How to Pray When You Can’t Pray to God

“I want to pray, but I don’t believe in God,” a woman said as a book club meeting for my upcoming memoir Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome. “I want to connect spiritually like you did, but I don’t believe anyone is listening.”

I was quiet for a moment, considering the question. It was an important one—so many people long to reach for Something Bigger but their idea of “God”, maybe even the word “God” gets in the way.

I’d already told the group about how I called God “Sam” for a while; I talked about how if anything is in between you and God, that thing is the problem: Figure out how to build scaffolding to climb over it; heck, dig a moat and sail around it if you have to. I’d mentioned giving yourself permission to redefine anything and everything.

But this was an entirely different question: How can I pray if I can’t pray to God?

I thought of something one of my favorite yoga teachers says at the end of class, right before Shavasana relaxation. “Remember, the greatest guru is within.”

“Can you imagine that your future self might be listening?” I asked. “The future self that you want to become?” She nodded.

“Then talk to that future self. Tell her you are trying very hard to get to her, and that you need help.”

I’ve done this a million times—and still do (even though I can now pray without a problem). I even write to FutureReba in my journal sometimes, believing that the person I want to be–maybe even the person I am meant to be– is out there somewhere in time, willing me the strength and courage to keep moving.

Kind of like how the flower exists within the seedling, I believe my future self already exists within me.

I guess people might think this is weird, and that’s okay. Because, goshdarnit, it works for me. And it might work for someone else out there, too, which is why I’m sharing this.

And every once in a while, just in case I’m right, I will pause just long enough to tell PastReba—no, promise her—that she will make it through.

If the idea of your past & future self is a little too woo-woo for you, there’s always Martha Beck’s beautiful idea of praying to Stillness. Or William Paul Young’s lovely comment: pray to Love.

The bottom line is that if you can choose Something, Anything, that you DO believe is bigger than you—pray to that Something Bigger.

And my guess is that eventually–in this life or beyond—we’ll discover that if we were ever praying, we were praying to God.

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