Wrestling in the Spirit

I always thought of myself as a spiritual person. I could feel that so strong in nature and with friends (although, sadly, not so often in church) and when I was playing or listening to music. Part of this feeling of spirituality was a decent prayer life. I was consistent and serious in my prayers, and I tried to keep them alive by not praying by rote or habit.

But more than a decade of education that took much of my non-physical energy (and much physical energy as well) wore away my sense of spirituality. I don't know if it did so by not leaving enough energy to focus on the spiritual or by leading me into spirit-numbing doubt. Possibly it did both. And my prayer life suffered as my connection to my spiritual being weakened. I found myself slipping into prayer as mindless repetition performed as a duty. Such prayer was so ineffective that I woke and worked and played and slept without any conscious prayer at all.

I'm beginning to recover my spirituality to some degree, but my prayer life has yet to be much affected by this recovery. But something happened this morning that might, if I can hold on to it, reawaken me to the efficacy of prayer.

I was up early and in my favorite local park walking and running before sunrise. About halfway through my workout, the sun cleared the mountains to the east. I had a little less than two laps to go when I noticed a young man on the park's grassy knoll. He wore a dark red short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans that had not faded. His brown hair was down over his ears and a fashion that struck me as very 1970. He stood with his shoes in his hand and stared at the sunrise. He moved forward toward the edge of the hill and stared at the sunrise. He crouched on his calves and stared at the sunrise. All the while moving forward until he was at the point where the knoll turns downward and falls away in a hill toward a small pond and the lower parking lot. Here he sat down. He sat there with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

I'm not good at intruding on people's solitude. Even though I felt this young man was in some kind of distress, I didn't make any special effort to come nearer to him, letting myself fade downward along the paths to the parking lot. I got in my car, started the engine and swung around toward the exit.

But I stopped at a point where I could see this young man through the trees, see him where he sat there facing the sunrise. I could think of all sorts of things that might be troubling him--a death in the family, a great decision to be made, the loss of a girlfriend or boy friend. It could be anything.

And then I started to pray, and I tried to do so in earnest, with an open spirit that would allow my prayer to go outward instead of just circling around inside my skull or remaining squeezed inside my heart. I prayed for this young man's comfort, for God or an angel to be close to him, close enough that he could feel the presence.

Just then, as I was praying, a woman walking her dog--she could've been in her 20s or her 40s--left the path and approached the young man dog first. The young man reached out and appeared to put his hand on the dog's head, and the woman stood there a leash apart from the the two of them. She seemed to be talking to the young man, but I was too far away to say for sure.

I thought this was good. A dog to break through to a troubled heart. I wondered if the young man and woman knew each other. I wondered if they were strangers. I thought her much braver than I, especially if she didn't know him. I thought her smart to lead with the dog.

I thought her an answer to prayer. And maybe an answer--or the beginning of one--to my prayer problems.