Wednesday, September 3, 2014

An Essay On Prayer. More Than That, This Is A Staggeringly Good Essay On Prayer From An Unusual Source And Unexpected Publication

Please click on the highlighted portion and read the whole thing;

I'm deeply sorry to hear about your brother's diagnosis. I'm sending you my thoughts and my heart goes out to your brother and your whole family. Guess what? That was me praying for you. I think the idea of "praying" is a lot less complicated, a lot more powerful, and a little different than you may realize. In fact, I'll bet you're already praying all the time and just don't realize it.

Prayer is a type of thought. It's a lot like meditation — a type of very concentrated mental focus with passionate emotion directed towards a concept or situation, or the lack thereof. But there's a special X-factor ingredient that makes "prayer" different than meditation or other types of thought. That X-factor is humility. This is the most seemingly contradictory aspect of prayer and what many people dislike about the feeling of praying. "Getting down on your knees" is not about lowering your power or being a weakling, it's about showing respect for the size and grandeur of what we call existence — it's about being humble in the presence of the vastness of life, space, and sensation, and acknowledging our extremely limited understanding of what it all really means.

Yes, this is from the Village Voice.  The writer, Andrew W.K., is not a theologian, philosopher, or member of the clergy.  He's a singer/songwriter from NYC.