The Minnesota State Photograph
GRACE by Eric Engstrom
In 1918 the photographer Eric Engstrom was preparing for a photography show in Minneapolis. Engstrom wanted an uplifting picture for a nation at war. He found it in Thomas Wilden, a local food peddler in solitary prayer at his dinner table. My brother Kevin gave me a print 30 years ago when I was at a very low point, and it has since had a permanent a place in my home. I think of it as as an ever-present reminder that I’m never without a place to turn.
And yet to understand the meaning of the picture I had to first learn the meaning of prayer.
So let me share THAT story with you.
As a kid growing up in the 50’s I believed in an “up there” and a “down there.“ Prayer involved entering into a magical world where sets of words, when uttered sincerely, could:
- Render answers to vexing problems
- Stop bad behavior
- Fix broken relationships
My mother would have us pray for world peace. Nothing, I mean nothing, was more powerful than prayer. Praying became a family practice as we recited the Rosary every night at 8 p.m. sharp.
That was, until December 8, 1960.
When I came home from school that day I found my dad sobbing inconsolably. Mother explained to my brothers and sisters and me, “Grandma died.”
The thing that made this so problematic for me was that the whole Moriarty clan had been praying for grandma for ages. I mean praying unceasingly. All of a sudden nothing made sense. What’s the use of praying if the outcome is already predetermined? All I knew was that the hundreds of Rosaries, Our Fathers, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s had been to no avail.
I realized that
- good people,
- asking God for good things,
- in a good and proper manner,
- made absolutely no difference at all.
The plug was pulled on my earlier notions of God, the Church, and Religion. I became, for all practical purposes, an agnostic.
Life was turning out to be so much crueler and harsher than anything my catechism suggested. Then when Dad died two years later it just confirmed for me that prayer was no defense at all against the viciousness of life. I ceased believing in anything that could not stand up to rigorous intellectual scrutiny. And Yet…..And Yet…..And Yet…..some part of me wanted to believe.
From the time my father died in 1963 until the day I stopped drinking, alcohol was what I used in place of prayer. But then, like a debt collector, alcohol began to demand payment for the moments of relief it had offered.
- The good times stopped rolling
- I began to lose people and property
- I drank to feel normal
Then one night I found myself beat to hell, lying unconscious on the pavement in a deserted construction site in Washington DC. I had no God to pray to for I had no God I believed in. The god (alcohol) I had been worshiping had deserted me ~ no, it had left me for dead.
Not long after that I found a way off the pavement. Through the intercession of some excellent surgeons who glued my body back together I found my way into meeting halls and discovered a way to heal my broken soul.
I Let Go completely of:
- Needing ANSWERS to unfathomable questions
- Needing to live in a universe I could CONTROL
- The desire for SECURITY where no security existed
I found a way to have a BACK DOOR conversation with God. My request was pretty simple: I wanted the (alcohol) monkey off my back. I wanted the cravings to stop. I wanted my mind back. I begged for the goddamn mental obsession over booze to cease.
And it did. On June 14, 1985 it ended and my prayer was answered.
I found my way home. I felt like an alley cat sneaking into church through the back door.
Once in, I found I was in pretty good company. I wasn’t the first who’d come to find a Higher Power via the back door. What we seemed to have in common is that we all got there as a last resort.
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
Just a Thought…
Pat
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