I pray a lot. Grace, lot's of hail mary's and glory be's (Shorter the better.) I get rid of the "thy's" and "thous". It's just not normal. (I haven't asked anyone to "take thy turn", for instance, in a long time.)
My favorite payer is the Hail Mary--just the first part, it's short it's simple and I see it as in praise of Maureen and the kids. (Maureen being Irish for Mary.)(My one confession in Ireland I was told to say "Three Hail Maureen's" for my penance.) It goes like this "Hail Maureen, full of grace (she is), the Lord is with You (He is), blessed are you among women (once again, although prejudiced, I agree), and blessed is the fruit of your womb (How can I dispute that!)
Here's the thing, if each of us has a bit of god in us, then why not direct our prayers each other. At my best, when I look into someone's eyes, I see god, so why not pray to him or her. Isn't that the best way to pray?
Like the Act of Contrition (A prayer that I can't get out of my head. Not my second favorite prayer by any stretch, but my second most prayed prayer behind the "Hail Maureen".
"O my god (yes, it's you I'm talking to face to face, hand in hand, I can feel your breath on me, you and I are a part of a living god) I am heartly sorry for having offended you and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven (losing being with you) and the pains of hell (being without you), but most of all (it's not me I'm thinking of mostly) because it offends you my god (still feeling your breath on me, and the touch of your hand) you are all good and deserving 0f all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace (I am nothing without your grace, please confer your grace on me so that I can make it through) to confess my sins (being open and honest to you), to do penance (how can I make this up to you?) and to amend my life (only with the help of your grace). Amen."
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What do you mean, no religious posts lately? I think I've held up my end. Within the last two months you can find Walking in Memphis, Old Hymns and the Arab Spring and God in the News.
Practicing Bill's method of prayer in recognizing the person next to you as God (or the closest thing you're ever going to experience as God), brings some interesting repercussions. It certainly would cut down on gossip and ill will toward others. Capital punishment would be out—we were guilty of that once before, according to the Christian tradition. In fact, it would go a long way in curing our present social, economic and political ills.
On the other hand, there is a contradictory side to recognizing one another as God. The remarkable lesson of Genesis is that much of our current predicament is due to our nature that strives to be like God. We are constantly eating from the "Tree of Knowledge".
Somehow we must recognize God in others, but not in ourselves. Or, perhaps there is more to being like God than knowledge.
I have two thoughts here. One is that making the Act of Contrition personal is exactly right. As my go-to theologian Rudolf Bultmann says, for Jesus, "[t]here is no obedience to God which does not prove itself in the concrete situation of meeting one's neighbor." St. Luke makes this clear by combining the story of the Good Samaritan with Jesus' discussion of the greatest commandment. So, if we are to be contrite at all, it should be over our failures with other people: our spouses, children, co-workers, as well as, say, the people of Somalia. As the Good Samitan story also illustrates: Who is our neighbor? It turns out that it's anyone in need.
On the other hand, there is another entirely different approach to prayer. And that seeks to answer the question, how do we speak to the Mysterium Tremendum? Thomas Keating says, "God's first language is Silence. Everything else is a translation." Even St. Paul seems to suggest this: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Romans 8:26
Coincidentally we just looked at the creation story in Michael’s CCD class. We read several other creation myths, and discussed how different cultures might produce different stories. So someone living in a hot desert might have a different creation story than someone living on a small tropical island in the middle of the ocean.
So what does Genesis say about those who first told it? Well it seems like something pretty revolutionary was occurring in human consciousness. People had this intense sense of the “other”; that there was the creator and the creature, but – and here’s the revolutionary part – the relationship between the creator and his creatures was incredibly intimate. God wasn’t something “out there”, but something experienced at such an intimate level that we could say that we are created in his image. We are not alien, one to the other. And thus prayer is a dialogue, and that dialogue is paradoxically between ourselves and something totally other, but at the same time with that part of ourselves which is most authentic. So a lot of prayer should be listening.
