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 when Sikhs 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.

Fi ndi ng the r i ght bal ance r equi r es both i nnovator s 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 sikhs will
do this because absence of meaningful prayer represents a live
without God.

Claudia Gaspar Soares Martins