Below is the first chapter (unedited) of the book. Enjoy! Be-warned, it is not a Christian friendly book (nor a Christian bashing book). After being raised Christian and even serving as a pastor of a church at a young age, I latter in life had a life altering event take place within a Wiccan environment that changed my perspective of life, the world, spirituality, and even being human. Peace to all.
Chapter One
My Soul Cried Out
The year was 1983 and summer break was categorically becoming the best of summers. On the edge of seventeen with senior year activities, the world was at my command. I was dating a young lady from a rival school (who later had the pleasure or misery, depending on one’s view, of being my first wife) and driving a rad Mustang with DIY Radio Shack installed speakers covering the entire backseat. My summer job of sacking groceries provided ample money for gas and Blackie (my pet dog) just gave birth to eight of the cutest, most robust, inquisitive litter of puppies any pet owner would be proud of.
Life in rural Arkansas was simple and time was plentiful. My grandmother (grandma), who provide a large share of my raising, was a child of the depression era. She had very little schooling, and was unable to read or write, beyond a few words and her signature. She married at a young age in the nineteen thirties to my grandfather (grandpa), a man who was equally educated. Their life’s journey was full of hardships and poverty, a type of life many experienced during that era of American history. My grandpa was tough, hardworking, cantankerous and at times a drunk. His opinion of sons was far more favorable than his opinion of daughters, making life for my mom challenging amongst three brothers.
Grandma was a “church goer” and grandpa equally a “non-church goer”. Much of my early life was journeyed in the midst of these two worlds. The world of the “good” church goer with a sense of moral direction and the world of the non-church goer who needed a sense of moral direction. There was no middle ground, it was a binary choice and everyone was judged by this division. The local gossip, which didn’t need social media in the seventies and eighties to be a dominant force, always split the talk along these lines. It was never far removed from blaming a person’s ills on their lack of church attendance, or their failure at adhering to “God’s” word. I remember such talk when grandma’s lady friends were around. Their conversation often included “If only Sally could get her no good husband in church, all her problems would vanish”. This type of religious pressure permeated the air I breathed as a young person.
This southern, low income community environment was prevalent throughout the south during much of the twentieth century. None-the-less with such influences in my adolescence years, I managed to enjoy rock music, Friday night football, fast cars and other teenage activities. But always, in the back in my mind was an overriding voice of the church and its teachings.
With these things in mind, that Saturday morning in 1983 was like any other; eat breakfast, play with the puppies, call the young lady and plan our day. In prep for leaving, all the drivers in the family performed a ritual with the puppies. They were kept in a safe area within our large three car carport. The ritual was to count all puppies in the area before backing a car from the driveway. There I was, counting puppies and thinking of the day with a young lady… six, seven, eight… all there. Count them again for good measure; seven, eight… all there. Check under the car, just in case one escaped… all clear. I started the car, backed down the driveway and to my complete horror, a puppy managed to escape and find itself under the car, with devastating results. The emotional pain in the moments after the incident, while holding and loving the puppy before his internal injuries claimed him, is more than my memory can bare.
It was at that moment, with the puppy holding on to life, I begin to pray (to anything or anyone) for a miracle. Seeking intervention to change the perceivable outcome and restore the order of normalcy. It was tragic, life changing and emotionally scarring for me. The prayers ended in vain as the nightmare followed its course.
I admit the story is a depressing, heart breaking opening to a book seeking the origin of prayer. But this tragic event, along with other similar events in my life led me to seek why we pray, or in other words, seek the origin of prayer. The question, “Why do we pray?” is vague and heavily merged into religious methodologies. A common theme surrounding the use of prayer is its correlation to a time of tragedy, or in the foreseeing of imminent tragedy. The religious aphorism “There are no atheists in foxholes” arises from such a preface. All seek (pray) for “divine” intervention when facing certain death. My experience and research provides a hypothesis such behavior is not religious or divinely inspired. Instead prayer is an intrinsic reaction to a situation. A triggered reaction during the course of an event. In the same manner as an accelerated heartbeat, fight or flight, tears, laughter and other naturally occurring responses, prayer will manifest itself organically. Organically, in this context, is to originate without the use of any artificial stimulants such as religion, training or culture. In its purest form, prayer exist without any outside requirements. But, as will be considered, non-organic prayer (the natural prayer under influence of non-natural forces) produces a trained, religious or culture based prayer. These prayers are mutated from their natural state, much the same way a non-organic food product is mutated from its natural state by the influence of external forces (fertilizers, pesticides or chemicals).
To assist in differentiating instinctive behavior from trained behavior, consider another childhood story. I was about five years old and at home with mom. I was playing with various toys about her feet while she ironed the laundry. From another room, the phone rang (in those days there were no wireless phones or cell phones) requiring her to leave the room. Mom looked at me and said “Don’t touch the iron, it is hot”, before she left to answer the phone. Like any five year old, I received this warning as an invitation to investigate. While mom was on the phone in another room, I reached up and touched the base of iron. Instantly I drew my hand back. At the same moment mom knew I failed to heed her warning. Most likely because of the instinctive and desperate cry of pain coming from my lungs. My behavior after touching the iron was not trained. No one taught me to jerk my hand away from the hot surface. No one taught me to yell from the pain. Basically, there was no delay of logical thinking between the time I touched the hot surface and my reaction to it.
