translating care

I’ve been considering prayer.

In the past week, I walked kilometer after kilometer over red dirt roads, muddy footpaths, rocky hills, grassy plains, splashing puddles, cracked earth, and over the thresholds of the homes of fifteen of the orphans and vulnerable children, specifically those living in child-headed households, that the Umoja Project supports. And as I went, I’ve been considering prayer.

I don’t pray. I don’t speak in the language of prayer. I don’t ask for prayers from others. I don’t say, “I’ll be praying for you.”

Instead, I write fervently. Instead, I walk my days in gratitude. Instead, I allow myself moments of mindful pause. Instead, I speak of days filled with sunlight, good in whatever form it may take, souls at peace. Instead, I ask that others walk alongside me, that others read fervently, that others sit with me in silence. Instead, I say, “I will be thinking of you,” by which I mean: in my life of intention, I will hold thought of you, I will reserve hope for you, I will embody my compassion for you.

But this week, I prayed. This week I spoke in the language of prayer. This week I allowed others to pray for me. This week I told others I would pray for them.

And this week, I learned how to mean it.

In the past, when I’ve come to Kenya, particularly when working with those in the rural village, whose every action is bound up in their faith, I have tiptoed around prayer. I have clumsily prayed when asked, I have awkwardly spoken in the language of prayer only when I see no way of avoiding it, I have stumbled over thank-you when others have prayed for me, I have said anything but “I’ll be praying for you”. But I haven’t really meant it. And I believe this has been to the detriment of my perceived sincerity.

Before, I associated prayer with Christianity, with bowing one’s head and praying to an omnipotent God, with saying “in Jesus Christ, our Lord.” And that may be prayer for some. That is prayer for many in Kenya, it seems. But because I don’t relate to those things, because I don’t find a home in Christianity, because my understanding of the world does not entail divine intervention, because I speak in terms of humanity and inherent good rather than salvation, I didn’t want to speak in terms of prayer. And I didn’t mean it when I did.

But it took me until very recently to realize that just as when I whole-heartedly attempt to speak in Swahili and Luo when I am here, so too can I whole-heartedly attempt to speak in the language of prayer. I am finally recognizing that though the language may be different, though they may speak in terms of prayer and I do not, though their prayers may be filled with words and names and symbols that I do not hold, it all translates to the same meaning.

When they pray and I write or reflect or take breaths for others, when they ask for prayers and I ask for presence, when they say, “I’ll pray for you” and I say, “I will be holding you”…in the end, we are all recognizing injustice and searching for light, we are all binding ourselves together, we are all giving thanks, we are all seeking joy, we are all questioning the existence of suffering, we are all striving for humanity to be filled with kindness.

And so this week, just as I greeted others in Swahili rather than English and still deeply meant my “hello” and “how are you?” so too I prayed, I spoke in terms of prayer, I accepted the prayers of others for me, I said I would pray for others and still deeply meant it.

When I sat in the home of Elvis, a twelve year old recently diagnosed with Sickle Cell who had to be carried to and from school because he was too weak to walk, I asked his family how I could pray for them. And when I said I would do so, I would pray for healing and strength from sickness, I meant it and I said it with the same sincerity as I told them that I cared for them, that I would be thinking of them, that I was grateful to have met them.

When I went to a Catholic mass and was asked to speak on behalf of Umoja, I told the congregation that though we may be far apart, though we may be different, though we may speak in different languages, we all pray to and give thanks to the same God. And when I told them we were united as one family under God and that when I looked out over the faces, I knew that we were family, I meant it.

I meant these things in the same way as I meant it when I cradled an encephalitic baby who was abandoned at birth and whisper to him as he cries that it’s okay, that I’ve got him. When I am embodying my compassion for him, when I am reserving hope that his soul may be at peace and free of suffering, when I am thinking of him in sunlight, I meant it just the same.

I see now that at the root, I felt the pain, the connection, the good, the love, the presence of each of these instances in the same way, regardless if I was speaking in another’s language of prayer or in my own.

And I’m thankful for this new understanding because now I feel more assured that my care and commitment to those with whom I interact will not get lost in translation.