Kathleen Horning- What is the right way to pray?

Kathleen Horning- What is the right way to pray?
Topic: The Phenomenology of Prayer 
Sept. 3, 2015
          
           The Introduction of The Phenomenology of Prayer emphasizes the significance of prayer, whether one is religious or not. A quote on page three stood out to me: “On the one hand, prayer is often personal and private. As such, it would seem to be an act of inner I that cannot fully be disclosed. Moreover, should anyone have access to something that takes place between God and me?”

            Last semester, I took a government class called Religion and Politics in the United States, a course that focused heavily issues that affected both religious and state affairs. One of the assignments for the class was to research different Supreme Court cases relating to the topic. One example was Wallace v. Jaffree, in which an Alabama law authorized public school teachers to conduct school prayer and other religious services and activities during the school day. The petitioner argued that this violated the Establishment Clause of the first amendment, while the respondent argued that it had a primary secular purpose for meditation. The petitioner did not want there to be an entanglement of church and state, but in my opinion, that is not the underlying issue. If prayer should be a private and personal conversation with God, this can be difficult to achieve when surrounded by the pressures of those advocating and those arguing against public school prayer. Does that mean someone should not pray while in school, or in any other public place? Should that person wait to pray with others until he or she is at church? Many questions can be raised about this issue.

            Personally, if I want to have a private and personal conversation with God, I would pray at a time and place where I felt I was secluded and had a quiet environment. That is just my personal preference. This could be in the privacy of my home, or during downtime in the Trible Library. Merold Westphal’s chapter in Phenomenology states the significance of silence during prayer: “Prayer needs silence, not only external but internal silence; for our minds and hearts can be and usually are very noisy places even when we emit no audible sound” (p. 20). Others may be more vocal and may want to pray with others, which I understand, but it may be more difficult to focus on one’s self. Not all people who pray are religious, so perhaps it is viewed as more of a practice for meditation.

           

The Mystical Bond of Rowing

The Mystical Bond of Rowing

September 12, 2015

            New places evoke novel experiences and stimulate the mind with creativity. The world is full of an abundance of places that have much to offer. However, there are always certain places that an individual’s heart feels a unique gravitational pull towards. These places, though visited countless times, seem to possess an eternal quality, one which cannot be snatched by the alterations of time or experience. For me, that place which puts me in a state of contentment, is the James River. 

No matter what season, the ultimate aspect of being out on the river is the interaction with nature. The incandescent fall afternoon, characterized by the changing color of the leaves and the balmy summer mornings, when the river sits with a peaceful stillness, echo the sound of peace within my mind, body, and soul. Experiencing nature each day provides a refreshing consciousness of vitality and passion in the midst of daily life. The idle moments of gliding through the open waters in a crew shell give my mind invaluable time to unwind, gain perspective, and think reflectively. Each visit to the James River gives me a renewed appreciation for the place I call home and the awe-inspiring beauty of nature. In the summer months I spend many afternoons down on the James volunteering for the learn to row camps put on by my crew coach. I engage in swimming, running on the trails which line the shores, and jumping off the rope swing with friends. The river is a place where I experience life and camaraderie to the fullest. 

The privilege of being able to row every day after school has taught me the essential skills of how to lead a balanced and healthy lifestyle while also instructing me in how to manage my time and responsibilities properly. After a long day of studying at school, the river provides a release for all of my physical energy while also rejuvenating my mind. Whatever worries, anxieties, or burdens weigh me down are all suppressed once I take the first couple of strokes off the dock and onto the water with my teammates. In a world consumed by busyness, deadlines, and chaos, I believe that it is imperative for each individual to find a place that brings contentment and renewed vision. For me, the river is my sanctuary, the place where I feel most at home. 

Decentering Yourself to Live in a Larger Story

Decentering Yourself to Live in a Larger Story

(The Phenomenology of Prayer)

September 8, 2015

There is something innate in human beings that inclines us to be part of something beyond ourselves. We have a need to be part of a cause bigger than ourselves. I was reminded of this on Saturday, through my suite mate Daniel, who plays football for CNU. This Saturday was CNU’s first home football game of the season. All the grueling hours in the weight room and laborious afternoon practices in the sweltering summer humidity was done with this day in the back of his mind. Though I myself am not part of the football team, I felt a certain excitement that morning because of my relationship with Daniel and his connection to the football team. All the passion, excitement, and expectation that people invest into a football team makes everyone interested feel as if they are part of something greater than themselves. 

