To pray or not to pray? That is the question.

What are my thoughts on prayer?

Prayer plays a small role in my life. Over the past twenty years, I've found praying to be a waste of time.  What does prayer achieve and who or what does one pray to?  There have been a few opportunities where I was asked to pray.  I attended a Christian retreat, called Via De Cristo, where I was a prayer/chapel keeper, of all things.  This is quite a job for an atheist to fill. There was some value and intent to my prayers that weekend. We prayed for each of the the presenters before they took the stage.  My verbal prayers focused on encouraging the speaker and helping them relax before speaking in front of a group.  It's strange but I could say nice, intimate things in prayers that I wouldn't say otherwise.  Why not say those things outside of praying?

Recently, I began experimenting with prayer again.  This time it is solely for my own purposes.  I tried praying on my walk from the train to my office.  I realized that I do not know how to pray.  My god is not some sentient being or spirit in the sky looking down at me.  I cannot pray to that.  Perhaps I pray to my higher self.  In the end, I realized that if I want to pray then I prefer to do it with other people.  Now my quest is to find others who want to pray in ways that I can relate to.  I would rather begin with something other than "Dear Lord, blah blah blah..."  I enjoy Native American prayers that relate to nature.

Let the experiment continue.

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