On Apr 18, 2005, at 5:24 PM, Dave Land wrote:
On Apr 18, 2005, at 2:27 PM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
Here's something else, then. What if there were Iraqis praying for an outcome that could only have been possible if Wes didn't survive?
Or anybody! I suspect there were prayers for various people to be
elected POTUS last fall. I stopped myself from doing that and decided
to pray to accept whatever outcome happened.
That's it. That's it right there, I think. That's probably the key.
Rather than petitioning a deity for an *outcome*, it might be much more
sensible to petition that deity for acceptance of circumstances.
When praying like that, it doesn't even matter if there's anyone on the
other end of the line. The practice of seeking to accept reality, rather
than dropping prayer coins into some cosmic vending machine, will help.
That first sentence can branch into a couple interesting areas, I think -- one that explores whether there is in fact anyone on the other end of the line; and another that explores whether a genuine attempt at understanding and acceptance through the act of prayer is significantly different from deep self-analysis or the "emptying" experiences sought after in some Asian-rooted religions.
Something like the latter exploration was what ultimately led me to conclude in the negative on the former. =:O
That said, one prayer that the Judeo-Christian scripture highly honors is the prayer for wisdom, and seeking acceptance of circumstances seems to me a most wise prayer.
Unfortunately that emphasis is not so heavy in many sects of the Abrahamic traditions. Your image of vending-machine prayers is quite apt; I wonder how much of it is cultural. It seems to me that in the US there is a general sense that quick fixes are best. Beseeching the heavens for gratification might just be an extension of the diet-pill attitude many Americans have. "I want to lose weight while I sleep, not because I eat consciously, get off my spreading backside and exercise or anything equally onerous..."
One of my peeves, BTW, is those commercials for antacids, where you see some person tucking into a plate of food that would keep a Rwandan family of 12 fed for a month, then grousing about his "reflux disease" (I know, it's genuine, but it's a condition often precipitated by chronic overeating, just as the "disease" of obesity generally is) -- a simpler solution might be to moderate one's food intake. Another is any ad for fiber supplements. The spokesperson talks about needing more fiber in his/her diet ... and so takes a pill or adds powder to a beverage, rather than, oh I don't know, eating a few more damn fruits, vegetables and legumes and cutting back on animal carcasses and cheese.
We really seem to want to live in a consequence-free world. Or if there *are* consequences to our actions we want to shove them aside or minimize them rather than change the way we act.
So "Lord, grant me patience ... and do it right now!" Feh.
Similarly, James 1:5 reads "But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach; and it will be given to him."
Which, to semi-converge a thread, is what the LDS church teaches Joseph Smith read in his teens, the passage that led him to ask for an understanding of which religion (among the veritable cornucopia of Christian sects in rural New York in the early 1800s, of course) was the "true" one. The answer? None of the above. Go start your own, Joe.
Rather than turn from a faith it seems to me that a more sensible approach would be to interrogate the faith and especially what one's expectations are of that faith.
When Nick first told me the story of the mother who lost her son in that
against-all-odds accident, I have to admit that my first instinct was to
wonder whether the faith she lost was such a loss, or whether she was
better off no longer insisting that God spare her son.
You mean, whether in the long term she'd live a happier, less stressful life? Interesting thought. Possibly so, but maybe only if she tried to understand why she saw things as she had, as opposed to attaching herself to some other activity that also masked the deeper issues she was (presumably) facing.
To converge another thread, that's (as I mentioned before) part of my trouble with 12-step programs. They seem another form of addiction rather than a means of addressing the source of the addictive behavior itself. IMO the real goal of any 12-step program should be to self-abnegate, to help members transform themselves in such a way that they don't *need* the 12-step program any longer.
I feel as though I have some standing in making such a statement, having
lost my own son ten years ago to a rare brain cancer. We got lots and
lots of advice on how to pray for Kevin, a lot of it of the "vending
machine" variety ("Just ask God and you'll get what you want!"). Some of
it was of that troublesome sort that suggests that if Kevin died, it
would be in part because we failed to pray in the spirit that some find
behind the words of James 1:6 ("But let him ask in faith, without any
doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the
wind and tossed.").
Yeah, people can think some pretty wacky things. "You must not have had faith as a mustard seed..." or the sneaking, vile kind of suspicion that you had somehow done something Very Bad in order to *deserve* the pain that had been thrust upon you. Sure, we want to find reasons for things, but when we fall back on thinking like that, we're way, way off the path of insight and wisdom.
Maybe some of that came from the need those people felt to say *something* that might be of use or comfort. Maybe they just didn't understand that sometimes quiet hearing of others' worries is the best kind of comfort that can be given.
"Why did this or that god let this or that thing happen" suddenly becomes a question that doesn't need to exist any longer...
For some Christians, that question doesn't mean much, either. A God we can predict reliably is too small a God.
Possibly harking to Job and God's reply out of the whirlwind? That's one of the more enigmatic monologues in the entire Abrahamic tradition. I've seen really hard-line realist type interpretations that insist God is entirely unknowable; I've seen Zennish renderings that suggest something remarkably similar; years ago my own take on it was that it was a non-answer, equivalent to an arbitrary, "Because I'm God and I can, that's why."
As a metaphor, though, rather than something to be taken as historical fact, the book of Job can lead its readers to some very interesting insights both about themselves and about how they interact with the world. It's pretty much diametrically opposed to the snack station-style deity so many want to have.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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