I Prayed Today ... but Prayer is Cheap

I attended two Traditional Ceremonies in the last week; a Tie-Up and Sweat Lodge. I enjoyed attending both Ceremonies. In the Ceremony I did do prayer. In the Tie-up Ceremony I asked for prayer for my daughter. In the Sweat Lodge Ceremony I prayed for my girl, my children, my grandchildren, siblings, aunties, uncles, relatives, and friends to have good health. Mostly I said Thanks to the Creator for all the Blessings in my life.

The Tie-Up Ceremony was an opportunity to hear some Teachings in addition to the Prayer and Healing which takes place. What did resonate with me was the Teacher/Elder/Ceremony holder's words on prayer. He spoke on how good prayer can be but he also went on to say "but Prayer is cheap". Its not enough to just pray, you have to take action with your prayer. You want something in life go out and work for it. Like being healthy - go out and take care of your health as well.

I have felt this way for a while. Like many I will pray in times of crisis. I will pray for the unattainable. I don't pray to win the Lottery that's weird and selfish. I might wish to win lottery but that's not prayer. I pray for other things, like my girl to over come addiction. Its not enough just to pray for the addiction to be overcome. I have to do my part. The only power I have over the addiction is how I act and react to my girl. I have come to realize the power or lack of power or control we have in many things. I guess that is one of the reasons we pray; because we have no control over the situation. Or we think we have no control over the situation. So all we can do is ask the Creator to help us.

For my girl all we can do is continue to practice Kindness to her. We have done all the other things: anger, guilty, pity, condemnation, extortion, bribing, enabling, encouragement. Kindness is the only viable option we can offer to our girl. We still pray of course, but prayer is cheap. We try to be Kind to her even when the addiction is selfish. We don't confuse enabling with Kindness.




I see or hear lot of folks who say "I'll pray for you" or  "sending prayers", or "pray for me".  I wonder about those prayers.  I have heard before that prayer is the least or laziest thing you can do. For example;  An Earthquake has killed many people, destroyed towns and we do our best by sending prayers. Do we really send those prayers or do we just say we are going to do a prayer?  I often wonder about that? I see it many times on social media where a tragic event occurs and we post "sending prayers". How nice and caring of us to send prayers. Makes me feel good, that you are praying for something/someone. How does it make you feel?

Besides prayer what do we do? How do we make sure prayer is not cheap?