Prayer as Journalling to the Sky

 

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
    vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
 What do people gain from all the toil
    at which they toil under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes,
    but the earth remains forever.

                                    Ecclesiastes 1: 2-4 NRSVue

I heard yet another of those summer repeat CBC Radio interviews, this time a portion of a conversation with musician Lucy Dacus. She is a solo success and a member of indie supergroup Boygenius, winners of three Grammy Awards last year. I am regularly reminded that the world of contemporary music has passed me by.

Dacus was raised in a Christian family in the States but has an ambivalent relationship with religion now. In another interview she makes a passing reference to the book of Ecclesiastes which recognizes the ephemeral human condition. 

With Q host Tom Power Lucy touches on the mystery of prayer and refers to it as "journalling to the sky." Maybe it's because I've kept a journal for 40 years and this blog is sort of a journal the phrase tickled my fancy. Some things I write about in my journals have import but others are just stuff that in the bigger picture doesn't really matter. i write about it anyway. Perhaps prayer is simply sending everything God's way with earnestness and playfulness and a few shrugs. It takes off the pressure to get prayer right, doesn't it? I'm hoping that a loving God is paying attention.  

I've listened to a bit of Dacus' music and I like it. I like her as a reluctant theologian as well.