Power of Prayer

The responses to my last post got me thinking. Whose prayers weigh heaviest, and how do they weigh? As Blue Spruce suggests, maybe the experts have extra clout with the Almighty. In that case, who could I call on? Well, I had several Tibetan students with relatives who were monks in Dharamsala. Presumably, they know better-connected people who know even higher-ups in the Buddhist system. I’m probably only a few steps away from the Dalai Lama. Although he has certainly had quite a bit on his plate lately, he’s known for his altruism and empathy for the needs of all, so I imagine him calling a side kick and saying, “Tenzin, there’s this woman in North America who needs some extra help. Can you give one of the prayer wheels an extra spin for her?” How would this weigh against the prayer of the convenience store clerk, reaching momentarily through his own shock and anguish toward someone else?
The Book of Job is considered the greatest poem/conversation on Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. As a part of a kind of cosmic bet, God allows Satan to inflict evils on Job: loss of wealth, livestock, and ten children. That isn’t enough, so Satan gives Job boils. Job’s wife urges him to curse God and die, but he refuses. Unless I missed it, he doesn’t pray for either justice or mercy. At the end, he gets more livestock and children to make up for the collateral damage. Presumably, the new children completely make up for the ones who were crushed when a building fell on them as they feasted. But I wonder. Did they pray? Were their prayers completely disregarded? The Book of Job is not comforting for anyone but the protagonist.
However, few religious traditions guarantee that prayers will be answered in the way you expect them to be. When people tell me that they’re praying for me, I always feel a kind of warmth, almost a jolt of energy, but I don’t confuse it with a cure.
What the prayers, either the imagined ones from the Dalai Lama, the odd one from the clerk, or the meaningful ones of family and friends remind me of is the games of Red Rover we used to play when I was little. I was always the weakest link: everyone aimed for me, where I stood holding hands with Michelle and Suzanne, because they could always break through the line. Then someone on our team had the idea of our holding each other’s wrists instead of hands, and for the first time my part of the line held against the enemy. And then we decided to put our arms behind each others’ backs and hold the wrists of the next person in the chain. This strengthened our line so much that no one could break through. The enemy team gave up. That’s what I imagine your prayers doing for me. They strengthen the line and weaken the enemy.