ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Discovering Spiritual Commonality : Faith: A confrontation with mortality leads to the realization that prayer is a highly individual path to a universal Almighty.

Mortality is fragile, but prayer is powerful.

I dreamed that the night before I had a heart attack.

In the ensuing confusion of paramedics, the emergency room and the dying groans of a man in the next cubicle, I couldn’t think of anything except the fact that I was deep into an encounter with my own mortality.

Do we ever really believe that moment will arrive? And yet, I discovered, it was here, really here, and I, I alone, would have to make a decision that could affect whether I lived or died.

The doctors scheduled me for an angiogram and an angioplasty (procedures to diagnose problems and help relieve symptoms). But when it came to asking my permission for open-heart surgery, should it be necessary, I replied, “No!”

And if my heart stopped beating?

“Don’t revive me! Don’t!”

You see, I had just been through three years of watching a longtime friend and writing associate sink, inch by inch, into the quicksand of dying. She’d gone all the way from chemotherapy to calling drug companies to see if they had an experimental drug that could save her. Her will to live was mighty, but at the very end, she wrote me of her final insight into her struggle: “The will to live needs to be put aside.”

For the last couple of years I’d been confined to a wheelchair, lived alone and remained independent. The nightmare of new dependencies and additional helplessness frightened me far more than the loss of life. I could not--would not--travel the road she had.

I was sad, though, at the thought of my unfinished business. I’d been writing a novel. Now there were only 30 pages to completion and the ending still not revealed to my weekly writers group. (Ah, the satisfaction of an author!)

But the manuscript had already been put aside with other disasters: the deaths of three writing friends who’d shared in the creative discussions, my seven-week stay in a nursing home and, to add to the saga of what sounds like “The Perils of Pauline,” my rescue from the Northridge earthquake--a miraculous escape that left me with the belief that I’d been saved for a reason. Exactly what, I didn’t know.

That feeling never vanished. With the kind of wavering faith I’d struggled with over the years, I sensed there was meaning to my life yet to be discovered. There were times when I couldn’t believe in anything. Sometimes I prayed; sometimes I gave up.

The heart procedures were pushed a day ahead. I suddenly became frantic with the need to talk to someone on a spiritual level. I’d lived in the area a short time, was of Jewish faith but had made no attempt at religious observances.

Now the nearest, most immediate person I could find was a non-sectarian hospital chaplain, Harry Wildeson.

At first he couldn’t be located. I curled myself into a fetal ball. Time was getting close--too close.

Finally he arrived, a mild, white-haired man in his 70s dressed in a conservative suit, shirt and tie. His eyes expressed concern.

We shook hands. I explained my feelings, told him I was Jewish. He, I discovered, had been ordained a Baptist minister.

At first he spoke of the New Testament. I wondered. Did he want to convert me? But then he cited from the Old Testament, and in listening to him, I sensed he was not only a learned man but a compassionate one as well.

He held onto my hand, prayed out loud, careful not to pressure me with his creed.

“Lord,” he said, “help Judith through this and help her find her purpose in this life.”

The visit soothed. By the time I was on my way to the procedures, additionally fortified with a medical sedative, I was floating.

However, when the three masked faces who were part of the team asked me once again, “Now if something happens and we think we might save you . . . ,” defiance erupted.

“No! Leave me be!”

But there was no need. Instead--hallelujah time! The doctor was pleased with what he’d accomplished. I did not need surgery. And I’d survived the percentage of risks connected with the procedures. Oh God, I’d survived--almost equal to before.

Back in my room in the intensive care unit, a red rose, perhaps to commemorate my repaired heart, stood tall and elegant in a crystal vase. The card told me Shula Kalir had been here. Shula is a cantor I’d met socially one time whose voice enriched the beauties of the words of the Jewish faith.

As I settled in, I mused that it would have been nice, perhaps even more proper, to have prayed with her, someone of my religion. And my gender.

But then the ultimate truth struck me: An Almighty Power belongs to all of us. Each and every one of us. And no matter whose path we follow, prayer is a personal, potent way of invoking faith.

Hadn’t it worked for me this day?