The Phenomenology of Prayer Thesis Analysis


    Prayer is something that I have been taught to do since I was little. Even as a toddler, I was taught to bow my head, close my eyes, and be silent for a moment and listen to the prayer before dinner. However, I never understood prayer until I was a teenager. Until then, I had never prayed to God on my own, but since then I have tried to maintain a close relationship with God through prayer. The teachings of Benson and Wirzba in The Phenomenology of Prayer opened my eyes to new methods of prayer that I had not known before. I had never encountered a book that focused on how we pray. I agree completely with the thesis that prayer is too deep to fully put into words and, therefore, everything that is written has to be taken with a grain of salt. Prayer is a conversation between a person and God which cannot be expressed in language. The feelings and emotions that are poured into prayer are exquisitely summed up by Benson and Wirzba as a “decentering of the self.” Even the first few pages of the chapter made me analyze how I pray and allowed me alter how I pray to have a better conversation with God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lett- Own topic- #1

In reflection of the Pacific Crest Trail video, it's amazing to me how united every hiker seems to be. Once you're on the trail it's as if you are apart of a separate universe. In the normal universe, people are labeled by class or what job they have, but on the trail everyone is of equal status and is treated as human. It's beautiful. I loved listening to what motivated each one of the hikers to finish their journey and i loved seeing the reactions once they did reach the end. While i am not sure if i would be able to go on such a journey, videos like this definitely make one get motivated to complete a big task like this. The other thing that fascinated me was that while it seemed many of the hikers were united and taking this trip together, each journey is specific in it's own right. That is what interests me so much about the idea of Long distance hiking. It's very relateable to our everyday walk of life; we all have people we encounter over the course of ou...
Read more

Roberts Phenomenology of Prayer

In chapter three of Phenomenology of Prayer, there are a few paragraphs on to whom a prayer is addressed. It says in the first paragraph, that the people who pray address their prayers to the divine and then wait for a response. So where do the prayers go? The prayers go to God or the divine and then God or the divine sends forth an answer. In another paragraph, a prayer is related to an artist and their painting. Sometimes an artist paints with a specific audience or person in mind. Sometimes it is a gift for a specific person. Other times, the artist paints without an audience. Or, the painter has someone in which they are painting for but does not disclose it. This is related to prayer because sometimes a person prays with a specific target in mind but other times, they are unsure of who the target should or can be. This metaphor was helpful in the understanding of to whom a prayer is addressed.
Read more

Phenomenology of Prayer#1

The first chapter of this book focuses on prayer with a decentered self. I think that this is necessary when it comes to praying seriously. When praying you are talking to a higher being. A being that you believe is more powerful than you. So you shouldn't be focused on yourself when you pray but your relationship to whatever you're praying towards. If you think of yourself while you're praying it defeats the purpose of praying.
Read more