What is prayer?

I think I’ll let my prayer plant answer for me.

Maranta leuconeura

—It’s not what you’d expect.

She looked over at the prayer plant, leaves coming to attention atop stiffening stems. The prayer plant’s members always assumed this stance at a certain time of evening. She glanced at her computer clock. Roughly 9 pm. Summer, winter, fall, spring. It didn’t matter that the hours of daylight differed widely between the seasons, that right now, a week away from winter solstice, the sun set at 4:20. Waning daylight was obviously not their clue, they did not take their call to prayer from visual signs. Must be something internal, circadian rhythms, she supposed, wasn’t that what was supposed to govern such things? In any case, she had given up trying to figure out how the plant knew it was time to pray. Perhaps it existed in a timeless state, like one that she herself aspired to. Or aspired to aspiring to.

It was always the stalks in the centre of the ceramic pot that started the process, leading the outlying stalks gently prayerward. Some of the outliers took their time, some never really quite attained to the prayer posture. She thought she herself would likely be an outlier if she were a member of a plant that prayed. After all, didn’t all groups have their leaders, their avid followers, and their stragglers? Strugglers?

Earlier, she had just sat down to write, wondering what would appear on the page, worrying that no words might appear at all, when out of the corner of her eye she had seen movement, the tallest stalk, smack in the middle, had jerked suddenly upright. Call to prayer! Boy, that was one dude that lived in the now. That’s when she thought she had heard those words: It’s not what you think.

—It’s not what you’d expect, the tall one corrected her now. —Those were my exact words.

—What isn’t what I’d expect? she asked, round-eyed.

—This prayer thing. It’s not what you’d expect. It’s not as if some god-presence is calling me, telling me it’s time to pray. My whole life is about prayer. Bowing, reaching leaves out to the light, stretching upright at night, it’s all prayer. Drinking (assuming you remember to water me) is praying. Not drinking, too. Breathing is praying. New shoots and leaves unfurling is praying. So is old ones shrivelling up and falling to the earth.

—Prayer is such a misleading word, really. You humans go to church, you kneel or stand up, fold your hands in a certain way, bow your heads or lift them up, raise your eyes or close them, sit cross-legged on a mat watching your breath, all depending on how you were taught or what you think you need to do to be heard by some mystic or mythical deity. It’s not like that. Praying is eating, it’s moving, growing, drinking, eliminating, having an orgasm. Prayer is not something (a particular activity) you do so much as it is everything you do, and more, it’s something you are.

Not much I can add to that, except perhaps: Amen. But if you're looking for a more traditional sort of prayer, here’s one I like a lot, words and music: