{"id":1644,"date":"2009-06-05T00:03:12","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T07:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=1644"},"modified":"2009-06-05T00:03:12","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T07:03:12","slug":"godsbigblog-why-pray-some-thoughts-from-karen-armstrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/godsbigblog-why-pray-some-thoughts-from-karen-armstrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Pray? — Some Thoughts from Karen Armstrong"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Multicolored<\/a>
Tibetan prayer flags fly at the Himalayan Fair, Berkelely. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Why pray?<\/p>\n

Apparently, I’m not the only person asking that question. No less a light than author and student of <\/a>religion Karen Armstrong\u00a0<\/a>took\u00a0up the question in an essay first published in 1998 and reprinted\u00a0in the April issue of\u00a0The Sun magazine.<\/p>\n

\"Don<\/a>
Don Fausto Perez of Mexico recorded his prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe on this retablo. Photo by B.F. Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If God is\u00a0the all-knowing, all-good and all-caring\u00a0Almighty of traditional Judaism, Christianity and Islam, then surely God knows what we want and need before we ask,\u00a0so what’s the point in asking?<\/p>\n

And if\u00a0the Ultimate Reality \u00a0is not so much the Person of\u00a0the Abrahamic religions, if it is more an all-pervasive Creative Force than an Other with whom one could have a relationship, then maybe there’s no point in striking up a conversation with It.<\/p>\n

Yet every religion worth its salt recommends the discipline of prayer, Armstrong notes. Why? What good is prayer? And what good can it do those of us who are skeptics, who can’t really\u00a0say we believe any of that religion stuff?<\/p>\n

Why Pray? Karen Armstrong’s Thoughts<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Armstrong responds by pointing out that, actually, most\u00a0religions don’t imagine God as something that is strictly “out there.”\u00a0Most teach that God is “a reality that is encountered in the depths of our own beings.” And it is in those depths that we become acquainted with ourselves. We encounter there our vulnerablities and our failures.<\/p>\n

“By putting our unutterable weaknesses into words, we make them more real to ourselves but we also make them more manageable,” she writes.\u00a0We shatter our defenses, which allows the Sacred to penetrate our beings.<\/p>\n

Prayer also pulls us out of our busy, literal,\u00a0habituated daily lives. By offering prayers of thanksgiving and praise — by expressing gratitude — we remind ourselves that our lives\u00a0are miraculous, that each day is a gift. “Such prayers help to hold us in the attitude of wonder that is characteristic of\u00a0the best religion.”<\/p>\n

You can find Armstrong’s original essay in Every Eye Beholds You<\/em>, edited by Thomas J. Craughwell, 1998, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More thoughts on prayer — these from Simon Weil — at “First Pay Attention.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Multicolored<\/a><\/p>\n

Why pray? Karen Armstrong, one of my favorite authors, has some answers for the skeptical. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[34,248,249,250,251],"class_list":["post-1644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-dont-miss","tag-gratitude","tag-guadalupe","tag-how-to-pray","tag-karen-armstrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}