Prayer for Money

When most of us grow up we are taught what is right and wrong. Stealing is wrong, giving to the poor is right., lying is wrong, being honest is right. All these rights and wrongs create some sort of multi-shaped mould within us to match up to right or wrong when we do come across various situations, so much so that when we are faced with a conflict we know exactly what we feel if we do the right thing and what we feel if we do the wrong thing. We of course settle for doing the right thing, which is more rewarding. Later on in life we struggle our way to end up in a job and the 'money factor' comes into play. But many of us still realize that this is not the important factor really.

Let me tell you about a situation that I was faced with, when I was working at an ngo organization some time back. We received an email from a foreigner whom I will call Mr.B who came up with this idea which I will discuss in detail. Our ngo basically supports widows though a widows home in the city of widows - Vrindavan. This person had been staying in the US but was originally an Indian who followed all Indian religious customs with the same fervor as an Indian would in India.

His idea was this:- He would help coordinate with US donors who would send details of people to be prayed for. And in exchange of the prayers by the widows they would get money in the form of donations.

On reading this email, I informed the head of our organization, that something did not seem right about this offer. But being of a more logical outlook she though this ideas was good. After all in Vrindavan these widows anyway beg on the streets and pray and hardly get any money for their prayers. Through this man's proposal the widows would pray and would get paid in return and that too in US Dollars!!

I then looked back into my good-bad-mould and could not find a solution for such a situation. Widows praying = leading to money = leading to a better life. Logically it seemed right but still something seemed amiss and I could not point out why in my heart I though this was wrong.

After some time another email was received from Mr.B saying that the donors would send pics of the loved ones, and particular prayers which they wanted the widows to pray and also said they would send us web-cams so that the donors would know that the praying was actually taking place!!Now this I felt was so wrong.

But again if you see it, it sounds logical from a "value for service" point of view. That is, if the widows were providing this 'prayer service', obviously there should be proof that the praying was going on especially for that particular person according to his prayer requirements. Only then would it seem that a proper service was being provided. This too sounded quite ethical. My other colleagues also though it was quite an okay thing. So what what was wrong? why was I the only won who was feeling this was the wrong thing to do?

After a few weeks of agreeing to MR.B's proposal the head of our ngo found it quite hard to coordinate with him regarding emailing pictures, prayers requests, particular praying times which conflicted with the timings of various activities of the widows in the home, many of whom were illiterate. So the idea was finally dropped. It was only after a couple of weeks of deep thought that I figured out the answer of why I felt that all this was wrong.

It was wrong: because the widows were actually people, earlier-young girls with bright futures who were deserted by their families and forced to go to Vrindavan. If it so happens that many such MR.B's come up then such a prayer service would become commonplace. This would only encourage more widows to be sent to Vrindavan, even families who would otherwise be supportive would send them to Vrindavan.

I was glad then that we had done away with this Prayer Service Proposal.