Hi graeme:

To me, it seems presumptuous or childish  to ask a cosmic deity to grant us personal favours, even if such a deity actually existed and had the power to fulfil our personal wishes. Nevertheless, prayers are sometimes answered.

That prayers occasionally are effective probably is due to the fact that, in earnest prayer, we can enter an altered state of mind. Whether we call this state the spiritual reality, altered consciousness or whatever is beside the point, but it propels us beyond the petty concerns of our egocentric selves into a reality that is all-inclusive. To me, this is the ultimate reality which unifies all and puts us in touch with everyone and everything, including the creative power of the universe, and results in feelings of love, goodwill, empathy, peace and compassion, and sometimes even affects the people or objects we pray for.

I'll buy that.

And I guess that's what bothers me about an urge to pray that seems to be based on nationality.

graeme, perhaps you should start a prayer thread?

It would be better if it were someone less opinionated.

Could a prayer alter a larger mind?

One would have to believe in that fanstasy ... soul/psyche and many Christians say it should be put aside on the shelf ... so people wouldn't think about how they're being blindly led to an end ...

Last man standing wins ... what? Nos Heights ...

Hi graeme,

Thanks for the head's up.

Do you think that said evangelist was serious or that the comment was meant to be provocative?  Missing context interferes with understanding the point that was trying to be made.

Would you barge into someone's bathroom while they were using it and berate them for why their tolet paper doesn't come over the top and off the front of the roll when it could just as easily come from the back and off of the bottom?

To be candid, barging into somebody's prayer to be critical of their prayer is akin to barging into their bedroom and critiquing their technique with their lover.

It isn't that there is no time or place for such questions or criticisms.  It is that in the middle of it may be the wrong place.

To be fair, the sign didn't say that either.  You inferred that is what it meant.

Given the sorry state of affairs in the world it is quite possible that there may be some in that Church who think exactly the way you believe they think.  There may also be people in that Church who think exactly the opposite.

You don't know the reality.  You read a sign.  It pissed you off and now they have to pay for that.

Ironic, isn't it.  That you have done, what you are critical of and what you believe they have done.  You've left stuff out.

Is it distasteful and unChristian to pray for a soldier?  Jesus heals a temple guard who has lost an ear in a sword fight with a fisherman.  Jesus heals the servant of a centurion and even counsels listeners to walk a second mile.

I think Jesus would be pleased that we take time to lift up one of his creations in prayer.

Again, context informs.  Are we to pray only for Soldiers?  No.  Are we to pray that they will make their kill quota or set a battalion record for kills?  No.  Can we not pray for their safety?  Can we not pray for their discernment to know when not to shoot or to know what not to shoot at?  Can we pray that they have nothing to be remorseful of when they come home?  Can we pray that they do for others what we hope others will be doing for them?  Praying for others means praying for others, not simply the others we like.  Lifting one demographic up does not of necessity put other demographics down.

We pray for those left homeless by Hurricane Sandy.  That doesn't mean we don't pray for those left homeless before Hurricane Sandy or those left homeless by some other disaster.  It means, right here, right now, these ones are front and centre.

We pray for a family whose home burnt to the ground.  That doesn't mean we are ignoring some other family two towns over who was also burned out of their home.

To suggest it does and to be critical of that is misguided at best.

And it is a daily thing.

That doesn't make it acceptable, that means it numbs and we are desensitized.  It is stuff over there.

Sandy Hook Elementary could pass for the Elementary school two doors down in Waterford.  Our school goes up to grade 8 so we have some older students.  Depending on how early I get to the office I have a steady parade of children moving past my office.

Some I pray for, some I don't.

That isn't because I approve of some and disapprove of others.  It is a matter of discernment.  I pray for the kids walking alone, that they have a friend to sit and talk to at school.  I pray for the kids with dirty clothes, that they aren't going to catch hell when they get home for wrecking new articles of clothing and that they aren't filthy because somebody at home doesn't care about their appearance.  I pray for the slow movers, hoping that they aren't slow because they didn't get breakfast again this morning or that their world isn't being torn apart by parents who constantly scream at one another.

