Prayers From A Small Boat

A musing about holiness and grace in the time between stories

In Murmurings of the Land - A Portrait of Stephen Jenkinson and Orphan Wisdom, Stephen Jenkinson says, ‘I suspect… prayers, in order to be prayers and not petitions for more have to include two things. One of them is that you are making supplication. So there is in it a confession of lack, or error, or worse. And the acknowledgement of the inability to be self-sufficient probably has to be in there too.

Now, content wise, what’s a mature prayer? That’s a really tricky question. Do you pray that people wise up? Do you pray, in the teeth of the shitshow of the way it is, do you just pray that it’s not this way when it frigging is this way? And it being this way is what prompted you to pray in the first place?

I’ve never heard a better prayer - it’s remarkable for its candour, its brevity, and what’s not in it - and the prayer went like this: God, help me. My boat is so small, and your sea is so immense.’

I do not know who I pray to when I pray, but my prayers are not petitions for more but for less. Please, make this stop. Please, I cannot live like this. Please, just one thing that’s easy. When I pray, my prayers are entirely of desperation and yearning, loneliness and terror, exhaustion and bewilderment. My prayers are not mature. They are prayers of a child trying to travel into adulthood in this time between stories, when most of the human stories that I was worlded within have revealed themselves to be mirages and dust, and all that might come from their revealment and dissolution is many generations away.

My boat is so small, and this time between stories is so immense.

Recently, I find myself pondering my relationship with holiness and grace. They’re not words that I travel towards with ease. I meet them first through religious stories, most of which I find strange at best and violent at worst. When I go to their original stories, though, I find rooted, animist stories pulsing with liveliness and possibility that meets this time in all the small and large ways.

In English, holy arises from the old English word hālig, meaning divine, sacred, to be revered or worshipped; consecrated, sacred.

Etymonline.com states that, ‘the primary (pre-Christian) meaning is uncertain, but probably it was “that must be preserved whole or intact, that cannot be transgressed or violated,” and the word shares a PIE root with Old English hal and Old High German heil “health, happiness, good luck” (source of the German salutation heil).’

And when we look to older English meanings of grace, we find its roots within Old French: graciier, meaning to thank, give thanks to; to praise, as well as mercy, favour, and virtue.

Where do we human creatures meet holiness and grace in this time between stories? Are there threads between holiness, wholeness, and holes? What is calling for our thanks, both wavering and sure? Where do we find mercies, both gentle and wise? What is asking for our rapture, our reverence, our favour?

In this time between stories, I stumble into holiness and grace in many places and forms, often where words cannot accompany. When in their presence, I try to absorb every moment.

My prayers are often petitions for less. But I find that I make less desperate prayers, too. Perhaps more mature ones. Help me not hide from the realities of these times, and meet them with attunement and response-ability. Help me ignite relational repair where welcome, and be available for the consideration of relational repair where not. Help me widen my capacity to travel into more-than-human stories and timescales, and place human ones in their rightful place. Help me make meaningful the work I engage in, and seek meaningful work when without. Help me inhabit my fate as best I can, and cause the least amount of harm when I cannot endure it.

Help me. My boat is so small, and this time between stories is so immense.