BEING HUMAN

#BeingHuman. #ExistentialHonesty. How to pray about Ukraine during a peace deal. Late-night reflections in peaceful Chisinau on the scandal of Daniel’s windows, and on praying toward the rubble.

Daniel opened his windows toward Jerusalem three times a day. Not toward Babylon, the city where he lived and worked and prospered, now the seat of a rising Medo-Persian empire. Not toward the palace, where his career flourished, where power resided, where the empire made its demands. Toward Jerusalem: ruined, distant, a city that existed more in memory and promise than in present reality, destroyed nearly half a century before he opened those windows. Roughly fifty years of rubble, of broken walls, of worship spaces reduced to blackened stone and ash. The people were still scattered in exile, displaced from what they called home, and rebuilding had not begun. Permission would come, and not yet.

So when Daniel prayed, he prayed toward ruins. Not toward what Jerusalem had been, and not even toward what it would become, but toward what it meant in its devastation. That is the scandal of his orientation: he turned away from imperial glory toward broken walls, toward present destruction, toward a hope buried under debris. Some cities matter because of what was destroyed there and what refuses to be extinguished, rather than because they still stand intact.

When you pray, your body turns toward whatever your heart claims as its center. Daniel’s body was in Babylon and his windows opened toward Jerusalem, which was his way of saying that he knew where he was and also knew where he belonged. The empire could command his service and could not command his orientation. Darius could make him an advisor and could not make Babylon his spiritual home.

The question was never whether Daniel served in Babylon, since he did, and faithfully. The question was which direction he faced when he prayed.

Prayer is not neutral, because it positions us and declares an allegiance. When Daniel turned toward Jerusalem, he was making a public theological statement: the center of God’s purposes lies somewhere other than where imperial power currently resides. The rubble of Jerusalem mattered more than the glory of a safe Babylon in an empire made great again. The promise mattered more than the present arrangement.

This is why they came for him. Not because he prayed, since the administrators under Darius did not care whether he prayed, but because he prayed toward the wrong city, because his prayer refused to reorient itself toward the center of power and its faith office and its traditional values, and because even in exile his heart stayed stubbornly turned toward something Babylon could neither offer nor control.

There is a reason the text specifies that his windows were open. He could have prayed in secret, toward Jerusalem, with the curtains drawn, and it would have been safer. But Daniel understood that some prayers have to be public precisely because they are controversial, and that when praying toward Jerusalem becomes illegal, praying toward Jerusalem with the windows open becomes a witness.

We live in a time when the question of orientation matters again, when prayer is concrete positioning rather than abstract spirituality, and when the direction we face while interceding reveals our theology more clearly than any statement about traditional Christian values.

Some pray toward the palace: toward the leader, the power, the empire, toward Moscow. They petition God to bless what the powerful are doing, to sanctify aggression, to make holy what should never be called holy, and their windows open toward Babylon.

Others pray toward the ruins, toward Kyiv and Bucha and Mariupol and Kherson and Pokrovsk and hundreds of other towns, toward cities that look far more like Daniel’s Jerusalem than like Babylon in its glory. They intercede for the suffering, for the displaced, for those defending whatever remains, and their orientation is toward the rubble rather than the throne.

The empire will always demand a reorientation of the soul’s windows from Christians who dream of a Christendom made great again, with a strong leader and strong traditional values. It will insist that wisdom means facing wherever power currently resides. It will suggest that praying toward destroyed cities is impractical, nostalgic and politically naive, and that it stands in the way of a peace deal. It will point out that Babylon is here, functional and glorious, while Jerusalem is distant and damaged and uncertain, and had better surrender.

But Daniel knew something the empire could not teach him: the location of present political glory is not the location of God’s ultimate purposes.

So the question stays with me. Which direction should our windows open when empires offer peace plans that require us to stop praying toward the rubble? When distant advisors suggest that facing the ruins is impractical, that wisdom means turning toward wherever power sits, that we should close our controversial windows for the sake of a pragmatic arrangement, do we listen? When they promise security if we will only turn away from what is being destroyed, away from displaced people, away from the debris, and face the palace instead, the capital of those demanding our reorientation, what then?

Daniel opened his windows toward Jerusalem three times a day, even when it became illegal, even when the empire insisted that this orientation threatened regional stability, even when advisors counseled accommodation. Until they threw him to the lions for it.

So in which direction do our windows open? Toward the rubble or toward the palace? Toward those defending what remains, or toward those demanding that we call their expansion something other than what it is? Are some orientations worth risking our security and our comfort and our lives for? Each of us probably has to answer that alone. The question is whether we still believe it.

Taras D., Chisinau