I stumbled, literally, upon poet Chelan Harkin and his intriguing poem “I no longer pray”. Never knew or ever heard of him before this time. One evening, August 20, I was lazily going over my email inbox. My eyes caught an entry made by Awakin.org, “I No Longer Pray”. My curiosity was aroused: why would any believer in God resolve to “no longer pray”? Strange for a believer to suddenly stop communing with his God, won’t you say? Prayer is personalized conversation with the Creator and it’s a privilege not everyone gets to have. So I took a plunge. Lo and behold, I saw the poem, the whole of it, and its author Chelan Harkin.
However, what I discovered after reading and rereading severally the poem was the heading or title is misleading. Probably, the poet means to draw attention, to fire your curiosity as he did mine. Close to the end of the poem, he says he hasn’t stopped praying altogether. Instead, he has learnt to pray in a way different than before his new lived realities. Now “I no longer pray as I was taught/but as the stars crawl/onto my lap like soft animals at nighttime/and God tucks my hair behind my ears/with the gentle fingers of her wind/ and a new intimacy is uncovered in/everything,/perhaps it’s that I’m finally learning/how to pray.” His former life of undisguised comfort/complacency, exemplified by drinking “dark (undiluted/wholesome) chocolate” at night in beautiful moonlight “singing to me” anaesthesizes him against the pain, the poverty and death that swirl outside this his comfort zone. Until he eventually gains “a new intimacy” with true humanity through knowledge of his past (ancestors), his experience of “pain, ache” and a strong longing like no other. It is at this stage that he abandons the roted pray he used to say as was handed down from tradition.
I am sure this “new intimacy” which the poet discovers, leading to his “learning how to pray”, how to respond to both his physical and social environments, is something we all connect to as we advance in age. On Jan. 11 2023, I moved into an old house, sitting on a 100×50 piece of land that I bought from a young man in desperate need of cash to emigrate. The tenants I met looked as old as the house and were as despondent as you could imagine. Life seemed to have been drained out of them. I gave them up to a year to find alternative accommodation but charged no rent. I gave them that much time not out of charity but necessity. I needed time to make the place liveable and I needed them to keep up a living presence while I was at it. The moral is we all need each other even if our situations in life differ as east from west. A SUV car owner driving to a place he doesn’t know too well must stop a poor pedestrian to ask for direction! He is learning anew to say a prayer, isn’t he?
Now, before I took up residence in my old new place, I had to clean up. Move earth from here to there, gather up dry twigs and grasses, replace broken windowpanes and fix spoilt door handles. While doing all that I came to appreciate the diversity of the ecosystem God has graciously delivered to man to “tend and enjoy”. You come to recognize the place of the mosquito that sings, uninvited, into your ears at night, the bedbug that crawls all over your body to suck your blood as you sleep or try to do so. The housefly that picks at droppings from your breakfast table if you fail to remove them as quickly as you can. The birds of the air that tell you it is morning with their cuckooing, hooting, qwakwaying and sheishying. And the shorttail wall gecko that is picking up cockroaches and ants from behind your cookers and fridzers. Appreciating this diversity of life forms helps us learn a fresh “how to pray” in the context of our discovered “new intimacies”. I still pray but in a different way.
Let me conclude by reproducing, in full, Harkin’s I No Longer Pray:
I no longer pray—
now I drink dark chocolate
and let the moon sing to me.
I no longer pray—
I let my ancestors dance
through my hips
at the slightest provocation.
I no longer pray—
I go to the river
and howl my ancient pain
into the current.
I no longer pray—
I ache, I desire,
I say “yes” to my longing.
I no longer pray as I was taught
but as the stars crawl
onto my lap like soft animals at nighttime
and God tucks my hair behind my ears
with the gentle fingers of her wind
and a new intimacy is uncovered in everything,
perhaps it’s that I’m finally learning
how to pray.
