Praying for Parking

SAMIRA KAWASH

Park Slope, Brooklyn

4 p.m. on a Saturday. I’ve been driving for the past two and a half hours. I’m stopped at the intersection, waiting to turn onto my Brooklyn street. I have an empty stomach and a carload of laundry and leftovers to unload. There are no garages or driveways in this neighborhood; townhouses are stacked tightly in horizontal rows and cars line the curb up and down the block. I feel the anxiety mounting, the tension in my shoulders. I do what I always do when I make this left-hand turn toward home. I pray for parking: God, please let there be an empty space. Please, God, let it be right in front of my house. 

Not surprisingly, this prayer has a poor success rate. God Almighty could certainly give me a parking space if He wanted to. I begin to speculate as to the cause of my failure: That I am not deserving, or pious, or righteous enough to have my petitions granted. That I need to hand over larger bills to the local sidewalk hustlers if I expect something good from God in return. That God is teaching me “a lesson” (patience? fortitude?) by withholding the prized parking space. That God wants me to stop owning a car and is punishing me by making me spend 45 minutes creeping up and down side streets. That God is busy with more important things.

It doesn’t seem so wrong as a prayer. After all, isn’t “give me a parking space” just a variation on Jesus’s instruction that we should pray to God to give us our “daily bread”? It kind of works, if “daily bread” means “whatever I need at the moment.” But when I think about this parking problem, I begin to suspect that isn’t what Jesus was getting at. 

That thing I call prayer as I wish for a parking space in God’s name, what am I really up to? I say I am asking, but when I listen to my voice, it sounds more like a demand. God, give me this parking space that I really want. After all, You love me, and if You love me, You want me to be happy, and if You want me to be happy, then You should give me this parking space. Right now. Because I am getting pretty annoyed at all these other cars that are in my way. This voice is a familiar one; its the voice of my daughter when she was five, tugging on my hand and pointing to the Lego SpongeBob Crab Patty Shack kit—pleeeeeeease!! That is me to God, pleeeeease gimme a parking spot, pretty please. I will blame my cranky toddler attitude on my growling stomach, goading me to treat God like mom with a magic wallet, or like Santa Claus, or maybe worse, like some kind of cosmic vending machine: push the “prayer” button and some goodie falls down the chute, as if God isn’t savvy enough to notice my feeble attempt at manipulation. 

Perhaps I can justify my prayer this way: my daughter didn’t need the Legos. But I need a parking space. As in, I will not be able to stop driving until I find a place to put my car. And this could lead to all sorts of evil: I will circle my block in an every widening gyre, muttering curses and polluting the air, until my car runs out of gas or I faint from exhaustion, at which point a tow-truck and/or ambulance will have to be called, the street will be closed down, traffic will grid-lock, critical transportation will cease, and widespread urban catastrophe will ensue. In the urgency of my need, it is not just my fate, but the fate of the entire city that hangs on my gaining this elusive prize. Yes, from my perspective, the drama in my life at this exact moment is the most important thing in the world. God should want to intervene, to save me and save us all. 

I remind myself it’s just a parking spot, not something truly life-altering like the Civil War or a nuclear launch or, gasp, college admissions. Nevertheless, I am embarrassed to notice the tone of imperious demand in this prayer for a parking spot. This God seems to be mine alone, the one I expect to serve me here at the center of my little universe. Easy to forget that street parking is a zero-sum enterprise: a place for my Volvo wagon comes at the expense of the silver Toyota circling the block behind me. So my prayer is not just for the blessings of a generous creation. In the case of parking, there is not enough. God, give me the thing I need, even though it means the silver Toyota will go wanting. God, play favorites. God, choose me. 

It is so tempting to use prayer this way, as a weapon in the Hobbesian struggle to wrest my little morsel from the hard matter of existence. My daughter’s pleeeeeeease  is just the entry-level version of the same strategy. I am constantly faced with the problem of not enough—especially living in a crowded city, where there are so many cars, so many bodies, so much desire and demand. I think what I need is a parking spot. But most days, I don’t get it. What I get instead is frustration, cursing, hating my neighbors who took up all the spots, impatience, erratic driving, more cursing. 

I finally realize: I’m praying for the wrong thing. And the words come. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Not somewhere else, in some distant hoped for future, but now, here.  Hard to find God’s kingdom on a gritty Brooklyn street, in a parking space that may or may not be waiting for me. But it is here, a glimpse of what is possible. Prayer is the way. God, give me peace. Give me the ability to accept whatever comes with a calm heart. I hope there will be a space for me, but if there is not, God, give me the patience to endure. This prayer, God answers. My breath slows. I pause to let a pedestrian cross. Perhaps my journey will come to its end soon; perhaps it will be a little longer. But right now, in the peace of putting this moment in God’s hands, I feel the gentle touch of paradise.