Wednesday Wishlist #7: A Prayer

Image Credit: criswatk

When I was a very small girl, due to some reason, I used to be plagued by nightmares almost every single night. As a solution to this, my parents told me to keep a rosary (prayer beads) below my pillow before I go to sleep. And surprisingly, after that my nightmares stopped (mostly). And even more strangely, on days when I would forget to place the rosary, I would again have nightmares. The pious might call this a miracle and the sceptical might not even believe me. But logically speaking, I think that by placing the rosary, I simply believed that the nightmares would go away – and therefore stopped dreaming them up. On the days that I missed, my guess is that my sub-conscious mind was still aware of the facts.

So this is my earliest memory of me ever praying for anything – although my parents tell me that when we went for the interview during school admissions, I promptly ran up to a statue of Mother Mary and prayed, and that is what convinced the nuns to give me a seat! In any case, I eventually stopped placing the rosary because of laziness and instead resorted to saying a small prayer before going to sleep, which involved, among other important things, that I shouldn’t get a nightmare. Slowly this grew into a habit. Usually, I mumble a sleepy prayer as soon as I wake up, a hurried one as I am leaving the house and a habitual one before I go to sleep.  Plus of course, if I need something desperately, on special occasions or I’m either upset or exuberant over something, I do pray.  And by praying, I don’t mean that I stand in front of pictures or statues of deities and chant anything. I just close my eyes for a minute and say my prayers, wherever I happen to be. That’s it.  

I wouldn’t call myself extremely religious. I do believe strongly in my God but for a person who has parents who never ever miss Sunday Mass and in-laws who have a whole legion of impressive churches attributed to them, I lag a lot! For one thing I don’t agree with everything that the Church teaches, including its stand on abortion, contraception and evangelisation. For example, I feel that Christianity is to an extent, if not altogether liberal, towards women. But what is this concept that a woman should cover her head in Church in order to show that she is governed by a man??! I choose to assume that instances such as these are simply miscommunications and distortions that have occurred, over the hundreds of years that this religion has been in existence.  

So I guess that whether I am a well-balanced religious person or not, I am certainly not dogmatic or fanatic about it. But there is no denying that it does provide me with comfort, hope and guidance. I recently came across a small prayer called the Serenity Prayer – and it has quickly become my favourite. The prayer is a short one but I think that the most profound lines of it are:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference. 

Isn't this a lovely prayer? What more could one ask for? It is said to be written by Reinhold Niebuhr in 1943. And the best thing about it is that it is a religion-independent prayer - which means anyone, irrespective of their religious beliefs, can say it when they feel that they need some peace in their lives. 

This simple prayer is also my wish for this Wednesday's Wishlist.