Memorised Prayers

Mizo kids would know this prayer:

"Aw Lalpa chaw leh thil tinreng, Min pek avangin ka lawm e; I rawng bawl turin min pui la, Isua Krista hming avangin, Amen." It’s a short prayer for kids before mealtime. I think they call it Grace. In Roorkee, I learned an English one: "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive through Thy bounty through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen." (If I remember right).

I say the Mizo one. Mostly because it’s always on the tip of my tongue. When your mother has drummed it into your head from the moment you started speaking your first few words (not even sentence), it really sticks to your brain. Also since you had to say the prayer before you could eat, one of your first rewards based behaviour modification systems, you can’t stop it now; if people put rice in front of you for you to eat, out comes the prayer. It’s become reflex at this point.

It’s actually a really sweet prayer. I wonder who came up with it. "O Lord thank you for food and everything that you’ve given us; help us to serve you, in Jesus Christ’s name we pray, Amen."

All these really long prayers that you pray and really ham up sometimes and you go on for like ten minutes and by that time you’ve started telling tales to God... I really prefer the mealtime prayer. Or The Lord’s Prayer. I like that one too. I think Jesus came up with that. Or the Bedtime Prayer. We have that one too. I don’t know who came up with that. That one is also nice.

I know the Mizo one: "Zanin ah min veng la, Lalpa kan thil hlauh ata, Vantirhkohten min veng rawh se, Khua var leh hma chuan, Amen." Quite sweet and to the point. "Lord protect us through the night from what we fear, May angels keep us save until dawn breaks, Amen." I know one English one, too. I don’t know where I learned it. "And now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, That if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take, Amen." Little dark, little morbid, little bit like me.

I really like these short prayers. One time, we were talking about prayers and a friend said that when people ask him to remember them in his prayers, he doesn’t wait for the major prayer times to do so; he just says a prayer for them wherever he is, whatever he is doing, so he doesn’t forget it later on. I liked that. I’ve been doing that too. So if you ask me to put you in my prayers, I’d probably say a tiny prayer for you then and there. Probably.

I remember too my sister one time having an epiphany about the mealtime one. We thank God for food and everything. Everything. So we thank God for all the shit that we go through as well. I guess it’s more to be read with the next line – to help us serve God. A prayer of thanks paired with a prayer seeking help for when it’s difficult. It’s only four lines. It’s really brilliant.

Artists have a special place in human society. They have for long helped us lesser mortals express ourselves through their art – their words, music, paintings... I think I’ll say a prayer of thanks now for the people who came up with these short prayers. They’ve helped me meditate; even when I am angry or scared and my thoughts aren’t coherent enough to come up with proper thought-out conversations with God, they’ve stuck. They still do.

And I think that’s nice.