Prayer is the little implement
~Emily Dickinson
Through which men reach
Where presence is denied them.
They fling their speech
By means of it in God’s ear;
If then He hear,
This sums the apparatus
Comprised in prayer.
Prayer can seem like such a small thing.
I have always had a sense of my own prayers as balloons, rising softly only to get stuck bumping around in a corner of the ceiling, never getting where they are supposed to be going. Other people’s prayers, I am certain, find their destination, wing their way right to where they’re supposed to be.
We fling our speech heavenward, hoping for an answer, a cure, absolution, redemption. Where does it go? Where do words go once they are spoken? Where does that sound go?
The “If” in the second and final stanza is so interesting to me. If God hears, then that is prayer. Prayer has been achieved. It isn’t prayer, apparently, if the “little implements” never arrive at their destination.
I wonder what I have been doing all this time.
The Emily Project 