Could I pray for them all?

Sure, I could say a quick God bless you to every one who walks past my window.  But then I wouldn't be praying for all those who walk past yours.  Does that make me a monster?  No.  It doesn't.  It means I am one and as one I am limited.  And to be blunt, if you aren't praying for everyone who passes your window shouldn't the first critique that needs to be addressed is why you aren't?

Including the prayers you make?

I wouldn't expect such an assumption to exist.  Why would you?

Even if those notions exist, and I am certain that there are people in the world who think this way, does the presence of that sign prove that this is what the people inside that Church think?

If this is the assumption that critical thought leads to then critical thought needs intensive care.

This thought does exist.  Again, I don't think the sign proves that the congregation thinks this way.

Agreed.  In that case the problem is less about actual prayer than it is your understanding of what prayer is about.  And maybe, just maybe, you don't understand the idiot prayer battery because you failed to comprehend that the illustration was meant to be ridiculous and not serious.

No doubt there are some who go to God because he is that great and wonderful vending machine that dispenses wishes depending upon the quality or quantity of prayers that we plug in.

No doubt there are some who go to that celestial vending machine looking only for one thing and if that one thing is not currently stocked it becomes a tragedy instead of an opportunity to try something else.

Babies eat pablum, we aren't critical of their ability not to eat steak.  They'll grow up and move on to more substantial food, eventually.

Who says that most prayer isn't doing that?  When I pray for the kids passing by my window it isn't just the ones with a paunch and a beard.  In fact the ones who walk down the street looking like my kids are the ones I pass over in prayer.  I rest on those who look like me because I know what secrets I kept from my teachers and classmates and what an unhappy home I lived in.  These kids may be closer to what I was than I know.  Those who look worse off get my attention in prayer for all the reasons lifted above.

I'm not focusing on the blonde, or those fair of skin, or those with new clothes or backpacks.  And I am certainly not praying that any become as good as I am.  I pray that they get through the day, that they learn something exciting about themselves and the world that they live in, that they go home to a family that is interested to share in those experiences.

I struggle with praying for them to make a difference in somebody else's life because that means that somebody needs to be in crisis and I don't wish that on anyone.

And no, while I'm praying for that stream of kids moving past I'm not berating them for having more than kids in Malawi nor am I going to beat myself up for not praying about kids in Malawi instead of these kids.  I'm not asking God to rob the children of Malawi so these kids can have an new Wii U.

Perhaps there is some pastor sitting in Malawi watching children going about their routine and offering up prayers for them on this day.  Is he praying for the Children of Waterford?  Does he even know Waterford exists?  Are we in Waterford the poorer for his ignorance?  Perhaps.  That doesn't make him a monster.

When we pray for the hungry and the thirsty, we don't qualify that with colour race or creed.  It is all the hungry in all the world.

When we pray for the sick and the imprisoned, we don't qualify what illnesses or what offences.  It is all the sick and imprisoned in the world.

When we pray for the government, it isn't just ours it is all governments and we pray that every government leads God's children as if God were present and leading and where governments fail to love their people we ask for God to tear those governments down.  That applies to us as much as it does to anyone else.

When we pray for the mission and ministry of the Church we don't mean just our congregation or our denomination.  We pray for everyone united under Christ.

Martin Luther allegedly said, "all of life is prayer."  Which would include this thread, that other thread you referenced and everything the both of us are going to do today.

All of it won't be great prayer.  Some of it won't even be good prayer.  And some of what one or two find meaningful will rub others the wrong way.

If we stop because we think we are leaving someone or something out.  Then even the meagre prayers we were going to offer do not get said.

If we wait until we have the perfect prayer nothing will be said.

If we think we have to pray for it all or it won't get prayed for we are idiots who fail to recognize exactly how the Church of Christ operates.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Interesting.

in earnest prayer, we can enter an altered state of mind. Whether we call this state the spiritual reality, altered consciousness or whatever is beside the point, but it propels us beyond the petty concerns of our egocentric selves into a reality that is all-inclusive.

Nicely put, and I'd agree -- with the 'all' changed to 'more' ---

Reality is , like sentience to my non-profound thought-bag, comes in many layers... 

