The Prayer Plant & Keeping Faith
There is a group of plants called the “maranta”. Their leaves are dedicated to the pattern of the sun: rising up to greet it and bowing down to honour its departure. These plants are most commonly called “prayer plants”. I have killed exactly three of them.
Of course, not intentionally. That would be incredibly sinister and morbid of me. In my defense, they are finicky. And that’s not just my opinion. You can go on a deep dive of the #plantsofinstagram universe and see many memes dedicated to these challenging plants. They require their soil to be consistently moist and need a great deal of humidity, and although I even set up a special humidifier for them, I somehow missed the mark here or there--either watered too much, or too little, or inconsistently. I doted on them. Prayed that they would survive. But they didn’t.
It’s ironic that their death is so dramatic too: each leaf rolls up into a tube, one-by-one, turning away from the sun, shutting you out for good, sending a clear message that you’re no longer on speaking terms…and then wilts over the course of a couple days. When you see the first leaf tube, you can try to water it (if the soil is dry), mist it, or find a better spot for it with bright, indirect light. Sometimes it works and the plant will resuscitate and life goes on. Other times, you have to accept your defeat.
I’ve referenced a Russian saying in a previous chapter, “plants grow in good homes for good people”, and well, killing a “prayer plant” is probably a gruesome crime in the eyes of domesticated Russkis. A plant so evocative and symbolic of prayer and faith. Bowing down to the sun and rising with the sun, all in a way that is almost invisible to the human eye, unless captured in a time-lapse video. This act of bowing down in prayer exists across several religions, cultures, and traditions: when we say “Namaste” at the end of a yoga class we bow, sometimes even all the way down to the floor, this is part of a Buddhist practice; when Christians and Catholics say grace and thank God for a meal at the dinner table, their heads are ever-slightly bowed; Muslim people bow-down in ‘Ruku’ when they are praying, often on their knees; Jewish folks also pray bowing down, sometimes while standing up, swaying is also part of some traditions. No matter who you are or what you believe in, we all feel the presence of something else and we bow down to it, whether it’s physically or metaphorically. Plants feel this too, they quite literally worship the Sun.
A prayer plant’s natural programming is a humbling reminder of forces that are far greater than us. Humble-ing. Hum-being. That faint vibrational echo of a hummingbird that you can only hear if you get close enough and block out the monstrosity of the world’s noise. That is us: a hum in this world. We can hear our inner hum when we are humbled, reminded of our small being in a universe so vast, so expansive, that we are a mere vibration in life’s melody.
And so when we pray - in traditional and non-traditional ‘hoping’ - we are humbled by our faith that there is something greater than us.
Faith is the silent thread that weaves the hums together, creating a tapestry of our prayers and thoughts, wrapping around the world.
It is so easy to lose faith, though. It can slip away like Peter Pan’s shadow during challenging times or unfortunate events. Quite often, we have more “faith” in things going wrong than we do in the magic of the everyday miracle. Those limiting beliefs come as whispers in our ears--scaring and discouraging us. Why do we have more faith in things going wrong, than things going right? But this, this is a pattern of fear-thinking, not faith. Fear can rob us of our faith, and therefore our hope. I had absolutely no relationship to faith, until I hit rock bottom.
8-ish years ago (in another lifetime, not too far removed from this one) I left an abusive relationship and moved back in with my parents. I found myself at the doctor’s office, choking back tears, blubbering out the words “depression” for the first time in my life. A few months after, my parents began their separation which sent heartbreak throughout the entire family like a lightning bolt. It was like the light went out on the entire world and we all had to figure out where the light switch was. And the only thing that could turn it on was faith that somehow life could be re-built.
Finally, when I was able to pull myself up and drag my legs out of the house, I went to yoga. I’m not sure why. But I remembered wanting to massage my soul and to warm up my heart. There I was, on my mat, almost daily, searching for myself. In class one day, bowing down in pigeon pose, breathing through a deep sensation that I felt in my glutes and my chest--a gentle-hearted, yet firm thought swam into my mind, “everyone needs something to believe in.”
That belief is the thing you hang onto with your two hands, or with your teeth, clenching for dear fucking life. And you pray that it grabs back. Faith is when you believe, despite all contrary evidence, that it’ll grab you back. When I hit bottom, I realized that we all need something to believe in.
The Mariam-Webster dictionary has several definitions for “faith”, but my favourite one is simple: “complete trust”. To me, faith is complete trust in yourself first and foremost.
I would be pretending if I told you I have a clear definition of what it means to have faith and trust in yourself, so I invite you to define this for yourself. For me, it meant self-dependability: I acknowledge and celebrate my ability to always pull myself up. It may not happen instantly, but I know that when I crash or fall, I will always piece myself back together--even stronger and more whole. It also means that I act from a place of my truth; that is, every time I make a decision I trust that it comes from a well that is deep within me, where the water is pure and nourishing. Healing, even. I trust my decisions, even when they do not make sense to others.
At the very bottom is where I found faith in myself, in my healing, and in the world around me.
Faith shows up in the smallest ways: when a plant flowers for the first time in three years, when we hike to the top of a mountain or hill and are humbled by the sprawling, grand vista ahead of us as far as the eye can see, when we hear good news about a loved one’s health, when we share an unexpected laugh after a long period of sorrow, when we watch the underdog win.
The funny thing about faith is that it necessarily relies on trust, an almost blind instinct. That’s where the saying “leap of faith” comes from, sometimes you have to jump before you can see with your eyes where you’re going or how you’ll land. But it is the knowing trust, deep within you, that guides you to land safely. Faith is seeing with your heart.
And sometimes a little prayer can connect us closer to trusting completely. I will expand the notion of ‘prayer’ as we know it in the traditional sense to other actions that connect us to the world around us: this can be a gratitude list, a walk in nature, a quiet sitting of nothingness, heck, it could even be a good cry in the shower. I invite you to define for yourself what connecting to your faith looks. It’s very liberating.
Prayer plants crave high humidity, something we do not see but they feel and thrive off of. Just like faith: an invisible compound that we need to mist on ourselves regularly, to live beyond our circumstances.
Despite my several failed attempts at keeping a prayer plant alive, I recently brought another one into my home. But this time, I paired it with the Peperomia ‘Hope’, because what is faith without the blind optimism of a little hope.
May your faith grow and flourish. May your prayers be heard.
Reflection Prompts
Ponder these in your head, write it out, or use these questions to deepen your conversation with a friend:
What does having faith in your life look like? Make a list of three to five points.
When was the last time you took a leap of faith? What was the outcome?
How do you show trust in yourself?
Words of Kindness
Pick whichever kindness phrase speaks to you, or all three, or use them to write your own.
I trust my decisions.
I have faith in myself.
My faith grows daily.