Naked Before the Sacred

I wouldn't presume to know what God looks for in prayer and meditation, but I might suppose that something honest, blunt, and real, might be part of it. The more direct, honest, "naked," the better. A very funny dinner scene in the film Meet the Parents is amusing because the protagonist in the film, Greg Focker, played by Ben Stiller, seems utterly ill-equipped to pray grace before meals when asked to do so by his girlfriend's father (played, with great comic style, by Robert de Niro). Stiller's character nonetheless musters up a biblical invocation, "O Thou who smotes the enemy!" and eventually ends his labored rambling by repeating the song he heard earlier that afternoon in a pharmacy, a song from Godspell; so, he concludes his prayer by aspiring "to see Thee more clearly, to follow Thee more nearly, to love Thee more dearly, day by day by day by day."

While that truly is a funny scene, the heart of the matter is precisely that: our heart. Our prayer and meditation must above all be authentic—real and honest in the most bald-faced way, above all with ourselves. But it can include, especially in theistic traditions, expressing our difficult feelings toward and about God. God is not a china doll. He/she will not break.

Think about it. Many human relationships slip into pat and static functionality, with real intimacy and its risks slipping away. If we really want intimacy in our relationships, then we need to be "naked"—open, honest, real. The fruit is rich relationship. This holds true in our relationship to the divine. Indeed, the goal of Sufi mysticism was to become a wali, a friend of God, a relationship naturally marked by intimacy and authenticity. Sufi poetry typically reflects these characteristics and often amazes for its directness and intensity. Consider these lines from Hafiz:

Throw away
All your begging bowls at God's door,

For I have heard the Beloved
Prefers sweet threatening shouts,

Something on the order of:

"Hey, Beloved,
My heart is a raging volcano
Of love for you!
You better start kissing me—
Or Else![3]

Such directness, in this case perhaps more playful than poignant, is a conduit of intimacy and is refreshingly evident in Hindu devotional traditions as well. The poems by Devara Dasimayya (10^th c. C.E.) and Sambhucandra Ray (18^th-19^th c. C.E.) at the beginning of this essay vividly convey a blunt directness, on the one hand, before the god Shiva (Ramanatha), and on the other, before the goddess Kali, here identified as Tara, ostensibly indicating the goddess's saving power. Both poems convey exasperation, in the first case on the difficulty of embodiment, and in the second case, from the grief of feeling forgotten by the "savior" goddess.

While the bhakti (devotional) tradition in India typically drew upon different patterns of human relationships to represent relationship with the divine, the premier model was that of lovers. As such, we may be surprised to note intense emotional expression in Hindu poetry not at all limited to extravagant passion or jubilant expressions of union. Not untypically, some poets will share a sense of pique, or irritation, or anger with their chosen deity, and even chastise the god or goddess for seeming delinquent in the duties of love. Sometimes the poet appears to badger the divine for his or her peculiar or incomprehensible ways, especially as the deity withdraws (or seems to withdraw) into absence. The felt separation and the perceived sense of abandonment often occasion blunt, bald-faced words of the lover to the Beloved. There are no pious platitudes here. No Hallmark card of saccharine sweetness.

For example, Kali, as the supreme goddess in certain Bengali devotional traditions, is understood, in her benevolent aspect of Tara, as the "Compassionate" and the "Thoughtful." However, some poets offer blunt critiques of her, occasioned by their anguish, concluding, as Rachel McDermott notes, "with bitterness and sarcasm; no one would worship the Goddess if there were an alternative."[4] Such poems reflect very real human predicaments; they express the understandable disquiet that obtains when appealing to a savior but feeling as if one's prayer echoes into silence.

We see examples of this disquiet in the Hebrew Psalms as well. The first two verses of Psalm 13, perhaps more plaintive than marked by pique, are nonetheless clear in their directness and vulnerability:

How long, Yahweh, will you forget me? For ever?
How long will you turn away your face from me?
How long must I nurse rebellion in my soul,
sorrow in my heart day and night?
How long is the enemy to domineer over me?[5]