One of the big, overarching lessons that was instilled in me, working at Camp Rockmont this summer, was that our personal stories are small. The purpose of Rockmont is to develop young boys, teaching them to stop living in their small stories and live in the bigger story that God has invited them to participate in. On the other hand, even our small little stories are vast and extraordinary in their own right. My roommate Matthew loves to make videos. Last week he made a video, documenting all the events he went through in a single day, including classes, meals, meetings, and everything in between. While watching the finished product, I was struck by how much one person can do in a single day. In the present moment the events in our lives appear monotonous; yet even one day, when taken as a whole and undergirded by narrative, can be retold as an epic story. 

Our meaning and purpose in life is inextricably bound up in the cause that we choose to devote ourselves to. In the early 20th century, leading up to World War I, an intense, unquenchable wave of nationalism swept across the continent. People became consumed with an irrational pride in their nation. Later on in the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of third world country citizens became gave their lives to the spread of communism, wholeheartedly devoting their efforts to indoctrination and revolution. In all of these cases we may say that people “lost themselves” in a certain cause. They became so devoted to a cause that, eventually, the cause itself controlled their every thought and action. Those who serve a cause always speak of how great and noble their cause is, while those who find themselves without a cause in life always seem to be living a life devoid of meaning, purpose, and direction. Whichever camp you find yourself in, the starting point is to recognize your desire, and perhaps need, to be part of something bigger than yourself. Why do we feel the urge to be a part of something greater than us? Where does this desire come from?

From birth, we begin to distinguish that there are things outside of us, which exist independently from us. We soon realize that there is more to life than our own story; that we are not at the center of the universe and not everything revolves round us. Nevertheless, we still struggle to accept this reality. Time and time again, we place ourselves in the middle of the world, deceiving and flattering ourselves into thinking that the cosmos revolves around us. In the center we become easily offended and defensive against anything that could threaten to disrupt our project in the world, whatever cause that may be tied to. When we place ourselves at the center of the cosmos all of our consciousness is directed at ourselves and our egos become inflated. 

Prayer is the great act of decentering oneself. Through prayer we take on the “posture of belonging and disposability,” becoming conscious of something other than us; something that transcends us in every way. It is in this sacred act that we see ourselves as the intended one rather than the intending one. Absorbed with self-consciousness, we were unconscious of the reality that God has been conscious of us all along. Prayer detaches us, thus giving us a true self-knowledge and making us fully human. Yet as Thomas Merton reminds us, “we do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all thins in and for God.” Unless we turn to God, the world remains defined by our own agenda. Only when we come to the one who has been conscious of us all along do we realize that God sits enthroned in the center of the cosmos, waiting for us to wake up to His agenda.

The Sovereign Freedom of Sacred Place

The Sovereign Freedom of Sacred Place

(Belden Lane/Landscapes of the Sacred)

August 31, 2015

Religious History scholar, Belden Lane, gives four principles that serve as the foundation for his study of the nature of American sacred space. The first principle, which I found most interesting, is that “sacred place is not chosen, it chooses.” The holy has a mind of its own, unswayed, untouched, and uninfluenced by human will. More often than not, we encounter the holy in the most unexpected places and the most unexpected ways. Sacred places catch us off guard. They seem to have their own sovereign freedom, manifesting their numinous qualities, revealing their divine messages, and singing their unique songs to those who were never seekers or pilgrims to being with.

Last spring, towards the end of the semester, my best friend Matthew and I decided to take a break from the college scene and venture out into the wilderness for an overnight backpacking trip to Signal Knob, in the Shenandoah Valley. The week leading up to that friday had been a stressful, challenging, and confusing couple of days for both of us and we longed to find peace, solace, clarity, and connect with God in the mountains.

We stuffed our packs with all the essentials for out journey, and headed out in the afternoon. About an hour and a half into our car ride we realized, to our dismay, that we had put the wrong address into the GPS. Annoyed by the loss of time and frustrated by the waste of gas, we quickly filled up the tank and switched routes. By this time we were expecting to arrive at 8pm and have to find a place to set up camp in the dark. Too far and too stubborn to turn around and drive back to campus, we ate dinner in the car and kept moving. 

As we were driving through the mountains, the sun began to set. It was one of the most grace-filled, majestic sunsets I have ever witnessed. Just when we thought that the sun had finally retired for the night, we would ascend another hill in the road only to see the sunset again, at a new angle. With each new view of the sunset it was as if God were reminding us with a big sunny smile that he was still there, watching over us. What seemed to be an inconvenience turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

We arrived later that night, in the dark and hit the trail with our headlamps, singing songs  and feeling a strange healing sensation from the mystery that surrounded us. Finally, we found a place to set up camp. Struck by the eeriness of being alone on a mountain at night, we suddenly heard a noise off in the distance, a rustling in the woods. As the sound got closer, we perceived the voices of children. Within a few minutes, a group of boy scouts had come upon our campsite. Their laughter pierced through the numinous moment, lightening up the whole environment. 

