The mystical power of prayer sustains a seeker

By Beverlee Pattonallen
FROM HEART TO HEART for The Register-Guard
April 29, 2006

Prayer, like life, has been a journey for me, once taking me in the opposite direction from where I intended to go, another time taking me across the world to live in India. Both times I had prayed fervently—out of fear or for something. As my faith matured, I learned to pray for more exalted purposes, such as understanding God’s Will, but back then I was young and new to my Faith.

After returning to San Francisco from a year in New York City on a dance fellowship, I was re-introduced to the Bahá’í Faith. Its teachings gave me a vision of spiritual and practical solutions to the civil rights and peace movements in which I was involved. I was full of zeal. So when Bahá’ís were asked to move to outlying communities, I volunteered to go to a town north of San Francisco, giving up a job, my apartment and my furniture. Bahá’ís call those who leave their homes to reside elsewhere pioneers. We are not missionaries or clergy but ordinary people collaborating to develop our religion.

The night before leaving I was wide-awake and panicking. “What am I doing giving up my friends, my job, my dance company, and the social life I love?” I asked myself. Feeling alone and confused, I beseeched God’s help all night long. The next morning, weary but feeling braver in the daylight, I got into a car packed with everything I owned and headed toward the Golden Gate Bridge. My car passed the street leading toward the bridge—and turned south. It was taking me out of the city in the wrong direction! Two hours later I was knocking on my mother’s door. I was in the exact place I had determined not to go, though that town also had few Bahá’ís.

Within a month I had everything that I had feared giving up—and more. I was teaching dance and I had met my future husband. My prayers for help had been answered with a helpmate. A year later we went, as pioneers, to the island of Grenada, West Indies, and eventually to India.

Going off in the wrong direction was the first time I experienced a dramatic result from prayer, though I have witnessed the mystical power of prayer constantly since then. Through many tests and bounties, prayer has sustained me.

Sometimes it seems prayer is the only thing I have any real control over. I can worry about the conditions that cause suffering to so many people around the world, or about family members or friends who are distressed or dying, but worrying does not change those conditions. However, I can pray, and I can practice in my daily life those values and principles I believe can effect a positive change in the world. Perhaps the only thing my prayer changes is me, but my Faith teaches that it does more. It connects our hearts to God and to each other, which makes both journeys worthwhile.

Beverlee Pattonallen is a member of the Eugene Bahá’í community and serves on the Coordinating Committee of the monthly Interfaith Prayer and Reflection service sponsored by TRIM