Whats in an image?

For PrayerSurfer my goal is to be inviting to everyone. I've basically decided on the following rules:

• No religion
• No gender
• No words

It can't be strictly Christian, as other religions pray. It can't be religious as there are also non-religious people that pray. I'd like to keep gender out of it, if I can. Also, I'd prefer not to have the logo a word/words. This could be international, so iconography would be best.

So now the trick is to figure out what conveys prayer with non-religious and non-gender images.

With the rules in place, I began to think about what conveys prayer?

• Praying hands
• Flowers
• Candles

I can't draw worth a damn, but I can use paint.net. I'm sure if I hired an artist they would blow me away.

UPDATE:

I wrote the above a week ago, although I agree with most of the rules above, I decided that iconography is good, but after playing with some images I decided to use some words as using strictly images got cartoonish looking. Which is also an assumed rule that I don't want the logo to be.

Finishing strong!

After a week of not really thinking about the image for a week. Today I decided to look at images of prayer. I found a cool clip art of a person in a prayer position. Then I found one with a person in prayer with the wifi signal above the head. I loved this one! However, I couldn't find a stock image of that one. I used the praying person and the wife symbol to create my own image.

I then started to look at surfboards for the "surfer" part. What I decided was to just use a surfboard outline, then just combine the 2 images to convey the
"prayer" & the "surfer" aspect.

I think I found my logo font. When I was looking for images of "Prayer", I found an image of a shirt that had the words Prayer Warrior in a Stencil. I found a Stencil font, downloaded it to my machine created the text PRAYER SURFER.

I started to go down a path with creating a simple sand dune, then I had 2 surfboards next to each other. Then I was playing around with the orientation of the boards. Then I added text to one of the surfboards... Then I added a palm tree... And... It just didn't look right. To me it looked cheesy.

I decided that wasn't going to work, but I did like certain aspects of the original image. I liked the prayingwifi image, and I thought the surfboard was simple but interesting. However, this is where I decided to break one of my original rules. I liked the text, but I didn't want it on another surfboard. So I decided to make the text stand alone in the stencil font. What I came up with, was this:

The thing with logos, is that they can be tweaked. This is version 1. I'm sure when I show this to my friends and family there will be good suggestions. I look forward to that.

Let me know what you think. I'd also love to know how you create your logos.