Prayers

When Nicholai was originally diagnosed with cancer – lymphoma, sometimes called lymphosarcoma – in January 2009, I quickly hopped online to research treatments, conventional and alternative. In this way, I stumbled upon a Canine Cancer Prayer List. With lots of emotion and few thoughts, I posted Nicholai's story and requested prayers on his behalf. After scanning the long, long list of prayer requests, so many posted with breaking hearts by desperate companions, I made a mental note to include these pups and their people in my thoughts.

I'm no expert at prayer. The scripted prayers I learned as a child (Hail Mary, Our Father) ring in a hollow place for me and do not suit the current occasion. I don't know how I should pray – "Dear god, save my dog from the inevitable. Save him from the mess we've made of the world. Give him an exemption from the natural consequences, not of his actions, but of the contamination we have loosed on his home." Would that work?

As a parent, I don't save my kids from the natural consequences of their poor choices. Throw your favorite toy out the window in a huff and it breaks? Tough luck, that. Leave your stuff out in the rain and it gets ruined? Bummer. Flunk a class in eighth grade and have to make it up in summer school? Your problem to deal with. Really, if I was God, and people prayed to me for salvation from cancer they created by dirtying their water, soil, air, and food with carcinogens, I'd probably say – tough luck, better choices next time.

Fortunately for us all, I'm not God. Still, I don't have faith that god – that beautiful spirit that infuses all of life – is going to rescue Nicholai, or anyone else for that matter. But perhaps the most important thing about prayer is not the response it gets. Perhaps the important thing is the change in internal thinking and feeling, and the resultant change in action. For me a prayer – a thought of gratitude or homage to that which is much bigger than me, eternal and filled with hope – changes me from negative thinking, hopelessness, and despair, to optimism and positive action. Prayers become something like this.

"Spirit of all that is, help me to love Nicholai each day he's here with me. Give him strength and me tools. Infuse us with joy and hope …

… Touch the life of our friend Pam with grace, let her know she's loved, let that love ease her pain …

… Help my sister to stay connected with beauty every day, to find strength and endless possibility in the magnificent hills and mountains around her house … "

I've gone back to the Canine Cancer Prayer list many times now to post requests for others to hold Nicholai in their prayers, whatever form they take; something is working for him, and for all I know the strength of unrelated persons' hopes, wishes, and love is the magic ingredient.

And while we're at it, here's one I'd like to see, hear, say, feel more often: "Oh, and God? Could you help us change our minds and our actions about the way we treat the earth like a garbage dump? Help us all see the magnificence in water lapping at shorelines, osprey nests high overhead, gray clouds, brilliant sunrises, fresh tomatoes, another day of breath. Help us to learn respect and give us the grace to go on living on this remarkable little blue planet.

Oh, and thanks."