The Prayer Revolution - The Heart of *
Sikhism
Sikhs have always known the power and the purpose of prayer. People are
been awakening to the fact that our relation with God sometimes have
been a bit too cold and a bit too domesticated; we yearn to sing to
God, to let our souls fly flee. And we feel that through prayer we can
rediscover our inner selves, and tie ourselves to the
Guru.
There is not surprising about this. Prayer is an irrepressible
expression of the human spirit, and the
Sikhs appeared on the
historical scene as a praying people. Yes, we know how hard prayer is.
We know that moments of true inspiration are rare; we do not expect
that every Shbad Keertan we will leave Gurdwara personally transformed.
But we do expect that our prayers will make us feel closer to God.
We need a
Sikhism that welcome exuberance and song as well ideas,
celebrates the cerebral but pulsates with emotion.
Sikhism has always
prescribed two paths to tradition : the path of mind and the path of
the heart. SGGS study is the way of thinking and prayer the way of
feeling. And even though these paths are parallel,
Sikhs have always
been required to walk them both. Therefore,
Sikh must be both a
studying
Sikh and a praying
Sikh. We
Sikhs must *make our Gurdwaras
worship our foremost concern.
The prayer revolution *will require an accurate understanding of what
Sikhs mean by tradition. The heart of the prayer tradition is the
order, language and raag that has become standardized over the last
five centuries.
However, everything else - the chanting styles, the music, the
aesthetics - has been ever-changing. In fact, much of what is referred
to as tradition is a reflection of 16th through 19th-century Punjab culture.
Communal prayer requires recognizable constants that bind worshiper to
worshiper and congregation to congregation, but
Sikhs need not be bound
by cultural precedents that no longer resonate.
And just as many people reject nostalgia disguised as tradition, so too
do many
Sikhs reject contemporary worship that is faddish or trendy.
There is no
Sikh worship without age-old prayers and time-honored
chants. In short, there is no need to choose between "traditional" worship and
"contemporary" worship.
Sikhism must insist on the best of both worlds:
continuity with tradition and constant reformation.
Finding the right balance requires both innovators and conservators -
those who push the envelope and those who hold back. At this moment, it
is the innovators we need most.
Sikh leaders must have the freedom to
develop new forms of communal prayer.
What will be the single most important key to the success or failure of
communal prayer ? *Music.
Sikh leaders must invite their members to
join in song because they know that people feel welcomed, accepted and
empowered when they sing.
Ritual music touches people in a way that words cannot. Music converts
the ordinary into the miraculous, and individuals into a community of
prayer. Music enables overly intellectual
Sikhs to rest their minds and
open their hearts.
All
Sikhs must join together in creating a Gurdwara that is a center of
Sikh life in all its sweep and scope, but that is first and foremost a
center of worship, reverence and awe. And *we
Sikhs will do this
because absence of meaningful prayer represents a live without God.
Claudia Gaspar Soares Martins
BRAZIL
sikhbrazil@yahoo.com 
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