I do not only blog, o, no, I also take part in a variety of forums (by variety, I mean three). I posted the article about the Prayer Surge at two of them, and the replies were largely positive. To the idea of praying, that is. Well, a lot of people pray, we all know that, but I wondered for a couple of days if I was just a weirdo for being annoyed/angered by the very idea. I held off of posting about it on one particular forum for a while, but finally could not stand it any more and so....
I am trying to decide what bothers me most about this so as to compose a coherent reply to the majority (overwhelming) saying that "It couldn't hurt" and "Well, obviously humans are doing a *great* job solving the problem". I think that the very idea is just absurd, of course, but I should be used to the absurd, so why am I so angry about it this time? I mean, really, roll-my-eyes-and-gnash-my-teeth angry.
Maybe it has to do with people dying and the obscenity of praying for the safety of the very people these Praying Soldiers are there to bomb, shoot, and make disappear. Maybe it's the over 3,000 dead US soldiers and how young the vast majority of them were (most younger than me, most young enough to have been a child of mine) and how they were trained (badly) to shoot people before themselves being blown up or shot or however they died too young and for a lie.
Maybe it's the prayer itself and the blindness of people not seeing that when they say "Confuse the wicked, O Lord, confound their speech. . . . Destructive forces are at work in the city; threats and lies never leave its streets," they could well be taliking about the wicked who lied and got us into this mess, them into this mess, that *they* are now the destructive forces at work in the city, and that further threats and lies are forthcoming every time I open the paper.
A combination? Is this just a straw too heavy on top of so many other bales?
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So, that's what I wrote, and still there is the feeling that I am sort of alone on this one. Well, at least one person objected, let history show.
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4 comments:
It seems to me that prayer is a quiet desperation to influence what we cannot -- or will not -- understand.
No, Clare, you are not alone. Many ordinary people are hostile to the bowing down, the sufferances, the retreats, that they must do in so many aspects of their lives. But they don't see an alternative. But this hostility will not, in the real world, be placed by prayer or worship.
Those that refuse to grovel need to show the way to the spiritually oppressed prayer-givers that humans are not helpless and can understand and change their lives -- the small problems and the big ones.
"Happy is he who understands the causes of things." -- Virgil
SE
Second post above was a duplicate, which is the only reason for removal besides spam which I will engage.
Thank you, Sandy E. I especially like the quote. It's good to know I'm not alone on this, as it sometimes does seem so.
Setting aside the prayer issue for now, what jumps out at me is the focus on Baghdad. It seems ironic to me that both the Bush surge and the "prayer surge' (ugh!) are focussed only on saving the biggest city in Iraq when the same people are more than happy to leave the cities back home to rot and descend into chaos.
Oh, and while the people signing up to pray might be doing something more constructive with that time, I honestly doubt they would be. They probably only signed up for this because talking to yourself takes so little effort.
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