Month 6, Day 4: Obligatory Prayer

I’ve only been practicing Baha’i for a few days now, and already I’ve found something I don’t like: obligatory prayer.

According to the founder of the Baha’i faith, Bahá’u’lláh, worshippers are expected to demonstrate their spiritual discipline by reciting obligatory prayers three times a day: in the morning (preferably at or before dawn), at around noon, and in the evening, around sunset.

Although you do get a choice as to which prayer you choose to say (there are three options), whether to skip reciting any of them is not negotiable. It’s obligatory.

And therein lies my problem with this part of the Baha’i religion. Telling me that something is obligatory automatically makes me not want to do it. It’s kind of like those signs in museums telling you not to touch the sculpture, which inspire inside of me an instant compulsion to run my grubby hands all over any piece of art I can reach.

But I’m going to be good and show some discipline and keep saying my prayers three times a day, even if they are obligatory. Of course, I’ve picked the “short obligatory prayer” from the list of possibilities (surprise, surprise!). It goes like this:

I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth.

There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.

I’ve got to say that I’m not even all that thrilled with the content of the prayer. I don’t like saying I’m “powerless.” Sure, maybe I’m not as powerful as God, but then again, I do have at least one power that he doesn’t have—I exist and absolutely nobody questions that.

Anyway, I guess I’ll live through reciting a prayer I don’t like very much three times a day for a month. But I do have an itch to rebel. Does anybody have any priceless art they’d be willing to let me grope to help me get it out of my system?