A Different Kind of Prayerful Moment
Every morning, I run in Central Park with my dog. As I run, I feel my breath flowing through me to the beat of my feet on the pavement and the staccato taps of my dog’s paws; lately I’ve felt ensconced in the rainbow of colorful leaves and the whisper of the wind rustling through them, and it’s all combined to make my morning runs feels especially spiritual and prayerful. As my legs flow over the pavement, my thoughts flow through whatever is bothering me, over challenges and around gratitude. I return home with a quieter mind and a greater openness to whatever the day might bring.
I had a very different kind of prayerful moment this week. On Tuesday, 11/11 at 11:11 AM, I looked at my watch just as the numbers aligned and I thought of my sister yelling “Make a wish!” when this would happen to her. In the middle of my Tuesday morning, I stopped mid-sentence to make a little wish for something I want to happen in my life.
This kind of mini prayerful moment is so unaligned with how I usually think about prayer. My prayer life is mostly not oriented around asking for something really specific I want and hoping it comes true; prayer for me is mostly about those Central Park runs or Shabbat morning with community, allowing myself to be swept up in music of services or the sound of my breath as I run.
I see, in this week’s parashah, an example for both kinds of prayer. At the beginning of Hayei Sarah, Abraham realizes that the time has come for his son, Isaac, to be married and continue the intergenerational covenant with God, so Abraham sends his servant Eliezer off to find Isaac a wife. Eliezer vows to complete the task, and when he arrives at his destination, he stops by a well and offers a prayer to God, saying “Let the maiden to whom I say, ‘Please, lower your jar that I may drink,’ and who replies, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels’—let her be the one who You have chosen for Isaac. Thus shall I know that You have dealt graciously with my master.” As it happens, Eliezer had barely finished speaking when Rebekah, Abraham’s niece, approaches and does exactly what Eliezer had just prayed for!
Eliezer’s prayer is an incredibly specific ask, sort of a “vending machine” model of sharing a specific wish and hoping to receive a concrete, specific outcome.
Later in the parashah, Eliezer and Rebekah arrive in Canaan just as Isaac is out in the field, taking the kind of walk that commentators understand as a meditative, prayerful communion with nature. Rebekah raises her eyes and sees her betrothed in this spiritual state, and immediately the two connect, enter his tent and fall in love.
Isaac’s experience of prayer could not have been more different from Eliezer’s; it was open ended and contemplative, not even explicitly called “prayer”, and yet it also precedes a moment of monumental shift in his life.
As the saying goes, “There are no atheists in a foxhole,” and it seems to me that Eliezer prays from this place of desperation and fear. In a tough moment, he reaches out for help and a reminder that sometimes we need a little external help and guidance.
We don’t know as much about Isaac’s experience as narrated by the Torah, but the Talmud in Masekhet Berakhot cites this moment as the basis for Isaac establishing the Mincha prayer service. From his moment of mindful presence in a field, we learn the importance of carving out time for spiritual introspection in our day.
Prayer can be asking specifically for what we want, in moments where the ask feels small and in moments when we don’t know what else to do. And prayer can also be letting our mind wander and opening ourselves to the world. We all have needs big and small, and ways we want to see change in our own lives and in the world. May this Shabbat and the week to come offer us the chance to put voice to our needs, to be alone to let our minds wander, and may we all be blessed to discover what we need right in front of us.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Deena Cowans