How can we pray if there are things in prayer we do not believe?
Many people treat prayer like a treatise, picking through the book for doctrinal points. While we should not assert things we do not believe, prayer is not philosophy. Prayer is poetry. The sound of the words, the rhythm and cadence, are integral to prayer. "Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines" is not the same as "Some days are sweltering." The 'content' is loosely the same, but one is poetry.
When we say "This is the Torah God gave to Moses" as we hold the Torah aloft in the Sabbath service, we can recite that declaration even if we have doubts that the Torah is the literal, verbatim word of God. The declaration is deeper than the definition. It is a current carried from the past into the future. "Beauty is truth and truth beauty -- that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know" famously declared Keats. Clearly not if you have to balance a checkbook. But we do not read poetry for information and we do not pray from the newspaper.
Over the years a prayerbook or hymnal becomes a vessel into which the aspirations and sometimes frustrations of the ages have been poured. They are the resource. Prayer connects us to one another, in shared longing for our own lives and for the world. Singing together changes the spiritual atmosphere. When one of us is sad, or broken, or cannot sing, the voice of another will lift him up and help soothe his spirit. It little matters if the words on the page would find their way into a list of approved beliefs.
We pray to heal our hearts and stir our souls. Check your caveats at the door. In here, we reach toward God.
Scott Swenson: Thoughts and Prayers: A Magnitude Greater Than 8.9
Rev. Jeffrey Mark Golliher, Ph.D.: How Religious Wisdom Frees Us From Fear
Eboo Patel: The President's Campus Interfaith Initiative
Rev. James Martin, S.J.: Why Is There Suffering?
Prayer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World Prayers - Prayer Archive (prayers from all traditions)
When one recites the traditional liturgy regularly it changes from something that is thought to something that is felt and experienced.
“The Talmud relates that the ‘original saints’ (chasidim rishonim) used to take one hour to recite the Amidah (seven seconds per word). From the context, as well as from a number of Kabbalistic sources, it is obvious that these original saints used the Amidah as a meditation…the slow pace has the effect of quieting the mind in a most profound manner…” (Aryeh Kaplan).
All religions are fabrications that are embedded memetically across generations: instilled in children too young to think critically and in adults too invested to think otherwise.
God, gods, and their respective nonsensical religions are made up, people.
Make-believe.
Prayer with kavannah is empty. It emanates from the heart although ebullient with passion it is kenosis an emptying of self.
JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I often say it when things get really crazy in the world like right now.
To those who prefer to s*** on this article, go ahead. This section of the website is for those people who believe in God (in whichever form) and wish to learn more about their religion, or religion in general. Criticism is integral to discussion, but name-calling is not. If you don't like it, go back to the homepage.
Not like I never wrote a poem or sang a song in my own life: one just came off my fingers a couple posts below.
Funerals are for the living, heaping indignities are optional.
But there's got to be ten thousand songs that'd serve, believe, don't believe, in what, who cares.
The perfectly ghoulish thing is that if I outlive my parents, they'll *probably* not even know *what* song to sing, and be too afraid to even play it if they did. try and erase my life under some 'true believing' 'hymn.'
But I'm not 'agnostic.' *My* hymns have been all around, all along, (And they are a touch better than Def Leppard, but not so bad as the rest) Funny thing is that in a world full of people arguing over who's 'Christian' enough, 'believer' enough, well,
Even hypothetically, I'd be the 'dead' one. And people thinking like you're talking probably couldn't name *one* song that I'd want to leave them with.
And that's very sad. Cause many, many songs would do.
'Agnostic.' 'Believer.' What's a 'good funeral?'
A good song, a good dance, and, a sad parting well-experienced. Sing the Go-gos 'Vacation.'
Just mean it.
Why?
Agnostic? Allowed. Numb? That's not singing. It's *erasing.* Poetry?
can fulfill thy law's commands;
could my zeal no respite know,
could my tears forever flow,
all for sin could not atone;
thou must save, and thou alone.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me;
let me hide myself in thee
I see you only talking to yourself...
The heat lamps of so-noble Churches find voices stolen
The alll-seeing projected, reflected, deflected Eye, said to sear
Those who are so blind as cannot see,
And squint and peer
Grow eyelids and be....
In some places the Sun warms, the steam heals, the Light returns, and shadows
Are not fear.
:)
Yeah, no poetry in there or nothing. Sorry, did I say that out loud? :)