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Evening prayers

Christian Century, Feb 24, 1999 by Gail Godwin

Adrian as chaplain had started the custom of night prayers with individual students. Initially, N.P.'s, as everyone at Fair Haven called them, had been conceived as a bridging ritual for new students who had recently been taken off their medications and were prone to be anxious or restless at bedtime. But other students heard about it and wanted them, too. If you wished a staff member to knock on your door between eight and nine and say night prayers with you, you made a little sign and put it outside on the door. Some students just scrawled a last-minute "N.P." on a piece of scrap paper and taped it up; others made careful cardboard signs, with cutouts of stars or drawings of animals in pajamas. On peak-demand nights there could be as many as 30 N.P.'s hanging outside doors in the main house and in the cottages; the staff had to hustle to squeeze them all in.

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"At first it surprised me, the popularity of it," Adrian said, "but it shouldn't have. Many of their parents were never home to tuck them in at night, or review their day with them."

"It's a wonderful idea," I said.

"But I got it from you, Margaret."

"From me?"

"You told me how your father came to your room every night and reviewed the day in his prayers. He read poetry to you, too. We don't have time for the poetry. There's never enough time to give them all they need."

As I undressed for bed, I mentally followed his evening route. The Jeffersons were on duty tonight; they'd cover the dorm quarters in the main house, and he would do the seniors, who lived six boys or six girls to a cottage. When Adrian and I had lived out at the school, before I became rector at All Saints High Balsam, I had helped with the N.P.'s .... I enjoyed knocking softly on the doors with the N.P. signs and entering into the aura of each personality. All students had private rooms at Fair Haven, even in the cottages. And how myriad are the ways we comfort ourselves and ward off anxiety through the arrangement of our personal surroundings! One girl had covered every available surface of her small room with framed photographs of herself and her horse--no pictures of anyone else; another had papered her walls with blown-up ads from fashion magazines: androgynous torsos twining around each other in skintight jeans.., snarling models in black leather with spiky purple hair and matching claws. One night I found myself praying beneath a poster of Ben MacGruder and his Melody Station group.

"I've never prayed in my life," a new girl, Josie, challenged me. Yet she had painstakingly nail-polished a big N.P. and a circlet of pink flying angels on a piece of paper and taped it to her door. "But what else is there to do in this spooked wilderness at night? How do you start?"

Josie's walls were still bare. Her boxes and laptop and study lamp and new books were all piled in a corner of the room, as if she hadn't made up her mind whether she'd stay. She was distracted and spacey, having been taken off Ritalin before arriving at school. "Education, not medication" was a cornerstone of the school's method. The founder, Hiram Sandlin, had done research on the neocortex and became convinced that there was no evidence that psychotropic medicines altered attitude problems. Part of the brain's structure evolved from the way it was used, he said. If young people's habits and experiences changed significantly, so would their brains. Wisdom would be developed in these young human brains by Fair Haven's curriculum, which stressed the intangibles, but for this time was needed, and an adequate staff possessed of those habits themselves and devoted to taking time with each student. That's why the school had to stay small.

"You can start praying in as many ways as you can start a conversation with somebody," I told Josie. "It depends on your mood, and how close you feel to the person. Sometimes I simply say, `Here I am,' and then wait." "Wait for what?"

"Well, for what I need to know next."

"You mean like a reply?"

"In a way. For something else to get a word in edgewise. Or, other times I start with a phrase from a psalm I like. `For you my soul in silence waits,' for instance. Or sometimes I begin by saying aloud the names of people close to me, or people that I want to pray for."

Josie cocked her curly head and gave me a strange look, then slammed her eyes shut and spieled off at least 20 first names without pausing for breath.

"Like that?" she asked, fixing me with an aggressive stare.

"That's quite a list. It's good you have so many people you feel close to or want to pray for."

She gave a high, skittish laugh. "What's next?"

Though her parents had written "Christian" in the "religious affiliation or preference" blank on her application form, she said she was unfamiliar with the Lord's Prayer. I read both versions to her from the prayer book.

Evening prayers

Christian Century, Feb 24, 1999 by Gail Godwin

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