Now that we are at war, or that a war is being perpetrated in our name - which may not be the same thing, what do we pray for? If we had reservations (to put it mildly) before hand, if we feel this is a mistake, are we supposed to put all this behind us, knuckle down and stand behind our brave boys and girls, some of whom have already lost their lives?

If I am honest I do not want our troops to be defeated and so now that they are in action I suppose I must desire that they are successful. The alternative is to will their deaths. War being what it is, they can’t go into this half heartedly. They have to go at it all out or they will court disaster. So I do bring to my prayers a desire that our troops are not slaughtered - but then I don’t particularly want to see Iraqi soldiers slaughtered either. A simple prayer for victory does not satisfy where I am, but then an honest analysis of my emotions and thoughts finds a desire for victory because the alternative is horrendous.

A few weeks ago I caught a programme on Radio 4 that I think was about Sandhurst, the military academy. I was only half listening as I drove along the A1. My ears pricked up when I heard one of the army tutors being interviewed say that it is in no ones interests to kill any more of the other side than is absolutely necessary. The aim of war is not to kill as many of the opposing troops as we can, but to win what comes after the peace and the received wisdom is that this is not helped by having a blood bath. The modern military mind seems to be much less gung ho than the popular image implies.

So when we are on our knees, or lighting candles in the side chapel, what is our prayer to be? How do we hold this situation before God and what should our desire be?

Perhaps we need to be clear what prayer is and what it is not. We need to move away from the shopping list approach to prayer as if it is some kind of superstitious magic. Prayer is always about seeking to ally our wills to the will of God. It is to pray ‘your kingdom come, your will be done’. Even when we think of Christ telling his disciples that whatever they ask for in his name will be granted we have to realise that asking in Christ’s name implies a desire to will what he wills. Only then can our prayers be said to be truly in his name. So all pray is to draw on God and seek the will of God.

That is all well and good from a distance, but where does that leave the troops who have to get their hands dirty in the horror of killing and fighting? And even if it is in no ones interests to kill as many as we can, killing is in the nature of war. How does a soldier pray ‘your kingdom come’, ‘your will be done’ and then squeeze the trigger? How do those of us who have sent these men and women to kill on our behalf ask in Christ’s name, even from a distance, and allow the fighting to carry on? Surely Christ’s name would demand an end to this madness and demand that the lion lie down with the lamb and the swords be beaten into ploughs?

Perhaps sometimes it is more helpful for this prayer to focus more on the corporate than the individual. The reality for the soldier is that he or she is in a situation where violence has erupted and they are caught up in it. The violence while it may be the result of their collective actions is not of their making. It is the politicians who make war. They make war because of wider circumstances than just the individual’s madness, though that can be a major factor. So the situation has got so out of hand that war happens.

I’m not trying to provide an excuse that relieves any personal responsibility here, but the individual does not exist outside of the world they live in. Living means getting our hands dirty and so our prayers need that kind of realism within them; as the individual prays ‘Your kingdom come’ they do so with all the pressures and other factors around them, in this case a battle raging. What I am looking for is a spirituality that can pray when the complete opposite of where we would expect that prayer to lead is going on round us. How do we pray when we are actively engaged in violence and war? Is it possible to hold the fighting before God and not just jump to the peace the other side, which is a much more comfortable place to be?

The great Celtic saints of Lindisfarne and Northumbria were no strangers to this. Battles were frequent in a time when kings were warrior kings. David Adam begins his imaginative biography of 7th century St Aidan with these words:

“Life is a battle. There are conflicts around us and within us all our lives. Yet if we are at war at least we are alive. If the warfare has ceased, we must ask if we too have ceased really to live.” (Flame in my heart p2)

Now pushed to its extremes this is a recipe for disaster and we have as social animals come up with all sorts of codes and conventions to put a limit on our passions - both in terms of excessive loving, where it becomes licentious, and in terms of pathological hatreds that are deeply disturbed and disturbing. Our first reading gave us the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) with their frame to place some kind of boundaries round human living and loving, round our passions. The boundaries touch the things that destabilize relationships - adultery and coveting, murder and losing touch with a sense of the eternal and transcendent - remembering the Lord your God and a day each week to renew its focus.

These commandments are about individual actions but set in a much wider social context. It is not just the individual who is to respect marriage and committed relationships, but we all are and the assumptions of our society are. It is not just the individual who is to shape their lives in a way that there is room for the sacred, but we all are and the assumptions of our society should have a sense of the sacred.

With boundaries in our mind, when the passion turns to war then the mechanical inhibitor in our international relationships has broken. This is passion turned sour and as the bombs drop and the missiles speed towards their target we know that something needs to be repaired. Our military expert from Sandhurst in that radio programme said as much - after the war we want to be able to persuade the vanquished to live differently. I have to say in this case we may also want the victor to live differently too. There are attitudes that have led to this war that are not to our credit and I fear we will pay a heavy price for them. Always we have in our prayers the need for Christ’s redemption. Something is lost when we turn to war and we need to recover it.

So we can light candles for our troops and all caught up in this war. We can pray that casualties will be at a minimum. We can pray for a speedy end to this temporary madness. War is never a permanent state. It is always a time of transition as we move from one place to another, struggling to recapture that which has slipped through our fingers before the mortars exploded. The honesty of our prayer may even include a desire for victory rather than defeat - but it will always look to an end goal that is something that lies beyond our immediate gaze, because that gaze is what has led to fighting in the first place, so it wasn’t up to much!

I am still not convinced that this war is just or necessary. But it is not going to end until either victory or stalemate is reached. Our prayers somehow have to hold the reality of what is happening: the dirtying, even bloodying of hands; the temporary madness that has to reign until it is safe to stop; the battling and struggling. The best place in our faith to hold our prayers is the redemption that comes through Christ, the recovering of what has been lost.

© Ian Black 2003

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