At prayer

What would it be like to pray five times a day, every day. To have the surety that praying has a purpose in ones own life.
For an atheist the compact with God is broken, God doesn't exist and the expression of faith is of no relevance to the business of everyday life.


But what if ones everyday life was regularly punctuated with an intense interaction, through prayer,  a conversation about ones self and ones place and purpose in the world. Not the small talk but the important stuff which you are unsure about.
What if the prayer was so fundamental, a prop that without it you become rudderless and that the concept of the god you are praying to is so strong you believe implicitly in his scripture, so that much of the doubt we have about our lives and the ending of our lives is removed by a simple act of faith.
Of course in a society where the heat and the structure of the day is much slower, then the act of praying is part of that rhythm of life and folds into the space and speed which is all around. The harshness and the tenuous nature of living makes death a close companion and our frailty on earth makes life beyond death so much more enticing and believable. 
In the busy non stop action of a western existence where we are protected by systems such as hospitalisation if you fall sick or simple sanitation is taken care of by the utility company then the pace of living is generated, not so much by oneself but by the needs of others. One becomes a very small widget in a vast jigsaw of activity. Praying under these conditions takes on a whole different meaning since one becomes an outsider, stopping the clock as it were to do something very personal.
The society over here has become very benign towards the needs of minorities. For all our sins we have accepted the cultural variations and needs and so when we have to wait whilst some one is praying so we can access a room or have answered a question which only the person praying can answer, we take this relatively new phenomena in or stride. Perhaps we wonder why a person in a business environment needs to absent themselves 5 times during the day and perhaps we become a little frustrated if our own breakneck pace is interfered with but on the whole we come to terms with praying and its importance in a way which was not something we thought about a decade or two ago.
Is it right. Well who can say. Is it inconvenient. Well yes but in the scale of things does it rather say much more about our own lives and the stressful pace we drive ourselves at, in worshipping a different God, the god of consumerism.