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  • RLGN 3120 Honors Contract

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    12 visualizzazioni10 pagine

    RLGN 3120 Honors Contract

    Caricato da

    api-278384808

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    di 10
    Prayer und the Path to Wholeness Yoshie Fujimoto Kateada ‘The Rhetoric of Belief: RLGN 3120.2 ‘ Lynch Ph.D, November 29, 2012 Ketenda 2 don't know exactly what a prayers. Ido know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day Tell me, what else should Thave done? Doesn't everything die at last, nd too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious lilt From “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver- A new definition of prayer. Why do we pray? The human instinct to revere. Prayer is offen defined as some sort of prescribed set of actions: something that is done to petition for something, oF te gain a certain result, but what if prayer is in fact the manifestation ofa basic human instinct? What if it is the action that stems feu what Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholie Worker Movement, calls the “instinet to revere” (84), She writes. people have so great a need to reverence, 10 ‘Worship, to adore: iL is psychological necessity of human mature thal must he taken into account” (84), Day even identifies acts of reverence as “the nvblest uets of which men are capable” (107), This human lendency towards reverence cam manifest in any number of ways. Perhaps we need to broaden our definition of what prayer is, because, as the 15" century Persian poet Rumi wrote: “There are hundreds of Ways to Reel and kiss the ground” (36). In ether words, there are hundreds of ways to fill our hunger for reverence, tn an interview on National Public Rudiv, poet Mary Oliver said think one thing is that prayer hhas become more usefil, interesting, fruitfil, and .. almost involuntary ia my life." ‘This brings upa Kateada 3 vompelling point if we pray because of an “instinct” then it fits that prayer is involuntary. It is the difference between praying and “being prayed.” And when we look more closely at this urge to honor and revere, i becomes clear that i is actually’ logical that we should want to bow down tothe bes around is. Conseevationist Rachel Carson wrote of wonder as fictional emotion (Puller, 45). She argued that when we are aware of the splendor of the natural world, we will develop an fonate urge to protect and honor it; and when we proteet the natural world we protect our home. Perhaps prayer is itselP the beginning of this process of recognizing beauty and honoring it When Iwas a child there was a tee on my street that T used! to wave to every time I passed. 1 have no recollection of why I did thi but 1am assuming that I simply had an urge to acknowledge that tree, and it then became a ritual, ‘This acknowledgement, which I repented over and aver again, beeame, ‘or me, a sacred childhood rial of prayer. Isaw beaury that felt aged to persistently acknowledge. ome fs most has evel hee wha payers, Ciena ofr mon in toast tirnstns than adults because they have not been nditioned to ignore spontancous urges, ar to do what is

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