In the horrific wake of mass shootings and any number of unfathomable human acts resulting in searing loss and grief, it has become common to hear and read the phrase, “thoughts and prayers.” The phrase however – hopefully well-intended by most of those who use it – is another casualty to mass shootings. Instead of a massive loss of blood, “thoughts and prayers” has been bled out of its meaning. “Thoughts and prayers” has become a tragic cliché.
At best, intoning our “thoughts and prayers” for others is part of the very human desire to express genuine condolence to and a spiritual solidarity with those we know to be in great pain.
But the current seemingly mindless mantra of expressing “thoughts and prayers” after another school shooting resulting in human slaughter is nothing more than a meaningless walk-off line by too many politicians who will do nothing to curb the easy access to military weapons purchased or procured by tormented civilians who have lost a war with their own demons.
Saying to survivors of personal tragedy that they are being kept in the speaker’s “thoughts and prayers” has become a meaningless comment because the phrase begs essential questions which go unanswered. “But what are your thoughts about? What are you praying for? How will your expression of concern result in your loving action that will contribute to making things better?”
In my personal experiences of sharing times of great loss with others I have known “thoughts and prayers” to be powerful. For instance, standing and holding hands with family members around the bed occupied by a loved one in the intensive care unit and expressing thoughts and offering prayers is so often a great healing moment. The “thoughts and prayers” expressed and shared in such times have that power because the “thoughts and prayers” have been united with tangible actions of medical interventions, witness of hands-on caregivers, and an abiding love that consistently has been a presence in that family circle or circle of supporting friends.
Perhaps especially in such settings and on the tear-soaked occasions when disease or the physically damaging result of accident wins out and a loved one’s life is tangibly lost, such thoughtful and prayerful moments are powerfully sustaining times. It is, at least in part, the result of grief burdens being shared and the promise that the now forever altered life paths of those who live on will not be experienced or “walked” alone. Rather, there is the tangible assurance that the journey will be accompanied by all those putting “thoughts and prayers” into new action.
Our sound bite times of secularized moments (and they are just moments) of silence and then quickly changing the cable channel have made “thoughts and prayers” myopic, impotent nouns instead of verbs. The consequence is that beyond the expression of “you’re in my thoughts” there is little thinking about new directions and/or interventions. Beyond the expression that “you are in my prayers” there is no ongoing time of disciplined devotion to prayer and putting prayerfully discovered opportunities for healing and/or growth into action.
Faith communities have known for as long as people of faith have been gathering that shared thoughts lead to new insights and powerful new thinking with tangibly healing and socially advancing result. Faith communities have known for as long as people of faith have been gathering to pray for each other and the world around them that prayers must be put into action for those prayers to make any difference in the lives of those doing the praying or the lives of those being prayed for.
Faith communities have known for as long as people of faith have been gathering that “thoughts and prayers” cannot be nouns. “Thoughts and prayers” are verbs which result in countless actions of community building and social improvements. Putting “thoughts and prayers” into loving action for the improvement of the general welfare has always been the meaning and purpose of “thoughts and prayers.”
But these are times when the attention to the meaning and development of “thoughts and prayers” by students of all ages has been either on permanent recess, in great decline, or too often replaced by nothing other than right-wing political and theological certainties. So “thoughts and prayers” are sound bite nouns disconnected by any meaningful sentence.
I wonder how many shooters and would-be shooters have ever experienced being prayed for or encircled in genuine interest by thoughtful people? Would such a regular experience in their lives – particularly in their formative years – have been a character-building and internal boundary-setting force in their lives? Would such experiences have been a powerful corrective, healing force to the otherwise hours of unbridled selfishness that gave internal permission to their acts of violence; violence born in hours upon hours of angry isolation? Just wondering.
I grieve for our secularized, polarized world where the only human face time is being experienced alone in front of a computer screen. I grieve for this time when “thoughts and prayers” are cliched nouns, where violence continues to generate no new thinking and where the disingenuous prayers often too glibly offered are as dead as now 19 more little children who were just going to school.