That is the entire prayer, as far as I have been able to discover. I came across it in a work of fiction by Kaveh Akbar, with no way to track it down. All Akbar said was that it came from Sufism, a mystical school of Islam.
Lord, increase my bewilderment.
What a petition! What a verb! To ask for more bewilderment, not less, from a higher power who must hear billions of prayers for more certainty, more conviction, more proof, more faith. I wrote the prayer down, then realized that wasn’t necessary. It was only four words long, with such good news in it that I memorized it before the ink dried. My increasing bewilderment wasn’t a problem after all. It was an answer to prayer.
You would be right to ask what kind of bewilderment I mean, since there are many forms of it, including some that belong in a trash file, not a prayer. The bewilderment of figuring out how to file a claim for services by a health provider who doesn’t accept insurance, for instance, or the bewilderment of…continue here.
