Prayer is a dance. No more, and no less.
There can be no more fundamental explanation for such things that we do than to compare them to a kind of spontaneous display. For doing it to really mean something, it must not be because someone may be watching; rather, exactly the opposite.
I think that in living, we will eventually find the true task is not in hiding our prayer from the Pharisees, or each other – that is, to pray in private, because that is easy, and a cheat. Instead, it is in hiding our prayer from our gods. And that means dancing even though no audience exists.
By looking upward, trying to see heaven, we have missed the vastness, the unknowable beauty of the Universe itself. Despite the fact we have spent millennia in this way – fruitlessly searching, waiting – I believe we have been searching in vain, and have ignored the truth, almost to our peril. We have been foolishly looking right past the obvious.
So, then, I would challenge the courageous among us: dance in an empty room, and pray although no gods exist.
Listen! To dance alone, the room must still contain both the dancer and the dance. Don’t you see? There is no god, but somehow, the dance still is witnessed. Have the courage to dance alone, my friends, and then by turning inward, we will come to know the Universe. And then, for the first time, it can mean something for us to dance together.
For Carl Sagan, who said “…we are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.” Thank you, Carl.
