One-word praying

In a village nestled in the rice paddies of Buan, South Korea, in the spring of 1999, I was in my mother-in-law’s house watching my husband die of cancer. I spoke tourist Korean, she spoke grade-school English, and in any case neither of us had much to say.

But all day long—as she cooked, as she scrubbed clothes on a washboard outside, as she swept out the room with a broom—I heard my husband’s mother repeat, almost inaudibly, as if I were not even in the room: “Chu-nim … chu-nim … chu-nim.” I was familiar with the word from many a Sunday in Korean churches and understood that her conversation was with someone else and not with me: “Lord … Lord … Lord.”

I sympathized with the woman but did not understand such a form of prayer and thought it perhaps an Asian custom. It was always and only “Chu-nim … chu-nim … chu-nim,” with never a petition or progression following the title.

Last week I completed the project I had begun on the day my mother died: cleaning out her closets and drawers and doing the dreadful triage of what goes to charity shops and what I cannot part with. I was alone in the house, save for Handel’s Messiah wafting in from the living room. And all I kept saying through the folding and the bagging up was “Jesus … Jesus … Jesus.” It was not exactly deliberate on my part, it just came out on its own. And though it was not deliberate, somehow I was compelled, and it felt better that I say it.

No health in my bones allowed for something more elaborate. It was not only about my mother but also about my children and about the weariness of the ancient battle of light and darkness, yet all I could say was “Jesus … Jesus … Jesus,” and nothing more articulate.

Someday in heaven we will know the power of our prayers. We will know the alchemy of incense smoke and prayer when the angel takes his censer and refills it with the fire from the golden altar from before the throne and hurls it down on earth to make a difference.

But for now do not be terribly surprised if when you cannot pray a proper prayer, the Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep to be uttered, and expects from you no more than that you say over and over by some strange compulsion that singular name that is above all names and that alone in all the universe can make anything good.

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