(I find being a 2 in the layer category perfectly fine...only 2,567,846 more layers to go )

Rumi said it far better...the one that starts along the line of - I was born a plant and died, then an  animal , man, Angel... et cetera.

Quantum mechanics really makes reality a whole new kettle of fish...in addition

to the idea of individualism. (If you see red when I see blue and we both agree to call it 

red ... we both stop at the same stop-light ...

Ah, Entanglement ! You and QM walk side by side in this...or should I say Arm in Arm?

====

And Reverend John; I pray that your well-deserved influence continue to grow.

(My religion includes yours ) 

No critical analysis allowed ... too close to thought and that is like the anagram ... evil/live 'n? To be alive goes against deathe ... and death is like Thadeus ... an ancient wisdom that is out of mortal hands or just out there ... myth like emotion's ole ... a gap in the celestial!

Then,  should we have a break to think once in a while ... Shabbat (chubei) concept for the eternal weaver ... does love's aware work go on during Sunday? That cognizance of the alter Ego ... that hated sense of seeing all-that-is ... the good, bad and ugly depending on time, space and light of the situation except for those that can't see outside the dark side ... there's moor tuit than morta can imagine without the stretch ... ancient Ankh with a glow ... anchora?

Sets the alien aL chimerii ... like myth of that beyond the control of powerful emotions ... so much Taurus to be fecund ... a fertile start?

Now, to the really conservative, that is annoying ... a probe to start the thing ...!

What's the thing? That's unknown we didn't wish to ... a human tendancy towards emotional state ... leaves one sort of numb'd ... like someone happy with the state of the surroundings ... and hating prayer as a profound thought that was exposed ... but few are recognizant of what it-all-means ...

omigoodness, revjohn, you presume on an astonishing scale.

I did not simply assume what they sign on the church meant. I have had many years of experience of people like that. I know quite well what they meant.  And in my lifetime, I have rarely, if ever, heard a prayer for the suffering we inflict on our enemies.

Whether I would barge into a bathroom would depend on what is going on in there.

I have no sense of bad taste if i barge into even a prayer is it sounds ill-suited. If I can use you overdone example or comparisons, I would certainly interrupt a Nazi service (There is one available near here.) if it were praying for the killing of Jews.

The prayer battery was not a joke. That is another of your assumptions. The proposal was quite serious. I remember the story well though it was at least fifty years ago.And I am almost as smart as you are in distinguishing between serious ideas and a joke.

As for my understanding of certain types of Christians and their perverse attitudes, I have preached in some pretty fundamentalist churches, given talks in them. I have also done considerable study of dominant positions of Protestant churches in Canada over the past century and more. I came along accidentally in resarch on the history of temperance movements. I have seen a pretty good sampling of their narrowness. I remember paricularly the diart of a methodist moderator of about 1900 who wrote, Hurray for king. Hurrah for our Christian generals, adding here and there bits and pieces to our empire...."

I have seen something like that even in the writing of the quite saintly J.S.Woodsworth.

When that church sign said pray for our soldiers, I know exactly what it meant I'm not assuming anything. it meant exactlywhat it said.

And when I say we have never had an outburst for the hundreds of thousands of chldren we h ave killed, crippled, orphaned in the last then years as we have had for the 18 killed in Newton, I know I'm not being unbalanced in that observation. And I n ote that even on this site, I have rarely seen a mention of those others.

Yet we have a prayer thread immediately for the ones in Newton. There is nothing wrong in praying for Newton. There is something very wrong in rarely even thinking of praying for the millions who live wretched and short lives to satisfies our greeds, and for the tens of thousands we have splattered on walls and buried under masonry.

I feel not at all repentant in bursting in on that prayer thread. And I think the bulk of your arguments cute but irrelevant.

Hi graeme,

Perhaps.

Fair enough.  Your assumption wasn't simple.  It was complex and informed by previous experience.  How many anecdotes are needed to turn an assumption into a fact?

Fair enough.  In the context of the thread it was about how the toliet paper sits on the roll.

