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Prayer
Apr 30, 2010 11:51:03 GMT -5
Post by beth on Apr 30, 2010 11:51:03 GMT -5
Yesterday, I read a review in the NYTs of Laura Bush's new autobiography. In it, she recounts a traumatic incident from her teen aged years in which she was at fault in a traffic accident that killed a schoolmate. She is quoted as saying that horrible event caused her to lose her Christian faith for years - only regaining it later in life. She said she prayed fervently that the victim would live, and when he did not, she could no longer trust or truly believe in God. Made me wonder how people in general feel about prayer. Is it an automatic reaction to the moments in life we can't bear to face? Is it a comfort, or just a knee jerk reaction left over from religious associations in childhood - or neither of those? Do we pray for deep needs only, or do we also offer prayers of thanksgiving?
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Prayer
Apr 30, 2010 12:31:54 GMT -5
Post by fretslider on Apr 30, 2010 12:31:54 GMT -5
Yesterday, I read a review in the NYTs of Laura Bush's new autobiography. In it, she recounts a traumatic incident from her teen aged years in which she was at fault in a traffic accident that killed a schoolmate. She is quoted as saying that horrible event caused her to lose her Christian faith for years - only regaining it later in life. She said she prayed fervently that the victim would live, and when he did not, she could no longer trust or truly believe in God. Made me wonder how people in general feel about prayer. Is it an automatic reaction to the moments in life we can't bear to face? Is it a comfort, or just a knee jerk reaction left over from religious associations in childhood - or neither of those? Do we pray for deep needs only, or do we also offer prayers of thanksgiving? So she found god, then she lost god and then later on she found god again. We all have different ways of coping with our demons. And Laura shifted her guilt; she prayed, he died, ergo it was all God's fault because God couldn't be trusted. I mean, really. Prayer is, to my mind, a way of expressing hopes and fears against all the odds for a favourable outcome. I'm not knocking that, but more often than not, god is a device to get them off the hook.
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Prayer
May 3, 2010 16:59:38 GMT -5
Post by beth on May 3, 2010 16:59:38 GMT -5
. . . and yet, I think those who have a background with close ties to Christianity will always turn to prayer in their darkest hours.
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Prayer
May 3, 2010 23:14:04 GMT -5
Post by pumpkinpie on May 3, 2010 23:14:04 GMT -5
Yesterday, I read a review in the NYTs of Laura Bush's new autobiography. In it, she recounts a traumatic incident from her teen aged years in which she was at fault in a traffic accident that killed a schoolmate. She is quoted as saying that horrible event caused her to lose her Christian faith for years - only regaining it later in life. She said she prayed fervently that the victim would live, and when he did not, she could no longer trust or truly believe in God. Made me wonder how people in general feel about prayer. Is it an automatic reaction to the moments in life we can't bear to face? Is it a comfort, or just a knee jerk reaction left over from religious associations in childhood - or neither of those? Do we pray for deep needs only, or do we also offer prayers of thanksgiving? Honestly, the woman's feelings that you are talking about here were very normal after the situation that occurred. Alot of people turn away from God when something goes tremendously wrong in their lives because they feel he has stopped helping them, so they just stop praying. Eventually, most who had believed for most of their lives will go back to God again after they snap out of the sorrowful period. I try to pray every night before bed. Not only when things are tough, but just out of habit, and to pray for the health, well being and safety of my family, friends and self. And I do say thanks in my prayers as well. I feel that they are heard and that all prayers are heard.
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Prayer
May 4, 2010 6:15:56 GMT -5
Post by beth on May 4, 2010 6:15:56 GMT -5
Yes, I think you're right in regard to prayer being the normal reaction of a Christian to a tragic event that moves totally out of their control. As another example, I read a book about the Ramsey child's murder in Colorado, 10 years or so ago, that mentioned her mother praying for God to bring her back to life when her body was discovered. It sounds outlandish, but, in fact, that would have been a normal reaction for a practicing Christian. The kind of prayer you describe at night is similar to meditating, I think. A personal moment with God that also allows you to contemplate what's going on in your life.
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Prayer
May 4, 2010 13:43:03 GMT -5
Post by Wonder Woman on May 4, 2010 13:43:03 GMT -5
Well, for me, since I am not religious anymore, a prayer is more a sending out to the atmosphere, a hope or a wish, generally for good things for others, and too, thanksgiving.
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Prayer
May 4, 2010 21:28:11 GMT -5
Post by sadie on May 4, 2010 21:28:11 GMT -5
Well.......I think it can be all of those things......desperation can make you turn to prayer.....promise all sorts of things. I've always wondered why would God answer some prayers and then not others.........what is the criteria......they always say there is a plan......and we're not meant to understand it until later.......how does that sit in your mind or your heart when it is your loved one that you are losing...........let's say it is a bus wreck filled with children........how do you hold your live child next to your neighbor that their child didn't make it or vice versa? Why are there seemingly wonderful people that die and people that are horrible or have done horrible things that seem to escape death over and over?
I try to give thanks for simple things.........have no idea when there are plagues, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc......that God would have the time to listen to individual prayers..........
I guess like WW......I send out wishes and good thoughts in general hoping that will go out in the world.
But.....I still have to say that if I got a call in the next few minutes about one of my family in danger..........I'd be praying and promising things in a heartbeat...........so what does that say?
