Prayer: The secret is out

My students look quizzically back at me when I tell them I know prayer works because when I pray for people they look different.

?Different to whom?? a bright student asks. First, I compliment her on her grammar then answer, ?Different to me, of course, you have to start somewhere.?

Another student ventures, ?Maybe prayer only changed your perception.?

?Ah,? I say. ?My perception! But don?t you see that my perception is all I?ve really got? My perception is everything! To me, there is no world out there apart from my perception of it, or apart from yours, for that matter. If there is a world out there, human perception is all we?ll ever know of it.?

?But, but, but?? say several. ?Others may just have a different perspective from yours.?

?Yes, and they should pray, too.? (Irked faces all around.) Keeping your class exasperated is the beginning of learning.

The conversation grows rabbinical and I have been through it with so many, many classes. If I say that prayer changes the world from the inside out, whose insides do you suppose I have in mind?

Your mind is the very point in the universe where the cosmos becomes self-conscious. (We?ll save God for another conversation, if you?re asking).

Of course, there are huge things like planets, stars and galaxies, but they don?t know that. We do. It?s all there in Genesis: God literally made us the brains of the operation.

?Ah, God! Isn?t he a cosmic intelligence??

Come now, when the Bible says God made us in his own image, did you think that applied to his shoe and hat size? No. It means he gave us consciousness!

The late Carl Sagan in his TV series Cosmos liked to say in his unique accent, ?The universe is beelions and beelions of years old.? I would murmur to the screen, ?Yes, and it took the universe beelions and beelions of years to learn that about itself ? through us!?

Alter our minds and you alter our perception of the universe and without our perception the world would have no idea of itself.

So, let?s begin again: ?I know prayer works because when I pray for people they look different.? Someone might ask, ?Do you pray for mountains and oceans, too?? Come now, this is Iowa. But the most startling proof of my thesis is when you pray for your boss, your spouse, your teenager after the order of ?Zits.?

Class is over. I?ll expect your response essay on Friday. Nearly everything depends on it.