So your personal taste dictates the action of others?

Fair enough.  Is that an accurate comparison to the prayer thread in question?

Fair enough.  It was presented as a serious idea.  It didn't catch on apparently.  I've heard references to prayer batteries though the context has little to do with the evangelist's shakedown you describe.

It isn't 1900 anymore.  That thought does not dominate the United Church.

It said please pray for our soldiers.

Presumably those soldiers are somebodies babies, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, fathers or mothers.  What makes it wrong or offensive to pray for them?

I quite agree with this point.

Rarely even thinking.  You are that deep in everyone's head are you?

The point I made was not an attempt to ignite any fire of repentance in you.  It was to explain why your criticism, no matter how valid, was not welcomed.  A time and a place for everything . . .surely you understand that.

So this thread becomes a time and a place for that conversation.

As scathing as that was intended to be it won't keep me up at night.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Not being into the other's head ... is that like ignorance of the indeterminate soul of God?

That's something else again like the anon a mous alien .. that which we'd rather not know ...

all opinions of taste are dictated by our tastes. There is no other way to generate opinions.

Do I know what people are thinking? When i see a North america which killed chldren by thousands upon thousands, and it still doing so without significant discussion of it or interest in it, and then goes ape over 18 killed in Newtown, I think I can make a pretty fair guess where people's heads are.

It's important to question our prayer. Prayer says a lot about our priorities, about our sense of balance, about where are sense of love is strong, and where it's weak.

Our Nazi church  (admittedly a very small gathering; it is bigger in the US) prays, too. Would I interrupt their sacred moment? You bet I would.

I wish I could remember the name of it. There's a web site from the US. It might be called the Aryan church, or something like that.

Alien; strange thing like a religion of peace turning its back on the conception of war ... knowing what ID's doing ... that free wiles for yah! Wonderful thing "conception" as a metaphor of many things ... IÐ (large case of ð, an esh, or ethe, iche in Cyrillic) can come at you as thought. Then the Latin desire shuns Greek as tossing koine into the fountain! Sunnamite woman as psyche; Ur out there? Ursalis Major ... no bull ... just a chit bucket or piece of the larger case ...

Everyone should have a Bucket List to place thoughts in for when your out of here ...

There is, or was a site, Graeme, called Four Winds of the Compass, that advocated free will for everyone ... without reverence for the weaker power in indeterminate dimensions ... where would thought be? Without respect for all how could things be Utilitarian in philosophy? Then one minister told me such things we bad ... philosophically I presume, or as HG says ... I wouldn't know! Just because "i" don't speak as he wishes me to ... he finds me indeterminate. Isn't that phun ais? Give it another Krank ... thus ID spins ... like DOS ... processes a broad reach ... once you gain access to the coded parts of the disc ... from the ends it's just a scroll!

Tomorrow we could pass thro' a dimple in the EMD ... something that can wipe out all previous intelligence inless it is cast down in stone like manna ... and the gravid will have her way bringing down the temple that shunned Ur ... perhaps it is just a disturbance in ancient thinking ... that is devoid today as in the past ... for we learned nothing by being fixed in the presence. EMD; and electromotive de vice, or corruption of mind that the subject can find no objective in ... a self-defining denial system ... like "control "c" on the Qui board ... Ur flat out in delite ... providing the conception of a spiral galaxie ... like DOS ... the icon is infinite as metaphor ...

Mortals don't like to discuss things bigger'n eM ... the paradigm that produces cross winds madness of the 4-hoers-m'n or uv in Greek that's dark humour and the point men hate such allusions to the corner stone as foundational wee peoples ... integral-elphs ... or Self in condensed form as condescention to the wiles ... so they won't understand this ancient script in time ... as wished. Some us may fall past into the mental swamp as trees growing in the loer water ... mayim or a whole different sort ...

No wonder we have difficulty finding the soul, it won't mix with the emotional dimension ... where we're pas'n through ... for a baptism of fire ... a learning period. Gives cause to pick up some thoughts, knowledge and process eM as wis-dumb .. just a word like gamma-zero-delta ... triad thing ... can be dangerous if without thought ...