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Kay
Apprentice
Texas Bluebonnets
Posts: 109
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Prayer
May 4, 2010 22:11:58 GMT -5
Post by Kay on May 4, 2010 22:11:58 GMT -5
I guess you could call me "religious" at least I attend church on a regular basis. I also pray daily, sometimes for wants and needs, sometimes just to give thanks and not at a specific time either, but just generally throughout the day, a running conversation if you like. I've had people pray for me when I went through a profound loss, and I felt those prayers comfort and heal me, a mountaintop experience, some call it, whatever you might believe, it forever changed me. I've prayed for people in great turmoil and pain and have had them say they felt comforted, so I believe those prayers had made a difference. I just know, without a single doubt, that anything good and kind that exists in me, comes from Him. I'm way more blessed that I have a right to be.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Prayer
May 4, 2010 22:36:39 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 4, 2010 22:36:39 GMT -5
I guess you could call me "religious" at least I attend church on a regular basis. I also pray daily, sometimes for wants and needs, sometimes just to give thanks and not at a specific time either, but just generally throughout the day, a running conversation if you like. I've had people pray for me when I went through a profound loss, and I felt those prayers comfort and heal me, a mountaintop experience, some call it, whatever you might believe, it forever changed me. I've prayed for people in great turmoil and pain and have had them say they felt comforted, so I believe those prayers had made a difference. I just know, without a single doubt, that anything good and kind that exists in me, comes from Him. I'm way more blessed that I have a right to be. I think you are more spiritual than religious
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Erasmus
Moderatorz
Deep Thought Mod
"We do not take prisoners - we liberate them" - http://www.aeonbytegnosticradio.com
Posts: 2,489
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Prayer
May 21, 2010 18:32:01 GMT -5
Post by Erasmus on May 21, 2010 18:32:01 GMT -5
There's a child in all of us that wants Mummy to make it better. I found this an excellent counter to the why does God allow evil? critique. To understand it though, requires what I feel are not so much two levels of 'God' as much as two understandings of what 'God' means. On the one side is what I call Stomping Jehovah, the deity imagined by bible-thumpers and genocidal empire-builders alike saying God made me kill them and without God's law we'd all be fighting and raping and thieving. Maybe they would, but plenty of that has been done in God's name and cultures that had never heard of the Biblical God managed more humane civilizations than some full of his name. For myself, I have no desire for any kind of unpleasantness, even to kill an insect (I might make the occasional exception for kicking small yappy dogs and boys under a bus or in the river!), nor do I feel particularly envious of other people's possessions save for some clothes I can't wear in public that have no religious reference I know of, and a sexual turn-down is a turn-off that I have no interest in sexual activities with anybody who has made it clear they do not or cannot, so let's do what they enjoy, despite spending most of last year being told for most of last year that wanting sex with people who do not is absolutely normal behaviour and there is something wrong with me for responding to another's feelings instead of enforcing my own - as long as she stops resisting, I can claim it some kind of grudging consent and get my jollies with a clear conscience. Why bother? On the other side is The god above God, that is a concept of divinity as beyond manifestion, something from which 'creation' is an alienation, a falling away, a formation of the purity of Einstein's Energy into the messinesss of quarks and photons and atoms and molecules and all that gubbins far removed in quality from the Purity it is a degraded form of. That God won't answer your prayers because that God is not a Cosmic Warlord. The godhead is a state of consciousness, not a personification ruling the cosmos. It is beyond that, but what is so great for us is that it is Mind and we are part of Mind self-aware and imaginative, as less evolved animals are not. "Ye are gods and children of the most high god" (Psalm 82) and Elohiym made "Man in their own likeness, male and female created They them" (Genesis 1). But "God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. If would be fitting for the gods to worship men" - Gospel of Philip, Logion 85:1-4I don't doubt that some prayers appear to be answered, and they are not necessarily to the Biblical 'God'. I am certain that more ritualistic forms of manipulating the materialistic world can work, because we have the mentality to surpass and control that world, or to lever its powers to our advantage - but unless we know very definitely what we are doing, may be like child joyriders, that what we have started we can neither stop nor even direct. Commonly in the New Testament we read Thy faith has cured thee and its like, and the Church interpretation is Faith that I can cure you. That's not what it says though. Maybe it means Your certainty in cure has cured you even though the certainty needed a figurehead to focus on because the individual could never put enough faith in their own ability to manipulate physical conditions. To believe that way, that an external 'divine' force did it, is to render yourself mentally subservient to whatever you believe that force to be. The true Prayer though, is meditation, awakening the inner divinity that sees through all this material dross and treats it with equanimity. True 'God' is The peace that passeth all understanding. If it were possible to understand, it would not be the real thing: The Way that can be explained is not the eternal Way: it can only be experienced, and for each the experience is different. 'God' is not power. Perhaps 'God' is Authority (in part). There is a tale of a bandit threatening a Zen abbot for the treasury: "Do you realise you are looking at man who will torture to death without any qualm?" The abbot: "Do you realise you are looking at a man who can be tortured to death without any qualm?"So who had the ultimate Authority?
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Prayer
May 23, 2010 22:39:42 GMT -5
Post by beth on May 23, 2010 22:39:42 GMT -5
Thank you for the good read, Erasmus. I have to tell you the adults in my home the past two weeks have thoroughly enjoyed reading several of your posts. I'll read this again tomorrow and find a point or 2 to discuss. Wouldn't want to be a small yappy dog or boy on your street.
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Prayer
May 24, 2010 21:41:33 GMT -5
Post by beth on May 24, 2010 21:41:33 GMT -5
I used to know a few people of the pagan persuasion who used 'magick' to bend reality to their needs and wishes.
When you think about it, that kind of thing is similar to prayer, and even, perhaps, less supernatural because the concept has to do with projecting energy from one person to another.
If one wants to scoff, they might consider it ridiculous, but for those who do not believe in Christianity, prayer must seem even more far-fetched.
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