It had been a time of extreme drought in the high deserts of northern New Mexico, when my native friend David invited me to an ancient stone circle to "pray rain." After meeting at a prearranged location, I followed him on an early-morning hike through a valley that contained more than 100,000 acres of high-desert sage. After walking for a couple of hours, our journey led us to a place that David had been to many times before and knew very well. It was an earthen circle made of stones arranged in perfect geometries of lines and arrows, just the way the hands of its maker had placed them long ago.
"What is this place?" I asked. "This is the reason that we have come." David laughed. "This stone circle is a medicine wheel that has been here for as long as my people can remember." He continued, "The wheel itself has no power. It serves as a place of focus for the one invoking the prayer. You could think of it as a road map - a map between humans and the forces of this world." Anticipating my next questions, David described how he'd been taught the language of this map from the time that he was a young boy. "Today," he said, "I will travel an ancient path that leads to other worlds. From those worlds, I will do what we came here to do. Today, we pray rain."
I wasn't prepared for what I saw next. I watched carefully as David removed his shoes, gently placed his naked feet into the circle, and honored the four directions and all of his ancestors. Slowly, he placed his hands in front of his face in a praying position, closed his eyes, and became motionless. Oblivious to the heat of the midday desert sun, his breathing slowed and became barely noticeable. After only a few moments, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes to look at me, and said, "Let's go. Our work is finished here."
Expecting to see dancing, or at least some chanting, I was surprised by how quickly his prayer began and then ended. "Already?" I asked. "I thought you were going to pray for rain!" David's reply to my question has been the key that helped so many to understand this kind of prayer. As he sat on the ground to lace up his shoes, David looked up at me and smiled. "No," he replied. "I said that I would pray rain. If I had prayed for rain, it could never happen." Later in the day, David explained what he meant by this statement.
He began by describing how the elders of his village had shared the secrets of prayer with him when he was a young boy. The key, he said, is that when we ask for something to happen, we give power to what we do not have. Prayers for healing empower the sickness. Prayers for rain empower the drought. "Continuing to ask for these things only gives more power to the things that we would like to change," he said.
I think about David's words often, and what they could mean in our lives today. If we pray for world peace, for example, while feeling tremendous anger toward those who lead us into war, or even war itself, we may inadvertently be fueling the very conditions that lead to the opposite of peace! With half of the world's nations now engaged in armed conflict, I often wonder what role millions of well-intentioned prayers for peace each day may be playing, and how a slight shift in perspective could possibly change that role.
Looking back at David, I asked, "If you didn't pray for rain, then what did you do?"
"It's simple," he replied. "I began to have the feeling of what rain feels like. I felt the feeling of rain on my body, and what it feels like to stand with my naked feet in the mud of our village plaza because there has been so much rain. I smelled the smells of rain on the earthen walls in our village, and felt what it feels like to walk through fields of corn chest high because there has been so much rain."
- Gregg Braden from "The Lost Mode of Prayer"
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