The other thing that is revolutionary about this “in God’s image” stuff, (as Jim suggests) and the main point I tried to make with the 4th graders, was that it means that I have an inherent dignity and I need to treat myself with the utmost respect. Of course the corollary is that the guy next to me demands the same respect. And as Jesus noted, this dynamic sums up the whole of the law.
It was interesting reading everyone’s comments. Over the last two years I have had the pleasure and privilege of teaching courses in world religion and ethics- two subjects that I believe I am woefully under educated to teach but that being said I have found both courses to be fairly enlightening. On a basic level I have learned much. I find religion and philosophy challenging and interesting but also find that application to life is amazingly difficult – like understanding while I teach ethics with regards to abortion the esoteric part is tempered by the fact that over 90 percent of abortions are for birth control and probably over 40 percent of them are preformed on Catholic and Fundamentalist women. Mostly poor and young, of course. The abstract philosophies and theologies seem to be rarely applied when confronting the possibility of feeding another child or just “not being ready”. This can be said for euthanasia, capital punishment, war, etc. or even how we justify everyday acts like speeding or helping our kids.
It is funny but as I become more and more entrenched in my atheistic ways I find that I am more at awe humanities achievements both for good and ill. While in Istanbul I was completely taken by the beauty and magnificence of the Hague Sofia but I also realized the suffering that this building represents, i.e. religious wars and religious intolerance. It is interesting that god is often seen in mankind’s great works of religion and art but rarely seen in a mushroom cloud or an oil platform or a computer game though all can be awe inspiring items. It is not seeing god in man that impresses me but what mankind has done to and for man (and woman). I see the humanity in the grand and every day, again for both good and ill, that has been spread out before me regardless of individual theologies and beliefs and I am awed.
I am not sure if seeing god in man or man in man makes much difference in how one should respect oneself or one’s neighbor. I wonder what would happen if we took our prayers and replaced the word “god” with “humanity” .
Stephen B.
Of course you are right. And I think that is Bill's point. Like you, he is wary of the generalities so he goes one step further and replaces "humanity" with specific people.
And Myk keeps reminding us there essentially is no difference between God and humanity. "[t]here is no obedience to God which does not prove itself in the concrete situation of meeting one's neighbor."
Unfortunately, the word God has been loaded with a lot of baggage. I still like the word, however, because it keeps a bit of the Mysterium Tremendum in the mix. As much as I'm in awe of humanity, I still recognize that I, and humanity, have nothing to do with existence itself.
I'm not sure it does make a difference ("in how one should respect oneself or one's neighbor") either, but if it does, it is knowing that you are helpless (for your own existence, among other things), and yet are fully responsible. And when you look at your neighbor, he is in the same boat.
I think I need to clarify my position here. Honestly, I'm vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of equating God with other people. All sorts of mischief occurs where we start deifying people. I'm not sure that I buy the notion of that God can be found in the world by some means of human introspection which reveals the goodness in people. If this were all there was to it, I think we would have done as Steve suggests and simply replaced God with humanity long ago.
When I was quoting Bultmann as saying "[t]here is no obedience to God which does not prove itself in the concrete situation of meeting one's neighbor," I wasn't equating God with people; rather I was equating morality with people. Using some traditional images about God, there's not much we can do to improve God's situation. Going to Mass, saying the Rosary, fasting, wearing sackcloth and ashes does little to help God. Jesus, himself, made the point: "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." The point is, at least for Jesus, the demand of God begins and ends with our love of neighbor.
As I've said before, I prefer to describe God more in terms of the wholly other or the Mysterium Tremendum. It's a recognition that all the introspection in the world can't bring us face-to-face with solid, reliable truth. Finally, there is a mystery at the core of things that cannot be resolved, fully expressed, or totally known. This is Thomas Aquinas recognizing, "I have seen that which makes all that I have written and taught look small to me."
One more thought from Martin Buber: “God is the mysterium tremendum, that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.”
Sorry, I didn't mean to distort your position. I knew the line was a distortion, but hoped in context it wouldn't be considered literally, especially when I followed it with references to the Mysterium Tremendum.
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