The older I get, the more I worry: the pandemic, kinks in my back, creaks in my shoulders, fear about what to do with myself now that print journalism is becoming obsolete – and that doesn’t even include the family.
At 61, I’ve reached the top of the proverbial pyramid, two generations of offspring forming the base, a source of great blessing and also more reasons to worry.
I’m not the only one. Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the clinical term for over-worrying, is widespread, not only among the old but even among teenagers and children. There are solutions: meds, breath work, yoga – but my instincts lead me to something older and more organic. I want to beat my worries or at least shrink them down by learning to pray.
“Prayer is real religion,” observed Auguste Sabatier, the 19th-century French Protestant theologian. What he had in mind was not the mindless recitation of words but prayer from the heart, prayer that is a natural outgrowth of the belief that God has one’s back.
My strongest experience of that came while flying across the Atlantic Ocean through a storm. For me, those shakes and bumps, which the flight attendant blithely dismissed as routine turbulence, felt like a roller-coaster ride to the next world, and so I reached out to the Higher Power and felt the Higher Power’s closeness as never before. It didn’t last long. Back on the ground, my prayers, formal from a prayer book, continued to look like the dying person’s EEG – a long flat line – punctuated with the rare tiny spikes when something roused me to a millisecond of wakefulness.
Those moments left an imprint. I realized I could pray – from the heart. Others did it; some of my spiritually gifted friends and of course spiritual virtuosos like Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the hassidic movement who lived a permanent state of dveikut, a Hebrew word which literally means being stuck to the Creator. His grandson, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, charted a path to personal prayer making it accessible to all – at least in theory. For Rabbi Nachman, speaking to God was natural and comfortable, like speaking to a loving parent or a close friend. That sounded doable, but when I tried to do it, I felt like I was talking to the walls.
Following the advice of a contemporary hassidic teacher, I decided to give my personal prayers a focus – they would be about gratitude. Scouring the unlit corners of my brain, I tried to compile an exhaustive list. My blessings were numerous, some obvious such as family, a husband, a home, the trees, the sky, a functioning body, community and friends. Others less so, like merging easily in traffic or realizing that the ants that had once colonized my kitchen counter had disappeared.
During those first days of gratitude meditations, my world felt illuminated. The grass seemed greener, the sky bluer, the fruit sweeter, but as time wore on, I realized that I had begun rattling off the same list day after day. I needed something else.
I tried to change my location, making trips to holy places – in Jerusalem there are many. Sometimes that helped but often, these places were noisy and crowded causing static in my attempts to communicate with God.
When COVID hit, my need to feel that God was with me holding my hand increased exponentially, but how would I do it? Holy places were off-the-table now. No visits even at four a.m. Then the idea hit – what if I turned my challa baking time into prayer time?
FOR THOUSANDS of years, Jewish women have baked their prayers into their Sabbath loaves, but though I was a passionate baker, I never joined my baking with praying. For me, the two activities were separate.
When I heard a neighbor describing how she prayed for sick and unfortunate people as she kneaded her dough, I rolled my eyes. Did she think she had spiritual superpowers to share? But lacking other options I decided to give the baking praying combination a try.
On some level, the idea made logical sense. Judaism teaches that binding a mitzvah to prayer (a mitzvah is a commandment or a religious action and, challa baking counts as a mitzvah) is the metaphysical equivalent of nuclear fusion, the prayer plus mitzvah merging into a powerful bang on heaven’s door.
Alone in my kitchen one weekday afternoon, I prepared myself to start. The conditions seemed optimal. Other than construction noises from the street, the house was quiet, my computer snapped shut, my phone unanswered, and my heart open.
As my fingers worked the dough, I spilled out the contents of my heart, addressing every worry to the only real source of help. I spoke briefly probably, under five minutes, long enough for the flour, water, salt, yeast and honey to merge, long enough to say my piece. After that I followed the ancient ritual priests, tearing off a small piece of the dough to discard and recited a blessing sealing the ceremony.
No lightning bolts struck. No hands reached down through my ceiling, but I felt heard. Perhaps the gentle rhythms of kneading had lulled me into this state, but it seemed to me that the Higher Power had accepted the invitation to join me in my kitchen.
That was four months ago. I’ve been doing this every week, cataloging my requests and sometimes (wish I could say always) appending a list of thank-yous as well. As oriented as I am to the half-full part of the cup, I realize a need to acknowledge that my life is full of blessing.
I enjoy these moments deeply. You could say that I’m even a little bit addicted to them – I even bake on weeks when my family doesn’t need seven loaves of challa. I give away the excess – but it’s a small price to pay for these precious moments with the Higher Power.
Like weeds after rain, my worries still pop up, but I’m obsessing less. I wish I could say that I’ve given up worrying for good. I’m not there, but things are better. Why worry, I tell myself, when I can give my load to my Higher Power right in my kitchen?
The author is a prizewinning writer, and she facilitates a memoir workshop on Zoom. ungar.carol@gmail.com