A fifth reason to pray
Foolishness to the world. Wisdom to the One it's turned back toward.
There are four old reasons to pray. This is a fifth — the oldest light, returned. Not asking, not confessing, not praising, not thanking. Only this: being a surface the light strikes, and turning it back, for the pleasure of it.
What we usually come for
For as long as people have prayed, they have come with one of four things in hand. Each one carries something across the distance between a person and God.
Look closely and they share one root. Each answers the question what do you want from God? — even thanks, which remembers a lack now filled. All four move something over the gap.
And then a fifth —
that wants nothing across the gap at all.
5.
Reflection
A mirror adds nothing to the sun. It cannot make the light brighter.
And yet what it returns is real — and it returns from an angle no other mirror holds. You simply are, one particular surface in one particular place, and the light that made you, you turn back toward its source. Nothing is asked. Nothing crosses the gap. The whole of it is the glad return.
Why your reflection is yours
The crease that came out unplanned and was kept anyway. A smooth surface returns light evenly; a wrinkled one returns it from somewhere new. Your irregularity is not a flaw in the mirror. It is the reason your reflection is yours, and no one else's, anywhere.
That God allowed the wrinkle at all — staked something on a creature free to turn away — that is God's folly. Yours is simply to turn back — let God know.
The whole point
The moment you want a result, you are asking again — managing, adjusting, bargaining. Reflection wants nothing back. That is what keeps it clean, and what makes it respectful rather than presumptuous: you reach toward God with open hands and no aim at all. Light, simply returned.
So what do you get from this kind of prayer?
Nothing. That is the gift — God might.
The pleasure
Confession is heavy; even thanks remembers a lack. But this carries joy in the doing — the gladness of discovering you were a surface the light was always going to strike. It is play, in the deepest sense: purposeless, complete, and glad.
A folly.
Do it: inform God, tell of you.