Praying for friends

My friend Donna went into the hospital this morning for tests. Last fall she had an operation to remove a cancer. Her doctor told her today’s tests are pretty routine and it is just a precaution. She feels ok about it, a touch anxious, but ok. I decided to pray.

Donna didn’t ask me to pray for her. But it seems to me that a prayer that affirms Donna’s pure wholeness as a spiritual being in the perfect image of her Divine Creator is the right thing to do. Her spiritual identity, therefore is flawless — nothing of value can be added to it (like a growth) and nothing of value taken away (pieces and parts from an operation). She is complete, right now.

“And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26)

When I think about the body and the incredible system that makes it function, I believe that it is a symbol or maybe a “metaphor” for what is each person’s true spiritual identity. It’s not the actual “thing” from the Creator, but it is the best understanding we have of it at the present. There aren’t two of each person, one spiritual and one material. There’s just one, and this present form is the clearest concept we get at the moment. Still, even though it is material, it must adapt to the spiritual characteristics of the divine creation, i.e. goodness, intelligent, harmony, functioning, flawless, complete, etc. In other words, the body must conform to the divine, intelligent system of the Almighty, the all-powerful.

Mary Baker Eddy describes “divinity embracing humanity” and I take this to mean that the divine, all-powerful influence has its effect over all life, regardless of how little we understand how it works at this point.

Here’s an example that kind of makes sense to me: you know how on your desktop you have “aliases” — icons of software applications that reside on your hard drive? Now, these aliases aren’t the actual app (the intelligence) of the system. They are just representations. Proof of this is that when you delete the alias, the app is still there on your hard drive! This is how I see the body (as an alias) in relation to the actual intelligence that powers each of us.

So back to my friend Donna. If she had asked me to pray for her, I would be praying specifically about her and the situation…IOW I would be taking mental responsibility for her health care. But since she didn’t, I am affirming good and true thoughts about her and to support her. It’s like a big hug 🙂 This aligns my thinking with what I understand the Divine is thinking about all of us.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we all did this every day about people we see?