God or the Horse?
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An immigrant from Russia was explaining to his children and grandchildren about life in the Old Country, and told a story about his father. One winter’s day, his father was away from home with his horse and sleigh, and a terrible blizzard began.
Soon, the man could no longer see through the storm. He was lost and afraid and cold. The wolves howled. It looked like he might not make it back to his family. He thought he might die.
The man slackened his hold on the reins, letting the horse find the way while he prayed. The horse took off. The wolves seemed very close. On went the horse. Eventually, the man realized that the looming shapes ahead were his house and barn. He leaped out of the sleigh, led the horse into the barn, ran into his own house and fell to his knees in thanksgiving to God for his deliverance.
As his descendants breathed a sigh of relief at the story’s happy ending from the warmth and comfort of their New World home, the youngest child whispered to her cousin: “He should have thanked the horse.”
Here’s what I have come to believe about prayer. In the end, there is only a shade of difference between thanking God and thanking the horse. Both are good, both are prayer. You could say that one acknowledges a mystery and another does not, but what greater mystery is there, after all, than the mystery of horsy knowledge of the invisible world, which brings a man safely home to his family?
And if it was the peasant’s ability to pray which allowed him to drop the reins and trust that mystery, who is to say whether the effect of prayer came before the storm (allowing him to trust his horse) or during it (guiding the horse or affecting the storm, or even spurring the horse on with the voices of wolves)? For it is surely likely that if the man had tried to blunder through the storm, tight-reined, on his own wits, he would have confused his horse and perhaps, in his anxiety, missed the shadow that was his home and his barn. He would thereby have frozen in the pastures beyond.
I see prayer as a slackening of the reins when all else is bound to fail—the willingness to give ourselves up to the healing powers and creative possibilities of a porous universe in which horses and still small voices can speak to us, soothe us, lead us, teach us, sometimes even save us. It’s not an obvious truth; it’s quite counterintuitive, after all. And so we must pay attention and remember and be thankful, and tell the stories. All of that, be it by word or song or a sigh too deep for words, is prayer.
She stays in touch with the world and her body through gardening, and a Kung Fu practice.
- Riding the Waves - September 1, 2017
- Face to Face with Mystery - June 1, 2016
- What Now? - March 1, 2014
