Monday, November 12, 2007
Why Are We Praying?
This survey is of course to be taken with a generous sprinkling of salt, but it has some interest in illuminating a growing disjunction between the inner and outer life. Prayer has no doubt become something like Meditation, a kind of self-focused quasi-spiritual exercise, with no attendant belief that it will make any difference, except therapeutically, to the person praying. It is hardly surprising that it continues to thrive in such a form, in the face of an increasingly stressful and demanding outer world. This must be the explanation for the most remarkable finding of the survey - that in London 73(!) percent of people pray. Or is it that remarkable? Considering how hellish London life is these days, perhaps it's only to be expected that at any given time three quarters of us should be engaged in silent prayer...
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I pray every time I come here!
ReplyDelete(I won't tell you what I pray because if you tell someone your prayers, they won't come true).
I think god listens to all our prayers - he just can't be arsed to do anything about them. we're made in his image, see?
...actually, I think he's probably outsourced his prayer answering service to some call centre in South Hell.
ReplyDeleteI tried prayer once. It didn't work.
ReplyDeleteI am a touch alarmed that the survey considers attending Church once a year to be enough to register someone as a churchgoer. I thought my once a month was bad enough...
ReplyDeleteI think prayer works marvelously for those who believe in it. My very Irish Catholic old grandmother got a great deal of comfort from telling her rosary. I think it was a destressant for her -- a calming repetitive act that required her to focus and took her mind off of painful situations.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the only time I really seem to pray is when I'm in a turbulent airplane and the thought runs through my head -- "Please God, don't let us crash!" Or if something bad happens to someone I love, then I pray like mad that all will be well. I'm sure 73% of anyone with a smattering of religious upbringing pray at those times.
i can recommend dropping requests into the prayer box & then lighting a votive candle in Durham Cathedral. Only done it twice, both times for other people, but it's worked each time. i regard the Xian deity as a useful but dangerous entity, like a mad uncle you occasionally ask favours of. Actually, strangely, most people regard me in that light, come to think of it.
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