These Times

Hope is a secular prayer

Kirk Ericson | Sep 07, 20230

A woman in our neighborhood many years ago was getting treatment for lung cancer. I saw her walking along the sidewalk in front of the house one day – she was getting chemotherapy or radiation, I can’t remember which – and she looked weary. We talked for five minutes in front of the driveway.

She was a wonderful woman, full of that rare combination of optimism and contrarianism that’s hard to maintain over a life. At the end of our chat, she had a question.

“Could you say a prayer for me?”

Um.

I told her that was my wife’s department, but I did say I’d be thinking of her often. She smiled and off she went.

Mrs. Ericson was in the living room, and I told her about the encounter. My wife’s been a Buddhist since her teens, and I’m not clear how Buddhists pray, or whether “prayer” even exists in Buddhism. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to have well-wishes for the ailing woman coming from a variety of dimensions: Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and whatever I am.

I did hope the woman recovered, and if hope is a secular prayer, I said many prayers for her. But I can’t bring myself to perform the get-on-your-knees brand of prayer. I haven’t done it in years, so I’m out of practice anyway. I could have screwed it up and caused something really awful to happen.

This illness matter arose a few years later when I received an email from a friend who had an “unexpected surgery” and was recovering at St. Peter Hospital in Olympia. She was doing OK, but she asked to send prayers and love her way.

I called the woman, and she sounded great, because she is great. She’s engaging and intelligent. We talked a bit about her illness, her condition and her prognosis, and then I brought up her prayer request. I said I hadn’t prayed for her – technically – but I had thought several times about her getting better, if that counts. She laughed and said she was grateful for the thoughts.

Which bring us to this: I know the moment of my most recent prayer – actually, semi-prayer. It was June 28, 2004, the day our second son was born. He came out of the chute with the cord wrapped around his neck, and he was hustled over to a nearby platform that’s set up for newborns if there’s a problem. I believe they’re called crash carts.

He wasn’t breathing.

Within 15 seconds, four people were hovering over him, clearing out his mouth and nostrils, doing CPR, operating a breathing bag, monitoring his vitals. A doctor appeared from offstage to orchestrate it all. Commands and responses flew among the assembled.

Thirty seconds in, a nurse said, “No pulse.”

I started praying. As I imagined it, it would be one of those conditional prayers. If you spare my child, I’ll do whatever you want. I began to produce the prayer in my mind: “God, if you save my child then …”

At that moment, Ryan David Ericson cried, the best sound of a lifetime. I stopped praying and returned to life in progress. The worst and best moments in my life occurred within 60 seconds.

Maybe Ryan returning from the dead was an act of god, if it exists, or an act of medicine, or perhaps both. Maybe it was Ryan’s choice. Maybe it was because of my prayer, and maybe god stirred him before I got to the commitment part because an omnipotent being should know how one of its employees would complete a thought.

What is for certain, though, is just how thin the cord is that attaches us to this life.