That place will always be a sacred spot to Matthew and I. Everything special about that trip seemed to choose us. We needed the delay, the many sunsets, the night hike, and the company of the young boy scouts. Though she was hidden in the mysterious shroud of darkness, it was as if Singal Knob had chosen us that night and welcomed us with open arms. Matthew and I did not go to Signal Knob expecting to make a sacred place out of it, rather we discovered a place that was eagerly waiting to share it’s treasures with us. As Mircea Eliade says, “the place is never chosen by man… the sacred place in some way or another reveals itself to him.” I am reminded that scared places cannot be created. They are as uncontrollable and unpredictable as the wild terrain that characterizes them.

Decentering the Self ~ Maddie Willis

After re-reading the last paragraph of the first chapter in The Phenomenology of Prayer several times, I have established a connection between the discussions in class and the readings. During the class discussions about the Cosmos, the “I” in the center learns that there are other objects and subjects that create chaos in the Cosmos or the world around them. When this happens, the body learns to decenter itself from the rest of the world, which relates to the last paragraph because decentering oneself is the only way to become a better person through prayer. Learning to put others before you is something that many people struggle with when it comes to praying. Most of the time people just pray to ask for help for themselves, but learning to pray for others is a gift. In class we talked about how each of us has our own projects that are usually centered around us. Merold Westphal says that praying is learning to “abandon the project of being the center” so we can mature in prayer to learn that decentering oneself is a gift of a lifetime. 

After making this connection, I have been thinking about what it takes to decenter myself, and I have come to the conclusion that in time I will become more mature in prayer to achieve the goal: being a better person. But why is it so hard to fully decenter ourselves from the world and put others before us?

Impossibly Possible- Decentering Oneself

Impossibly Possible- Decentering Oneself

9/7/15

(Phenomenology of Prayer)

The first section in the Phenomenology of Prayer focuses on the idea of decentering oneself when entering into a posture of prayer. As humans, we naturally center ourselves in relation to the rest of the cosmos. This is because we have a consciousness that perceives everything in relation to ourselves. The funny thing, when I think about this idea, is that every single person centers themselves as well. We literally cannot fathom what is like to have the consciousness of another because it would require us to consider that from outside of our own consciousness which is naturally impossible.

So, how then, do we come into a decentered posture when entering into sacred communication (prayer) with God?

Praise and adoration of God take immediate focus off of yourself and in turn, shifts the focus onto the Other. The book makes an important distinction between praise and thanksgiving: to praise is to thank God for who He is, whereas thanksgiving is thanking God for what He has done for me. While thanksgiving is a necessary and beautiful aspect of prayer, thanksgiving still leaves us in a centered posture as we are addressing God in regard of His relationship to us. However, praise is admiration and awe of the character and mystery of God. This section has served as a great reminder to enter into prayer with praise in order to decenter myself and place my life's authority and admiration onto God.

Kaitlin Pommert- My Sacred Space

September 1- Interaction with Landscapes of the Sacred

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the soul” wrote by Simone Weil (found in Landscapes of the sacred pg 7)

This summer I said goodbye to my childhood home. This experience affected me more than I expected. Since I am in college now, I really won’t be home much anyway so why should where I go for a few weeks of the year matter. All logic says it shouldn’t matter as long as I am still seeing my family and friends. Yet in reality this book is correct in that a place makes up a person and people make places. That home made me who I am. All my big life transitions have happened there. I became a preteen and then a teenager. Every birthday and holiday and milestone of my life has been celebrated there.  I never really realized how much impact my home had on those events for me until it was time to leave. That place had become a sacred place to me. With all this being true, I also realized how much we had made that home. As we packed boxes up and the house slowly emptied it didn’t feel right anymore. The magic that made that house sacred to me was being taken.  I realized then what really makes a place sacred are the memories and people there.  My new house doesn’t have the same memories as the old one so it’s not sacred yet. However, it does have something much more important. The people who make my life. We made that old house sacred and for me it always will be a sacred spot, but this new house has the potential to become just as important to me. There will be landmarks and celebrations by my family and friends that will make that place sacred. So while that old house made me who I am, this new one will make me who I become.