Praying for the stranger

Running errands after mass this morning, I happened to come upon a woman I know very vaguely. As Springsteen sings, I was walking in as she was walking out, and as we nodded to each other I noticed she was sporting a huge shiner and, before I could stop myself, I gasped and asked, “are you alright, were you in an accident?”

“I moved my stuff out of my boyfriend’s apartment and he gave me this as a going-away present,” she said. Seeing my expression she added, “I’m okay. This was a small price to pay,” and she slipped into her car.

I wished her well, and understood she was not about to endure questions as to whether she’d pressed charges. As she drove away and realized I had never seen the woman when she was not rushing. She is always friendly, always pleasant, but there is forever this undercurrent of haste and nervous energy, like a stream attached to a waterfall some miles away; you can sense the pull. Whenever I encounter her I am reminded of that great saying,

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

And that’s true. Everyone of us is fighting with our worst selves, with the things in our past which have hurt us – and the ways we have hurt others – and all of our psychic defense-measures. Our flippancies, our shouts, our glares, our sighs, our snarls – they’re all part of the great battle we are engaged in, day-after-day.

Our inward battles are trying enough. To face violence and unkindness in the external is an additional heap of sorrow – another battlefront. We fight so many.

I wondered today if anyone prays for this woman, and realized I was someone who could, so I did. And when I came home I put her into my prayerbook, so I will remember to do so again, and again.

Prayer has power; it is a palpable force and people of faith know that. People without faith know it too, which is probably why they’re against it. I remember a time in my life when absolutely no one was praying for me; I can recall the desolate and bereft day when I realized that it was true – that no one I knew was was expending a little energy, igniting that force to assist me in my own battles. That was a sad, lonely day, but it was in many ways instructive, too. I realized in that moment that I was not praying for anyone else, either. And so I began to pray, and my first prayers, after the awkward, “well, God, here I am,” were for others.

I don’t pray much for myself. My dialogue with God about the stupid concerns of my daily living tends to be an ongoing one, of me throwing fits large and small and God shutting me up by astounding me. But I pray for others, everyday – people I know, or who I don’t know but who ask me to. And I pray for the contemporaries of my own children who I am reasonably certain no one else is praying for.

And lately, I find myself praying for strangers. At the bank, watching a harried mother deal with her whining daughter, I pray for them, and for their good. For the elderly couple walking hand-in-hand to light a candle in church. For the three kids dressed in black, hanging out aimlessly by the corner. For the overweight guy who looks so sad, the kid behind the counter whose dreams likely never included that job.

It’s a funny thing, but praying for strangers has made me slightly more at ease in the world. I am an introvert and that will always be true, but the spiritual and psychic engagement of the world, through prayer, has made me feel more a part of it. Praying for others has made Thomas Merton’s astounding personal revelation make more and more sense to me.

“There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

No. But praying for them helps one to move in that light.

We are, after all, all in this together – and quite outside of time.

Speaking of which, here is a long, print-worthy article from the Washington Post on young people concerning themselves with the stranger. Like Deacon Greg, I meant to post it days ago. But perhaps the Holy Spirit wanted us to bring it up today!

Maybe today you are being called to concern yourself with the stranger? Pray about it!