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Letter of the Heart

The time spent working on Prayers for Healing has been a deeply healing and transformative period for me personally; whether the book that you now hold is a cause of that or the result of that, I do not know. What I do know is that it is impossible to read the words, in some cases centuries old, of fellow human beings entreating, praising, and questioning the divine entity of their understanding without being moved—and even profoundly changed.

I believe one reason for that, perhaps the reason for that, is because we are our most authentic, essential selves when communicating with a deity whose existence we can know, but not prove; for when we pray, when we truly and even desperately reach out to our God, we are stripped to our souls. When sincerely attempting to make a connection with Spirit, we in effect transcend our own humanity and become spirit—some would say, remind ourselves of our true identity as spirit—acknowledging as we are doing when we pray that there is another unseen realm of significance, and that it is the arena of ultimate meaning.

That said, there is a raw beauty in the myriad, and very human, modes of expressing prayers—and it has been my desire to include a full range of voices, from the elegance of Sir Thomas More’s plea for the forgiveness of his enemies to the directness of Marian Wright Edelman’s dissection of pretense, and from the simplicity of Basho’s reflection on changing perceptions to the rousing rhythm of Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for a collective vision of equality. Their voices are the reflections of our own struggles and dreams; their prayers are our prayers.

To better place these letters of the heart into the human context in which they were written—and to help us connect to the actual men and women who wrote or inspired them—I have included relevant historical dates of reference for some of the prayers included here. They are also organized according to season, in the hope that being mindful of natural cycles will foster healing in our wounded collective relationship with the earth. This volume can be used as a daily meditation tool beginning at whatever date you happen to encounter it or flipped through at random until a particular piece speaks to you. As Madeleine L’Engle reminds us, the root word for “heal,” hale, is the same as for the word “whole”—and thus the subjects explored herein speak to the whole of our existence, encompassing ourselves as individuals and as a society, our environment, and the creatures with which we share it.

It is my heartfelt prayer that readers of Prayers for Healing will encounter at least one prayer, on at least one day, that will resonate deeply within them and contribute to their own healing in whatever facet or circumstance of life that it may be needed. My wish for all of us is best expressed in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “May all beings learn how to nourish themselves with joy each day.”

—Maggie Oman, San Francisco, California