Explainer
Creed
Psychology
4 min read

The selfish desire of hopeful prayer

While waiting for a bus, Henna Cundill contemplates how prayer transforms the uncomfortable into imaginative hope.
A woman leans against the glass of a bus shelter while waiting, she clasps a bag.

“Try praying” suggests the bus as it pulls up. Ironic, really, given how much of my life I’ve spent in this draughty shelter, earnestly praying that a late bus would just turn up. Well, here is a bus, but it is not the one I’m waiting for. However, its slogan has lodged in my mind. Perhaps I should pray anyway, just to pass the time? What would I pray for right now, beyond the bus I want? Are any of my other prayer requests something that God is likely to countenance? I’m all too well aware that there are some things on my personal wish-list that the Almighty is definitely not going to grant.  

In 2022 a Church of England survey found that nearly half the population (48 per cent) claims to pray, and the numbers are apparently even higher among the 18-24 age bracket. In the breakdown of the statistics, it can be seen that the poll respondents prayed for all the ‘right’ things – for peace, forgiveness, guidance, and for those in need. So far, so pious. Would any of us really admit to a pollster that we pray for the other, slightly more selfish things – a convenient parking space, good weather on a holiday? Such prayers are suitably benign, but probably also pointless. God, surely, has better things to do. We still pray them though. Well, I do anyway. Maybe you are better than me, but I’ll go ahead and admit to all those little, probably pointless prayers – prayers revealing that inwardly I’m quite selfish, and a bit of a narcissist, a girl who just wants an easy life and an on-time bus.  

Perhaps the uncomfortable truth here is that a lot of prayer is born out of a desire for ease and comfort. Prayers for peace, forgiveness, guidance, and even prayers for others in need can be no less a response to a sense of discomfort or discontent than the prayers to get me out of this draughty bus shelter. But such desires are entirely natural. After all, as humans we are programmed to maintain homeostasis. Within that, most functions can happen internally – so when the individual body is too hot, it sweats; when the body is too cold, it shivers (like me in this shelter right now). It’s all about control.  

But sometimes the discomforts are emotional, and we are dependent on external factors to maintain or regain our homeostatic sense of peace – factors that are out of our (or any person’s) control. To pray is to make a cognitive response to that realisation, to seek some input from a higher power. There is nothing I can do to make the bus come on time, and in the absence of peace, forgiveness, guidance, or when contemplating the multifarious sicknesses and struggles of my fellow human beings – well, I realise that maybe damn near everything is out of my control. God, can you do something about this? It’s making me uncomfortable.  

Oddly enough, even the most well-known of Christian prayers, the so-called “Lord’s Prayer” (Our Father, who art in Heaven… etc. etc.) makes no bones about acknowledging this. Part way through, like hungry children who loiter in the kitchen whilst mother is cooking dinner, unashamed the pray-ers cry out: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It is a daily moment of divinely sanctioned gimme, gimme, gimme. My selfish inner narcissist loves that bit.  

I’m not generally praying for bread; I have bread. But to me the bread is a metaphor for all my inner needs and appetites. I think one of the early Christian writers, Augustine of Hippo, grasped this uncomfortable truth also. Reflecting on the brutal honesty of the prayers which are found in the Bible’s Book of Psalms, he wrote: “Your desire is your prayer, your prayer is your desire.”  Augustine was not advocating that such desires should be uncritically indulged, but that pray-ers should be honest enough to verbalise their desires, to acknowledge them before God, and in that way allow sunshine to become the best disinfectant.   

There is, perhaps, no bleaker statement than the words, “I haven’t got a prayer.” Where there is prayer, there is imagination, and imagination is a sign of hope. 

How interesting that the Lord’s Prayer acknowledges this basic human need – this need to say, “God, life is uncomfortable, and I don’t like this feeling.” I wonder about the other 52 per cent of the poll respondents, the ones who said that they didn’t pray. What on earth do they do with their appetites, with their difficulties, or with their sense of malaise? Because I think Augustine was right: prayer is all about desire, and desire is about hope for satiety – be it physical, emotional, or cognitive. Prayer is anticipating that our desires can or might be met by someone or something, out there somewhere, and allowing ourselves to imagine how that might come to be. There is, perhaps, no bleaker statement than the words, “I haven’t got a prayer.” Where there is prayer, there is imagination, and imagination is a sign of hope. 

