I grew up an atheist. When you are born into a multicultural family like mine and go to a Christian school where they force their beliefs down your throat, you naturally go the logical path. The sane path.

Now how did someone like me, who grew up reading Richard Dawkins end up praying every day?

I'll be honest. I still don't subscribe to a particular religion nor am I sure of the divine. What I do know is that praying keeps me grounded. The chaotic undercurrents in my life have swept me through waves of melancholy and despair, and I need something to hold onto as my cortisol levels keep rising and my hair keeps graying (no matter how many times I tell myself I love my gray hair).

So here I am, back in my home-ish-town (story for another time), going to church every Sunday with my mom at daybreak. And my favorite part about going to church is the homily (speech) by le prêtre. The priest. Everything else is Catholic aesthetics that nourish my soul.

Last week, the Bishop gave the sermon at the cathedral (because that’s where we go, being the classy people that we are). And he said something that really touched me: prayer is the act of hopeful waiting.
And it’s true, if you think about it. I keep praying, hoping my fear, my pain, everything that weighs me down will one day be washed away. Because sometimes it just won’t go, no matter how much you will it to. Like a thin plastic bag trapped beneath a rock that is trying all it can to be washed away by waves.

A guide to praying

The simple act of praying can be achieved by just focusing. Now, if you have ADHD like me, you've just got to zone in and out of it. The way I see it, my vespers are geometric shapes, and they all fit together somehow into a huge honeycomb-like structure. And as I release them, they rise and join the ceiling of the church I am in. I try not to worry about the outcomes of my prayers, but that usually just leaves me gassy.

PS: If you have aphantasia, congratulations: you get to pray without the PowerPoint in your head.

My point being, I think I judge myself for praying. Because I grew up an atheist. When you are born into a multicultural family like mine and go to a Christian school where they force their beliefs down your throat, you naturally go the logical path. The sane path.

Ending this with my favorite quote from Richard Dawkins, the torch-bearer of not-praying.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?

I hope my ancestors who earned me the right to not pray are happy with my choices.