We see or hear it every day. Good news, or more often bad, is shared on social media, and the poster is flooded with thoughts and prayers, and hands clapping together.
There are those who see this as the only response to these small worries and larger personal disasters. Because they don't see the respondent pick up the phone to call, or their car keys to head over to the afflicted home or family.
Some even wonder if those posting thoughts and prayers are even actually thinking or praying. Or are they making the polite response? Like "How are you?" as a greeting, but not really listening or interested to know how the other actually is.
Of course they have actually had a thought concerning the matter. They could hardly have read the post, let alone replied, without having a thought. As for praying, what is prayer but a directed thought?
But these conversations can make one wonder. They can make one take a long, deep look at their own personal version of "thoughts and prayers" being a helpful thing to do.
For those who have Faith in a deity, it's a no-brainer. They know. Faith is belief without proof, and they don't need proof. The truly faithful will do 'extra' things like add the names to a prayer list and call to ask others to pray also. They may do this, and be trying to think of how else they can be helpful to those in need. Or they may not. That is between them, tyheir faith, and their deity.
There are others who wonder. Can "thoughts and prayers" make a difference in the outcome? Can thoughts and prayers effect a cure, decelerate a situation, or have any type of result? (There have been research studies done, with mixed results.)
Will the differences, if they do occur, be lasting or ephemeral? Does it matter more in the long run, or the short term?
Even more importantly, why would they work? Is there any kind of science that can possibly explain this phenomenon? What could it be? How would it work?
The place to start is with a thought. What is a thought? What makes a thought?
It is a spark. A minute (or notso small) creation of electrical energy in the brain. Not necessarily seen, or smelled, or identified by any other sense. But energy where there was none somehow has become a fact.
According to science, everything is or becomes energy. Many energies cycle through the states of liquid, solid, gas. Many energies become different forms of energy, as a result of a spark.
Once, there was thought to be three states of matter -- solid,liquid, and gas.
Now a fourth state is recognized. Plasma. Plasma is matter turned to energy. There are experiments with the energy of plasma becoming matter. Some scientists say it is impossible; others say they have achieved success at molecular or atomic levels. What greater things can be achieved once they learn and acquire understanding of how this works!
It is my belief -- unproven at this time -- that that may be how thoughts and prayers work. It is energy that can (although no one knows how) be directed in a certain manner for a certain purpose.
It may be that some people can do this, without consciousness, just as there are some who can draw or carve or create music or songs.
It may be that there are people who can be trained to do these same things -- paint a landscape, vibrate a reed into organized tones (that create an emotion), direct energy toward a stranger who needs healing.
Of course, it is equally true that these things don't work that way, that they happen randomly or not at all, that they can never be taught if they do eist.
But they might.
Science is finding out.
Science is learning.
Most of all, Science is keeping open to the possibilities.