Part of this type of instinctive reaction stems from the processing compartment of our brain. In “lesser” complex brains like rabbits, the input of a nice smelling lettuce leaf causes many natural reactions. The rabbit turns toward the lettuce, bites it, consumes it… all without delay (or very little delay) between the neurons that executed the smell input and the neurons that triggered the eat it now response. Most humans, unlike the rabbit have a more complex processing compartment in their brain. An area that intercepts the input to eat and “reasons” about it before relaying the message to eat. This human behavior of intercepting the message between input and reaction has evolved over the eons, and gives humans areas of distinct advantage over less evolved brains.
Humans retained some inputs which bypass reasoning and send an impulse directly to response mode. For instance, the jerking of my hand from a hot iron did not pass through the reasoning area of my brain. The brain takes the quickest path available in sending a response to remove the hand from danger. This method of bypassing (or very strongly trying to bypass) the reasoning area of the brain and invoke an immediate response is (for the purpose of this work) instinctive behavior. If the behavior resides in the reasoning area long enough for one’s conscious to consider it, this writing will consider this type of action a trained behavior. The instinctive type of natural, untrained behavior is considered when searching for the origin of prayer. It arises without thought or training; it is an evolved natural response to a given type of input.
The petition to a greater power for intervention while in a dire situation appears the standard method of operation for instinctive prayer. A religious person trained from an early age may develop daily rituals such as a daily prayer time. This type of behavior is not considered in the quest for an origin of prayer. Trained behavior by definition overrides or enhances the natural driven desire or instinct. To understand an origin, the trained behavior is filtered out until a picture of the pure, untrained instinctive nature emerges.
Having been raised in a typical southern religious environment with training in “God’s” ways. Sunday church services were as much a part of life as school, friends and family. Christianity was expected and permeated nearly every aspect of our community. By time I was sixteen I was heavily active in church activities, leading many of them. I attempted to routinely read the bible, say a prayer for the world and live by the church’s teachings. Yet, that tragic day in 1983, no training prepared me for what happened. As the horror unfolded before my eyes, my soul did not find comfort in any church message or training. My heart did not pause and say this is a time to lean on “God”. What happened in that moment was guttural, instinctive and without forethought. I cried for help… I saw a mortally injured pet gasping before me and my heart immediately, desperately searched for ways to undo what was done. My soul cried for a path that would change the inevitable picture before me. It was at that moment, without hesitancy, an urgent appeal surged forth to anyone, anything in the universe with the capacity to change the inevitable. I didn’t think of a “God”, or my church training; instinct took over and I cried to the universe for help.
An instinct so strong it overwhelmed the moment and burst forth through the tears transcending the obvious hopelessness before me. An instinctive cry for something I had never witnessed or experienced before; a cry for a future different than all my experiences predicted. My logic was at an end. Every door I saw before me led to the same destiny… tragedy. It was as if at that moment, with every door closed, my emotions found another door to knock on. One which did not obey the rules of nature, where death wasn’t the ultimate destiny. It was this door my heart seized upon and begged for mercy, help and intervention. The origin of this guttural, instinctive response has lingered in my mind for decades.
The origin of this natural response is the genesis sought. The response was not trained. It was not thought of beforehand. It rose up and took charge, much like the auto reaction of me pulling my hand away from a hot surface. This guttural response in form of a primitive prayer is the inspiration for this work. Attempting to answer such questions as; is the response autonomous, survival based? Has it evolved as life has evolved?
In undertaking any study, definitions are required in order to properly communicate and direct research. As such, prayer’s definition must be forged. Without prayer’s definition, there is no origin to aim at or actions to understand. In forging a definition, the approach of analyzing various attributes of prayer is taken. Once the attributes are well defined, a formal definition of prayer is derived encompassing its attributes. To accomplish this, several preliminary definitions are needed for a better understanding. In the same way instinctive prayer verses trained prayer is distinguished, other ambiguities are highlighted, discussed and defined when appropriate.
Consider a fundamental characteristic of prayer as described by Vigilantius around 400 A.D., “Only the living pray”. Most people will grin and nod their head in affirmation at such a benign and obvious observation of prayer. Yet on examination several ambiguities arise. Does living include non-humans? If so, does it include all animals? What about plants? Is the Earth living? Readers familiar with the Christian faith may recall the scripture saying “the whole creation has been groaning”, a type of cry for help. Again, is the Earth considered living? At minimum, the term life needs defining to understand what entities are capable of prayer. The second ambiguity of Vigilantius’s statement is to ask if prayer is restricted to humans.
Often in research, one question leads to another. If part of prayer’s definition is to be uniquely human, then human life must be distinguished from other forms of life. One must define life in order to categorize what life is human and what life is not. Quickly we arrive at Dr. Seuss’s wisdom, “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” The questions concerning prayer’s attributes are complicated and require rigor to separate instinct from religion. Shall we “pray” Dr. Seuss’s wisdom holds and the answers discovered are simple?
