Have a little faith — you'll feel better
Research backs the healing powers of prayer, but you'd better believe it
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I started going to Sunday school and church when I was 5. I stopped when I was 6. That’s when my older brother was diagnosed with a rare and incurable immune disorder that necessitated his living in a sterile “bubble” room at a hospital near our house. My mother proclaimed that no god would have allowed that to happen. Even a 6-year-old could read between those lines. Either God didn’t exist, or He was an astral bully. My parents and I stopped attending church, and I dropped out of Sunday school. And that was the end of anything approaching sanctioned religion or prayer in my life.
Secretly, though, I remained fascinated by the rituals surrounding religion and the fact that many of my friends appeared to be sure that God did exist and that the world was operating according to His plan. The kids in my mostly Catholic neighborhood griped about the Christian education classes their parents forced them to attend, but surreptitiously, I envied them. Partly, I felt deprived of the camaraderie bred by the torture of their mutual obligation, but mostly I yearned for the certainty with which my friends believed, their seeming lack of doubt.
I was a doubter. Not just of God but of my parents. I felt continually torn between a desire to emulate their biting disdain of all things religious and my fear that we were missing out on something important. After all, my religious friends and their parents didn’t strike me as stupid. What if my parents were wrong? Someone had to be in error, and I very much didn’t want it to be us. Because if it was us, what magic, what advantage, what peace of mind were we potentially giving up? And what further retribution were we risking from a god who had already picked on my older brother?
So I went with friends and their families to church or synagogue if I happened to be staying over when they were going. Later, I’d sneak off to various churches in the neighborhood by myself. Once, I actually went up and took Communion. (When I told a Catholic friend about this, she was sure lightning would strike me.) Occasionally, I’d pray. Sometimes, it was a mundane request: Please make it a snow day. Other times, when I was caught in a dire spot — trying to buy beer with a fake ID, for instance — my prayers might be a little more urgent. But my brother’s death, when I was 14, ended my religious dabblings. Even if there was a god, I decided, I didn’t think much of Him or His plan. So I snubbed Him. As I grew older, my see-if-I-care position evolved into a more rueful atheism: I continued to envy people who believed in God, who thought that their prayers had a chance of being answered. These, it seemed to me, were happy delusions that could make the world feel a little safer. But I had never shared their steadfast faith, and it was too late to talk myself into it now.
And that’s pretty much where I’ve stood, until recently, when I started hearing about research suggesting that faith, religion and prayer confer a variety of health benefits, from an increased life span to better odds of conceiving to a reduced risk for depression. Once again, I found myself questioning my beliefs, or lack thereof, and envying those whose faith seemed to come so easily, like a summer cottage handed down from one generation to the next. I wanted something spiritual in my life. But how do you “get” faith, with a family history like mine? You can’t magically muster it up out of nowhere. The closest I came to anything resembling ritual and spirituality in my life, I realized, was yoga. I go to class often. I meditate and chant, which I enjoy, though I generally have no idea what I’m saying. The whole process makes me feel calm and serene, and I like being part of a community of people who also get pleasure out of these things. I appreciate that part of yoga is to learn to accept where you are rather than judging yourself or others.
What yoga doesn’t do is give me faith that there is order in the world, or a sense that there is a god in control of things, who listens and might address my complaints if I bothered to ask. Since 59 percent of Americans say they pray at least once a day and 22 percent say they do it at least once a week, it’s tough not to wonder — still — what I’m missing. And so I decided to investigate faith’s perks, much as I did as a child, except I didn’t take Communion this time.
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