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I’ve had a couple interesting dialogues recently with friends about prayer. In one of these cases, the friend was considering using content from page 54 and 55 of Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty in a sermon he was putting together, and wanted my permission to use the content. In the other case, a good and hearty conversation just got around to the subject.

Prayer fascinates me. People “use” prayer for many purposes. Some of these purposes seem manipulative and evil to me, some more than a little selfish, but for the most part people view prayer as a way to reach out and try to connect with G-d. A truly honorable and noble pursuit.

Prayer might become a much more meaningful part of our lives if we could look at our “prayer behavior” and our motives, and segregate out our uses of prayer in order to make each more effective. I think when we use prayer as a public proclamation of our Faith, we’re generally pretty good at it. When we use it to prove to ourselves and others how righteous we are, I think we’re pretty good at it.

But when it comes to the really deep and meaningful stuff – the stuff where we’re trying to open our soul to a connection with G-d – I think too many of us are intimidated and unsure.

I wonder if the key to connective prayer is to give up the notion of praying to G-d, and instead to view prayer as a simple connection with G-d.

It’s not a message or a request, it’s a connection. One soul connects to the Source Of All, becoming both receptacle and conduit for Divine Energy, creative and healing.

Not talking from and to, but being with.

As we go through the process of searching for ways to cut money from our national budget, we should be doing some soul-searching as well.

You can watch the political parties lining up with their masters and pets, trying to focus the effort on the places where they want the budget cut. To do this, they need to demonize and dehumanize the people who they want to cut funding from.

One side wants to cut funding and “pork” that goes primarily to the wealthy class in our country. They look to move the taxpayer dollars toward those on the lower end of the income scale, and away from those on the upper end. In addition, they target defense spending as the best place to reduce cost.

The defense industry argument is an easy one to make – I’ve written before about the amazing money we could save if we cut our defense spending to twice as much as the next biggest defense spender in the world – $600 – $700 billion a year. It’s staggering.

But there’s a human side to that. Defense contractors are the biggest “welfare recipients” in the nation, and when they get that taxpayer money, they pass some of it on to their employees in the form of jobs – often really good jobs. These people who have these jobs aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.

As we cut the defense industry’s “welfare” ticket back, many of those good and hard-working folks will be out of a job.

The other side wants to cut funding for any programs that move money toward the middle or lower classes in the country, while retaining programs that continue to benefit the upper class. They typically demonize the waste in government programs like Medicare and Social Security – these are the places they want to make the big cuts.

But there’s a human side to these cuts as well – much easier to see. While there is surely waste and fraud in any bureaucracy – be it Medicare or Defense contracting – there is also a great need among the poorest “class” in our country. As we cut these programs back, those with the greatest need will feel the greatest pain.

These people aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.

The budget has both a revenue and a spending side. Both sides need to be addressed. On the spending side alone, as we pound the table with our strong opinions about who we should be cutting government funding for, let’s do our best to understand clearly what those cuts mean, who will be hurt by the cuts, and what that pain will look like.

Even when we hold strong opinions about who should receive the biggest cuts, let’s try and see the real people who will feel the pain of the cuts. Let’s see the good within those people, rather than demonizing them.

The same logic holds true for cuts to overseas programs that the government funds, or cuts to outreach programs in churches, temples, and mosques. It’s even more stark in those cases, as the recipients of the help often look much different than we do, and live much differently than we do. It’s much easier to not see and understand those more distant people, and much easier to see only the bad things about those people.

We’ve all got good and bad within us, right? We’ve all got things we’re proud of, and things we’re ashamed of. When we look at someone else, we need to recognize the same holds true for them. We choose whether we’re seeing the good or the bad in that person.

Until we see the good in a person, we’ll not be able to provide real and meaningful help, or find real and meaningful solutions. We’ll not be able to open the Giving Circle.

Mahatma Gandhi believed every single act was important. He suggested once to “think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask if your next act will be of any use to him.”

In a world where we’re generally evaluating each act on its ability to help us gain more power, wealth, or comfort, this is an interesting twist of perspective.

Or am I wrong about that? Maybe we don’t evaluate our every act to determine how it might help us gain more power, wealth, or comfort. Maybe the majority of our actions “just sorta’ happen” – without much thought.

Of course, a psychologist would probably argue with me that our unconscious mind is, in fact, doing some level of evaluation before we act – that beneath the most (apparently) mindless act is some level of measurement and decision. The scales used in that measurement and decision-making are often hard to fathom, having been built up over our lifetime to serve some hidden set of scale-masters.

Makes sense. After all, we’d be crippled by analysis if every single little thing we did needed to be analyzed before we could act.

But what if…

we were just a little more thoughtful in our process? What if more of our actions did involve a conscious effort to predict who will benefit from that action? And just as important, who will be hurt by our action.

Here’s a quote I read recently from Chabad.com: “The very fact you know about someone who is in trouble means that in some way you are able to help. Otherwise, why would this knowledge have entered your world?”

Why, indeed?

After all, the world is packed full of disaster and hardship. Every minute of every day, really bad things are happening someplace in the world, and there’s something you could do to help in many of those cases.

It could be completely overwhelming. You could become paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the help that others need in this world.

For that matter, there are places in your own life where you can use help, right? There are folks in the world who have the ability to provide some of that help to you, though you are one of countless places where their help could be of value.

My Lord, how’s a person to know what to do, where to give help, how to give help, where to ask for help?

Every day, your journey takes you down the path of life. That path moves you through some tight quarters, where your life brushes up against the lives of others. You rub a shoulder here, you bump an elbow there.

And in the process, you glimpse the ability to help now and again. A gift offered to you – the opportunity to give and to help.

Otherwise, why would you have brushed up against the understanding of the need?