But remember you cannot tell the wiles anything, just a story myth or strange po*ethics ... speaks to something unknown inside ... like the notorious "i" that is also indeterminate as the Cos-Mos, and alternate, or opposing mind in old tongues as redacted from Muse ...

In my humble opinion (that is nothing to humble) and happy minds that haven't been out much; this is not reaction but pure co-eruption of the oppressed. Now Freud called this hysterics ... and we don't like to discuss such things as this is like aN/Na anagram of the reflective mind that comes back at you when out of there (emotional state). Some call IÐ live/evil that is a misnomer as it is only evil to the purely emotional ... identifying them as such ...

But you know how the emotional people hate to discuss mental issues!

"Prayer", I have found, means all sorts of things to all sorts of people. I cannot think of a time when I have seen it taught in a Christian church.

For me, prayer is a conscious listening with heart and soul; I can never put words to my prayer, and find spoken/corporate prayer impenetrable.

So, now we're living where we are — this is just an example — I spend time by the nearby river, listening to flow which I hear first in the inattentive way of "river noise" .  When I start actually listening, rather than simply hearing, I hear composite layers of tone and this beome a musical flow.

This music is always different, day to day, the result, no doubt, of water levels and flow rates and all that … physics, explicable and unmysterious.

But, when I let myself deeply listen to the music, I HEAR another accompanying "song" that does not come from the river but is in harmony with the river. I call it (confusingly, I'm sure) the "angel song". It's a bit like a counterpoint score in my… imagination? head? heart? inner ear? soul? A kind of resonance coming from inside me.

Listening to this "angel song" does not give me words but it does fill me with powerful feelings that inform the way I think about all sorts of things, the way I understand words and experiences. It changes me in all sorts of ways so that it nuances the ways I see the World around me. Is this "prayer"?

I also find I need an hour at least each day of silence. I don't always get it and, if I can find opportunities to take more, I do.

In the silence, I first try to flood my mind, then my emotions and then my whole awareness with love — until the silence and love merge.  I focus on non-focus. Without opening their "envelopes of noise and information and reason) I let the pressures and information and words and concerns that have been preoccupying me dissolve into the conscious sustaining of love.

It's a practice I'd compare to  having a shower or bath…  refreshing, satisfying and sustaining. Except VASTLY more so. Is this prayer?

And then I try to write a poem a day… "try" is the necessary word. It doesn't always happen but it does require a type of effort and focus that I find helpful to my emotional and intellectual coherence. It brings things into a communicable relationship with my "social" being: it stokes my reason, thinking and capacity to engage socially. It's where I find emotional range: love, anger, gratitude, curiosity, compassion, appreciation… all that stuff.  Is THIS prayer? 

I don't ask "GOD" for stuff, or to make things happen — that's up to god-filled people in my view — because "god" delivers so much I find it hard to keep up. The more attention I pay to the flood of goodness, beauty and abundance that's EVERYWHERE, the less I can imagine anything I'd want to ask for; EVEN in the midst of the horrors that afflict the World.

It's us — people — who cause almost all of the world's suffering. Bathed in human love, I have seen terminal illness, pain and injury become paths of liberation and even joy. Deprived of love, they become horror and torture. That does not justify the injury at all, that's not what I am saying. I am saying that the anguish IS our responsibility to tend, to prevent when we can, and help "god" heal. We almost always find "god"  a powerful partner in our limited efforts to heal the pains we encounter. So maybe THIS is prayer: helping to heal the anguish we encounter in the World around us?

Or is prayer something we do to give us the strength and the passion to become and remain engaged?

Sort of like catharisis? ID'll wash ...

Here's a prayer…

I would think that most people who pray pray the most for the people who are the closest to them. That would include primarily family and friends, then perhaps people at their church (temple etc.), place of work, sports club, etc. Next might come people who they see and identify with most on the nightly news. It isn't so much that they don't care about people on the other side of things, it's just that they don't immediately personally identify with them. Of course, Jesus told people to pray even for their enemies.

Rich blessings.

Thank you, Mike.  I don't think I shall ever again feel the same way about 'silence".