On my birthday last year, I found myself in Westminster Abbey. I had missed the time slot for tourist visits and could only enter for the Evensong program. Being a practising Muslim, I was not familiar with Anglican liturgical rites, but curiosity prevailed and so I entered.
As I walked in, my gaze was seized by the sacred art, the high vaulted ceilings, the looming majesty of a place that, over the past nine centuries, has witnessed the coronation of every English king.
A thought strolled through my mind; not a unique one but one that weighed more heavily in that moment: how many prayers have been offered here over the centuries? What dead hopes and unlived dreams hover in the air? How many hushed prayers have been uttered in communion with God, seeking good in this life and salvation in the next?
Some would have walked away and later felt that their prayers were answered. Others would have felt that they sought but did not find, that they knocked but found no open doors. And yet, the faithful continue to pray.
Since my visit to Westminster Abbey, I have thought more consciously about the nature of prayer. Prayer occupies a unique space: all communication is directed outwards but prayer is directed inwards, to a being that the Qur’an describes as being closer than our jugular veins. It is fainter than a whisper, yet it echoes resoundingly in the depths of the heart. Prayer is that which recentres our relationship with God, rekindling the flame that flickers within us that reminds us of the evanescence of life and its sorrows.
In wanting to learn more of prayer, I consulted How to Pray: Reflections and Essays, by one of my favourite thinkers and writers, CS Lewis. In this work, Lewis tackles a variety of questions concerning prayer, such as why one should pray if God is all-knowing; whether prayer can be proven to “work”; and how one can pray with delight. Some may find these topics fascinating, but I am not interested in theological quandaries; I leave that to theologians and philosophers. I am interested in beauty, not in comprehending the divine but in adoring it.
Lewis has a remarkable knack for explaining complex concepts in elegant and accessible prose. In a book brimming with beautiful passages, one stood out for me:
“Don’t bother about the idea that God ‘has known for millions of years exactly what you are about to pray’. That isn’t what it’s like. God is hearing you now, just as simply as a mother hears a child. The difference His timelessness makes is that this now (which slips away from you even as you say the word now) is for Him infinite. If you must think of His timelessness at all, don’t think of Him having looked forward to this moment for millions of years: think that to Him you are always praying this prayer.”
This passage blew me away. A single, uttered prayer becomes timeless. What, then, of all the prayers that have ever been uttered? Is prayer not that which unites different faith traditions and stretches across the vast expanse of history? Has there ever been a person who did not pray, at least once in their life, to a higher being?
The world, then, becomes something entirely different: the Earth, with all its lands and seas, is transformed into a vast arena of perpetual worship. Prayers are drastically altered; words uttered and cried in every conceivable language merge into an unending song that fills the air with the praises of the divine; the solitary and individual becomes communal and universal. And suddenly the brittle barrier that we have erected between the sacred and the mundane begins to crumble, slowly at first, until it shatters before the piercing power of prayer.
In Westminster Abbey, I wondered why the faithful continue to pray. Perhaps it is because they always have.
Ali Hammoud is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. He is broadly interested in Shia Islam and Islamicate intellectual history. More of his writings can be found on his Substack page
