“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.” Pearl S. Buck

I like to pray. I like the feeling of being listened to and of possibly being responded to. The thing is I gave up on any belief in invisible disembodied entities that could hear me a while ago. But I still like to pray, even if it is only my own unconscious “hearing” it, the intentions of my prayer being planted in its depths where it can reside until it is ready to emerge in some future revelation.

But sometimes I need to have something other than my own psyche to respond to my prayer, an entity or entities that will respond directly to me. I think that’s the good thing about other people that you can talk to and be open with. If you have people like that that is. If you don’t it’s easy to see why people turn to disembodied entities, fantasies or a big anonymous universe. An invisible ear is better than no ear. And yet it’s not something that you can rely on forever. The empty silence is only a temporary measure that consoles for a little while but can only swallow the prayer and never respond. And that’s not good for any person.

I think that’s why I write. Humans are what I pray to, the entities that I expect a response from. Perhaps not an immediate response, it can take a while for words and ideas to circulate in the collective human psyche before it comes to fruition. Sometimes there is no response and it’s just enough to know that there’s someone out there listening, or in this case reading.

So with my blogs I pray to humanity, an “entity” I know is capable of understanding and even of responding. And in some ways my blogs are the responses to other people’s prayers, that what I am saying is what someone else may have been waiting to hear. Many people write things, not just to share their ideas, thoughts and opinions but because they are trying to communicate with the world, and that requires responses.

It doesn’t matter if God, Goddess or gods can hear, understand or respond to our prayers, as long as there are humans that can. Each of us can pray. But even better, we can all respond to prayer, including our own, making it work through us.

 When someone prays, will humanity answer?