Thanks, Fhansen,
My comments were addressed, as I had hoped my last paragraph and, I believe, the tone of the majority of the thread show, toward intercessionary prayer, or prayers of petition. For the most part, those seem to fall into the category of personal wishes, even to the avoidance of necessary consequences. Clearly even Jesus’ prayer to “let this cup pass” didn’t mean that He wasn’t ready to do the deed as described in the Gospels, or even that He thought it was unnecessary. We all wish that it didn’t hurt to go to the dentist, express that, and go in and sit down.
Having myself had a life altering spiritual revelation, I am not in a position to argue that the Invisible or Unknown doesn’t inform the ordinary course of living. Indeed, I feel I covered that, albeit briefly, even encouraging devotional prayer.
I’m mainly concerned here about that part of prayer culture that makes God and Good too much of a personality dynamic admitting of private priorities as distinct from Impartial Love. An example of that might be two teams or two armies each invoking God’s help to overcome the opposition. Such victories are determined by the gifts, abilities, and conditions as they exist on the field to the extent that they are utilized by the participants, whatever their (free) will. One act of free will is to complain, or to wish for magic. Another is to really work hard at what you are doing so you get what you want, including internal conversations describing outcomes. Those don’t, as far as I can see, invoke or involve any ad hoc Divine intercession, nor do they need to, however fervent our wishes. And we might remember, as they say in sports, “pain is necessary, suffering is optional.”
Although my understanding of “miracle,” the commonly understood result of intercessionary prayer, is that it is a lessening of the seeming objective confinement, those can as well be due to a change in perception or other dynamic. As Asimov said, “any technology sufficiently advanced appears to be magic.” I mentioned before the perspective of someone from Biblical times watching us use a remote on a car, television, or whatever. Surely a confirmation of “action at a distance,” eh? But then there is the thing about paired particles…
And a miracle is a reduction of the seeming confinement. In another thread the posters are bogged down in reactive arguments relative to one word in the OP’s original post, not even addressing in part the actual question. As soon as anyone sees past the emotions, it is not the same situation of involvement as it seemed to be. Did anything change? Yes; the perception of the reader. Did the original circumstance change? No. It appeared, due to emotional loading and/or ignorance to be what it wasn’t.
That is not even to mention that the body does weird things. Richard Bandler literally talked his mother out of terminal cancer in a few hours; she lived another eleven years. She had scripted herself into dying. Mitigating the script “cured” the cancer–it allowed her body to revert to health mode instead of orchestrating its own demise. Such incidents are common, either self administered or through others, whether through prayer or secular linguistic methods. Again, the “interventions” of God is in the existence of the original laws and dynamics of Being, which we not only do not fully understand, but even cloud over with our persistence in insisting on intervention. Again I respectfully point to the cargo cults as an illustration of what we might commonly do, thinking we are “praying.”
So, yes, we ought to pray,. But let it be prayers of opening to Wonder, the root meaning of “miracle.” Isn’t it the greatest miracle that we are consciously, or not, aware? That we can explore this Creation as it is, and not how we commonly make it up to be? My most common prayer, if you will, is one of gratitude, focusing on the astounding good fortune that constitutes the circumstances of my living.