It takes a bit of courage, sometimes, to admit to what we imagine, what we secretly hope for. It might be a world of peace and prosperity for all, but it might also be for the demise of an enemy or for a successful and stress-free life. Psychologists Ann and Barry Ulanov observe that in this way, all prayer is confession, even the prayers where we are asking for stuff. By coming face-to-face with God, we also have to come face-to-face with ourselves, including our selfishness and narcissistic longing.  

So, have I got the courage to verbalise my personal wish-list? To take this idle moment and allow my imagination to present God with all my deepest, darkest desires? Well, it sounds like it might be good for me, whether God is listening or not. Prayer, it seems, is an opportunity for some gritty self-reflection and deep personal growth. So why not? Here goes:  

“Dear Heavenly Father… 

…Oh, never mind, my bus is here.  

Amen.” 

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Explainer
Creed
Eating
1 min read

Intermittent fasting? Try the 5th century playbook

Lent is upon us – those 40 days of voluntary masochism that we moderns have mercifully put behind us. Or have we?

Julie Canlis

Julie connects Christian spirituality with ordinary life in Wenatchee, Washington State, where she teaches and writes.

A wine glass of water sits on an empty clean plate.
Daylight fasting.
Jean Fortunet, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Fasting, at least in the health world, is no longer a derogatory term but one in vogue. Particularly the merits of the restricted diet, in which you limit the amount of time you eat either to a day (e.g. to an eight-hour window) or a week (e.g. skip eating on two different days). The latter approach, maybe surprisingly, follows in the footsteps of our religious forebears, who fasted every Wednesday and Friday. Could it be that they’d figured out a practice we are just discovering? And what else were they trying to achieve?

To a medieval peasant in Britain, Lent ratcheted up the twice-weekly fast. It was 40 days of a vegan diet, that often increased in intensity as the body adjusted (though the pregnant, young, sick and old were exempt). Lent also issued in much cultural creativity. Who knew that Cathedral at Rouen was a Lenten by-product, as those desperate for butter could get a dispensation by contributing financially to the Butter Towers (as they became known)? And Britons may have Lent to thank for both black peas, a Lancastrian delicacy, and fish & chips, as cooks were challenged to keep Lenten menus interesting.

Despite our caricatures of Lent as a dour and draconian time, it was essential to the enjoyment of medieval life. The purpose of Lent was not the denial but the renewal of pleasure. Maybe it’s precisely that aspect that has echoed through the centuries, manifesting now in our punishing diets, Tough Mudder races, and endurance stunts. Isn’t that a bit part of why we (well, some of us) do them?

 

This article was first published on March 15 2023. 

'One of the principal rhythms of medieval life was this move from feasting to fasting to feasting again.'

Our modern fascination with fasting can also receive wisdom from Lent, which is that fasting for its own sake will always lead to something unhealthy. It must be for the purpose of something greater. Our forebears worried that physical practices could become idolatry, when wrenched out of their context of repentance. As G. K. Chesterton remarked,

'Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped.'

The Old Testament prophets were particularly grumpy about this, insisting that fasting would do no good if it did not also help you love your neighbour more. Or as the early third-century Christians who fled from Roman excess into the deserts remarked,

'If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride; if you think highly of yourself because of it, then you had better eat meat.'

Fasting on its own will not make us better people, though we might shed a few pounds. Fasting is to restore the pleasure not only to eating, but also to the soul in need of God. Interesting that one of the primary biblical metaphors for a lively spiritual life is that of feasting and eating. Fasting resets the soul with repentance. It is praying with our body. It is not a negation but a purgation of desire – not denying our desires but resetting them. C.S. Lewis wondered whether our desires are not too strong, but too weak.

'We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.'

So if you’ve considered intermittent fasting, or even if not but you feel you might need a more balanced perspective on pleasure, consider the Lenten playbook. Feast and fast cyclically. Do it for a greater purpose than just losing weight. Let it change and reset your true desires. And maybe, just maybe, you might discover God waiting for you at the root of all your desires.

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