Prayers Like Fireflies

One night, up north, in Wisconsin, I was especially restless and could not comprehend why. I threw back the sheet (It was a warm night.) and tiptoed down the creaky stairs to the windows overlooking the pond. I could discern where the sky met the treetops, where the shoreline met the water—so dark, bleak, humid, heavy.

A sudden spark of light demanded my attention—a miniscule flash that, like the state of my mind, I was unable to comprehend. Then there came a second wink in the cattails, followed by a flicker near the weathered Adirondack chair. Fireflies! It had been years since I’d seen these ethereal lightning bugs and now they appeared as pinpoints of comfort in the gloom.

Over the past few months, I have witnessed the illness, hospice care, and death of too many people I love. That fitful night in Wisconsin, I realize now, was caused by the deep, shadowy thoughts that come from the loss of souls you’ve shared living with, and sharing dying is much, much harder. When I saw the fireflies, I desperately wanted comfort, a wish to come true, a tiny miracle (if any miracle can be considered tiny) for all those in pain, both physical and emotional.

The opening of the classic Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life, is often disregarded. It’s a series of black-and-white scenes depicting the town of Bedford Falls and then a wide shot of our glorious universe. The audio, as you may recall, is a volley of voices praying for the hero George Bailey.

Prayer…

…it’s a whisper of a word that can pack a wallop. Prayers, like fireflies, drift in the dark, eventually landing and shedding a bit of light on what’s bothering us. The only difference is that we don’t expect an answer from the fireflies’ glow, and we often expect a tidy solution from our prayers. I wonder, if all the fireflies in my backyard ignited simultaneously, would it appear as daylight? Do more prayers, spoken more often, or by more voices create the change we desire?

Prayer has accompaniments: prayer chains and circles, beads, shawls, clasped hands, and books. Prayer, in my mind, also has other names such as meditation and affirmation. It can take place anywhere: late at night, when one mentally lists gratitude while lying awake in bed, the church or temple pew, or after a yoga class along with the word namaste. Prayer can be spoken aloud beneath the canopy of a big, old tree or to a bushy-tailed squirrel as curious about you as you are about it, or on an urban rooftop after a rain, when everything glistens and the grit of the city is washed away. We intend for our prayers to be heard by God, nature, a higher power, the universe, the collective consciousness, just as the luminescence of the fireflies was witnessed by me.

I have prayed a lot the past few weeks and have discovered that what matters most, is not so much if my prayer is heard, but that I thought it, felt it, meant it, and spoke it.

Yes, our prayers are like fireflies. They light up the dark.

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