When politicians respond to journalists about a disaster, they invariably say their “thoughts and prayers” are with the families. It has become a stock phrase. Perhaps some forensic philologist might trace its first occurrence. I wonder if its originator was intending to cover two bases or implying that a distinction between sacred and secular is superfluous.

Bishop Jack Spong, bête noir of conservative Christians, wrote his first book on the subject of prayer: Honest Prayer (1973). Even then, he was skeptical that prayer was a means of communication separate from ordinary dialogue. He recalled having a deep and worthwhile conversation with a parishioner around “that of God”, at the end of which there was the conventional expectation that he, the priest, should do his professional thing – and pray! It was his feeling then that a formal prayer would devalue the recent conversation rather than enhance it.

Some would speak up for the value of prayer in affecting the pray-er – whether or not it affects an ‘Effector’. Can a request to a theistic deity be thought to change human history? Others would prefer that prayer is silent. Words can cloud and confuse an issue. Although music can help – even songs without words – to set emotional tones and lift us to another plane.

A supreme example of the power of music in prayer occurs in Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel and Gretel. The two children are lost in the fairytale forest and must bed down in the approaching darkness. This is their prayer:

When at night I go to sleep

Fourteen angels watch do keep

Two my head are guarding

Two my feet are guiding

Two are on my right hand

Two are on my left hand

Two who warmly cover

Two who o’er me hover

Two to whom ’tis given

To guide my steps to heaven.

It has much in common with Celtic guarding prayers. These were prayers based around the home and especially its focus, the hearth; such as this one quoted by John O'Donohue, in Anam Cara:

My Fortress
The Sacred Three
My fortress be
Encircling me
Come and be round
My hearth and my home.

These are affirmations of faith or invocations rather than instructions to the Divine. And in Celtic Prayer there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular. All things are connected. In that sense we may agree with St Paul that we should “be constant in prayer”.