Late in life I returned to college and eventually completed my doctorate in computational science and engineering with an emphasis on theoretical physics. I learned early on a main building block of physical sciences is the ability to predict nature. A stone tossed into the sky will return to Earth with accurate predictability, there is no record of a hand tossed stone not returning to Earth due to gravity. These laws of nature, once discovered and formulated in the language of mathematics, have provided humanity with incredible advances. Over three hundred years ago Newton discovered a few of nature’s laws and how they can be expressed in equations. These equations have led humanity to global navigation, combustible engines, flight, moon exploration and many other advancements. These advancements were achievable not by Newton’s laws, but because nature behaves in a very specific and repeatable manner… the stone always returns to Earth.
Imagine if the stone returned to Earth on some tosses and other tosses the stone never returned, but kept sailing away into the emptiness of space. Because we are trained by our experience to understand the stone will return to Earth, this scenario sounds like a silly sketch from Monty Python. But if there were no experiences to draw from, it wouldn’t sound silly. There is no history of experiences to provide us hope the stone will do anything different than Newton’s laws predict. These laws of nature, even before they were put into the language of mathematics, served humans with boundaries of what was possible. Even without the laws written, humans understood the stone would return to Earth. Lacking the knowledge of elemental chemistry and understanding of oxygen, our ancestors knew one could not breathe underwater. These scenarios may seem trivial, but their subtle creations of restrictions to possible outcomes plays a critical role in our everyday life.
One does not walk in front of a moving vehicle without the expectation of being harmed. If a person drops a thin glass onto concrete, the thought of it breaking enters their mind before it collides with the concrete. Our mind subtly determines the future as the glass accelerates to the floor. In an event more directly related to prayer, consider a skydiver. They jump from the plane and soar toward the Earth below. Previous experience provides comfort the chute will deploy when the rip cord is pulled. It is when the unexpected happens that nature’s boundaries take center stage. If the rip cord fails to deploy the chute, the mind and body instantly move into a state of higher awareness and urgency. Instinctive behavior like adrenalin, elevated heartbeat, increased observation kick in. Another, not so obvious instinct is one’s calculation of how long before impact occurs, giving credence to urgency. These instinctive impulses are reacting to the boundaries of nature, such as gravity, impact, terminal velocity and the mortality of human life.
During this type of event, when all the laws of nature agree to a certain undesirable outcome, instinctive prayer often emerges. These natural laws have bound the person to a future event they desperately wish to elude. Every scenario played in the mind returns failure due to a known law of nature, the situation is hopeless and just as the glass is shattered on impact, so the skydiver foresees their demise on impact. At that moment one often seeks for ways to violate the laws of nature, to overcome them and wield them to their own desires. A second consideration is to “believe” a law of nature was missed in their experience, a law, whose discovery is needed at this point in order to obtain a positive outcome. If only they could bend the laws, find undiscovered laws, the outcome would be changed/manipulated to a favorable end. This need to rise above the constraints of nature’s laws appears often within primitive “instinctive” prayer. This need appears to work as a trigger to elicit an emotional response.
In the medical industry it is not uncommon to hear of instances where doctors, having done all they know to do, relinquish their control to nature. At these times the word miracle is a familiar part of the nomenclature. It represents an event in which the constraints of nature are superseded or temporarily changed to avoid an unwanted outcome. Understanding the meaning of miracles, nature’s constraints and how they play a role in prayer is one area discussed in the quest of properly defining prayer.
In religious realms, prayer is frequently tied to behavior. For instance, the more “righteous” one lives the more “powerful” their prayers are. Within Christianity the bible proclaims “the prayer of a righteous person avails much”. It is as though religion seeks to imply a law of nature upon the act, much like Newton’s law (paraphrased) for every action there is a reaction. If one performs this “righteous” action they obtain a “power” to overcome the laws of nature and obtain a miracle. In basic form, this philosophy teaches if one defies their natural born tendencies (titled sin in Christianity) they can obtain super-natural powers of prayer and defy the natural laws of the universe. This concept may appear as separate from prayer, but research’s logic demands it be considered. Discussed later in this work is how this type of philosophy paves a path to regret. Regret, on inception, places one in a situation of seeking to never repeat a past event. In a desire to not repeat the actions, one seeks to change their behavior in order to overcome the situation should it befall them again. Concerning regret, this work considers the role of morals in the expectation of success in prayer, even when the prayer emerges naturally.
As the search for an origin of prayer is undertaken, the first chapters are dedicated to defining being human, morals, life, nature’s constraints, regrets and other complex, controversial components of prayer. Once these definitions are forged, a formal definition of prayer is created and the search for the origin of prayer is underway. In researching primordial prayer a wide net will be cast to consider if it is uniquely human. Of course this work will attempt to answer the question, is Dr. Seuss’s “the answers are simple” reflective of the complexity of prayer? And lastly an endeavor will be attempted to answer if observable hints of primordial prayer exist all around us; in humans and in nature?
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