties but undimmed by them; a wisdom, generosity and affection which one often sees in the quiet smile of people over a certain age…
 
There is much sorrow too. Some of it is close to home, within the radius of what we must all expect to encounter, loneliness, the loss of someone we love, whose company somehow made life safe and without whom space itself, the very air, feels different, less substantial, less sustaining so that sometimes even going outside can be frightening. There is physical and spiritual suffering, illness, heartache and mind-haunting fears, anguish which neither our words nor actions often seem able to diminish. Just beyond our personal ambit, or maybe within the circles of those we have come to know, lie other forms of suffering: having no home or country to feel safe, fleeing war, carrying the indelible images of the violent destruction of places and people one loved, one once held in one’s arms, went out with for a drink; homelessness, hunger, fear, the inescapable feeling that violence is following at one’s back…
 
So what does one pray for?
 
One prays for the obvious things; safety, food, health, peace, for ourselves, our neighbours, our people, everyone, all life. One prays that what one encounters in life should serve to open and not close the heart. One prays for moral and emotional courage. One prays for the closeness of God, that we find the source of God’s sacred spirit within us, as if the heart were a well and one had only to go down deep enough for it to be replenished with fresh, pure water. One prays to be privileged to sing with life, to cherish and nurture life. One prays that kindness will ignite further kindness, love further love, justice further justice, and that all the good we do will be carried by life into further lives and deeds, for the impact a person may have had by the end of his or her days is unfathomable and immeasurable, since one cannot possibly know to what goodness it has led.
 
Our prayers should to be like a torch, a head-light or a heart-light, pointing forward to illuminate the path ahead, which we then try to follow in our deeds. ‘I am my prayer – v’ani tefilati –‘ said the Psalmist. Our deepest prayers are not extraneous from ourselves, but the essence of the people we are and aspire to be.