This ema, a wooden votive plaque, holds a mystery. Three women are praying, but we do not know what they were praying for.

Their eyes are fixed on a gohei, the folded white paper decorations often seen at Shinto shrines.

A gohei represents the presence of a deity and is also believed to be a place where a deity may descend.

In Japan, people rarely described the gods in a human form. The divine was not something to be easily pictured. Instead, people prayed toward the place where they believed the deity resided.

So what were these three women asking for? The safety of their families? Recovery from illness? A happy marriage? Or perhaps something more personal—a wish they could not tell anyone else.

We do not know. And perhaps that is exactly the point.

Some prayers are meant to remain private. There are wishes we cannot share even with those closest to us. Not with our family. Not with our friends. Sometimes they are difficult even to put into words.

And yet, they may be the very prayers we can quietly place before the gods.

Only the gods know.

That is all this ema tells us. It does not record what the women wished for—only that they prayed.

Perhaps that is what prayer has always been. Not something that needs to be understood by other people, but something we quietly place before something greater than ourselves.