Does Prayer Change Things?
1/15/08
Sometime before the holidays I was making my way from the Shuttle to the 4, 5 and 6 trains in that connecting tunnel under Grand Central Station. There were about a dozen people roaming around with red aprons that had PRAYER CHANGES THINGS written on them. A little further on I noticed a “Prayer Station”, it looked more like a carnival booth where you might pay a gypsy to tell your future or pay for a kiss. Being skeptical of (yet fascinated by) religion like I am, I sort of dismissed these people with their aprons and carnival booth as ultra right christian (is that supposed to be capitalized) cheerleaders. And yet at the same time I thought “wow isn’t this great” it’s kind of like that YouTube video of the guy giving away FREE HUGS. Except free prayer isn’t exactly free hugs, is it? And I’m not sure prayer changes anything. My first thought was “if prayer really changed things wouldn’t we have peace on earth already?” So as I waited for the downtown train heading to Union Square, I started thinking, “what does change things?”
And whether it was the Inten-sati classes, my law of attraction thinking, or all the other bits of therapy, healing and self-help reading or just a random moment of clarity it came to me, simple and straightforward. What changes things is 1) Intention 2) Action 3) and Belief in oneself. I didn’t realize until just know but those are perhaps the tenets of my personal, dare I say, religion. No, I dare not because there really is so much baggage there, right? Sometimes baggage with wonderfully beautiful luggage tags and sometimes a suitcase full of shit, and sometimes a duffle bag of treasures but baggage none the less.
Baggage on the conveyer belt of the baggage claim at an internationl airport. But I digress. No, this is not my religion but I am confident that 1) Intention 2) Action and Belief in oneself does change things. And while I think prayer is a component of intention, it is incomplete in it’s ability to actually bring about change. Don’t get me wrong prayer is a good thing. Some of my best friends pray. But to loosely paraphrase Mary Baker Eddy, prayer does not change the laws of the universe, but it does bring us into closer harmony them.
Sometime before the holidays I was making my way from the Shuttle to the 4, 5 and 6 trains in that connecting tunnel under Grand Central Station. There were about a dozen people roaming around with red aprons that had PRAYER CHANGES THINGS written on them. A little further on I noticed a “Prayer Station”, it looked more like a carnival booth where you might pay a gypsy to tell your future or pay for a kiss. Being skeptical of (yet fascinated by) religion like I am, I sort of dismissed these people with their aprons and carnival booth as ultra right christian (is that supposed to be capitalized) cheerleaders. And yet at the same time I thought “wow isn’t this great” it’s kind of like that YouTube video of the guy giving away FREE HUGS. Except free prayer isn’t exactly free hugs, is it? And I’m not sure prayer changes anything. My first thought was “if prayer really changed things wouldn’t we have peace on earth already?” So as I waited for the downtown train heading to Union Square, I started thinking, “what does change things?”
And whether it was the Inten-sati classes, my law of attraction thinking, or all the other bits of therapy, healing and self-help reading or just a random moment of clarity it came to me, simple and straightforward. What changes things is 1) Intention 2) Action 3) and Belief in oneself. I didn’t realize until just know but those are perhaps the tenets of my personal, dare I say, religion. No, I dare not because there really is so much baggage there, right? Sometimes baggage with wonderfully beautiful luggage tags and sometimes a suitcase full of shit, and sometimes a duffle bag of treasures but baggage none the less.
Baggage on the conveyer belt of the baggage claim at an internationl airport. But I digress. No, this is not my religion but I am confident that 1) Intention 2) Action and Belief in oneself does change things. And while I think prayer is a component of intention, it is incomplete in it’s ability to actually bring about change. Don’t get me wrong prayer is a good thing. Some of my best friends pray. But to loosely paraphrase Mary Baker Eddy, prayer does not change the laws of the universe, but it does bring us into closer harmony them.
posted by Nadette! @ 10:23 AM
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