Prayer

Post by **izeveryboyin** » November 1st, 2007, 3:39 pm

Do you pray? To what diety? Does it work? I need answers and I am running out of sources. My life lacks a certain stability that seems to come to others with such ease. And yet here I am, trying to put one foot forward and stumbling every goddamn time. I've been going to church with my mom a lot lately. I'm wondering if perhaps the answer lies there. I have always been amazed by those people so rooted and grounded in their faith that they could be on their last dime, completely down and out and yet still emerge with a triumphant smile on their face b/c they have come to know some deity and developed a strong relationship wherein they gain strength, serenity and calm. I want that peace. Some people say that those rooted in their respective religions are just delusional, but look at how happy that delusion has made them. Look at what those delusions have afforded them. Sometimes I wonder at what price do we keep our sanity? Maybe I am rambling b/c I am lonely and confused and overworked and tired, and head-fucked, nervous, angry, depressed. What do they say about caution being the better part of valor. Bullshit. Seems to me the only way to tolerate this godforsaken existence is to run forward, hands outstretched, eyes closed, and let the branches snag you where they will. Shit, couldnt be much worse than this.

END.

Post by **Arcadia** » November 1st, 2007, 6:10 pm

mmm... no. Not in the church old way but I light candles with my own ritual. Maybe is also a kind of prayer, who knows. And I don´t go to church with my mother but I still go to the university that maybe it´s a good substitute for that

.
Seems to me the only way to tolerate this godforsaken existence is to run forward, hands outstretched, eyes closed, and let the branches snag you where they will.

you are writing again, friend

take care,

Post by **Doreen Peri** » November 2nd, 2007, 12:47 pm

I haven't tried it in a long time but I do believe it has worked for me in the past. Pray to God if he or she exists and if not to the Life Force of the Universe.

I tell ya what.... I'll pray for you.

Please pray for me.

I need it, too.

Hang in there, izzy!

Your daughter needs you to be strong .... the natural order of the universe will fall into place. I just know it.

And for that, be grateful. Get a lot of rest. Eat good things. Exercise. And have hope.

When it feels like things can't get worse? Guess what? That's when they turn around and start getting better. It is the way the universe works.

Post by **stilltrucking** » November 2nd, 2007, 9:11 pm

“Is what I am doing really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above… And if the light from above is lacking, I can’t in any case be more than clever.” Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue59/59carey.htm

I don't think I can pray anymore
The closest I can come is when I say grace before I eat.
I sit there and think, god eating god

but my faith in god seems more solid than it has ever been
Have you ever read Spinoza?
Me neither

What the hell is postpartum depression anyway?
it has been on my mind since you first started writing about your pregnancy
I was thinking if she is depressed now
what then?
I am either crazy or autistic
I can't imagine what it is to be a woman

But I wonder:
is that what we are, a walking batch of chemicals?
Our moods:
nothing but molecular storms?

If it would cheer you up
I would tell you about the mundane miseries of my days
I seem to be waiting for something
my days roll into one another like waves on a beach.
I loose track.

Maybe I should get stoned:
That cheers me up
but then I got to keep smoking.

I wish I could say something that would help you
I don't think this means much
I been trying to write something here for you for a couple of days now
but I just can't

I been hoping a poet would come to your aid.
Please keep on writing
I may be wrong
but I think you have a gift
even your darkest words
give me hope.

How do you feel when Myla smiles at you?
I think about your love for Malik
lucky brother.

The circle will not be broken.

a picture of my mother from a long time ago
if she was alive now she would be old enough to be your great grandmother,
she married crazy mike when she was 16 on the advice of her mother.
she would bitch at her mother for ruining her life
my grandmother's excuse was she did not have a mother
her mother died in childbirth

Nothing to do with anything
except I am glad you are going to church with your mother.
The Quakers helped me through some dark times. That is as close as I have ever been to a church goer.
These days I listen to the music

"Lord help me Jesus I've wasted it so, Help me Jesus, I know what I am."
Why Me Lord

_____________________________________________________

And yet, for all his detachment, Santayana could be horrified
at any effort to supplant God’s authority in our lives with a vulgar
secular humanism; he reacted with scarcely controlled religious
passion and outraged piety to a scene he witnessed when an
Italian, a “short fat middle-aged man,” spoke to his little daughter
in a way intended to disabuse her of her Christian beliefs: “I saw
the claw of Satan strike that child’s soul and try to kill the idea of
God in it. Why should I mind that? Was the idea of God alive at
all in me? No: if you mean the traditional idea. But that was a
symbol, vague, variable, mythical, anthropomorphic; the symbol
for an overwhelming reality, a symbol that named and unified in
human speech the incalculable powers on which our destiny
depends”
...
“I can always say to myself that my atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true
piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by
men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests

Santayana’s God

I pander you not.
I do believe in the the Power of Myth.

avatar source

Post by **stilltrucking** » November 2nd, 2007, 9:57 pm

Einstein's "belief" in Spinoza's God is one of his most widely quoted statements. But quoted out of context, like so many of these statements, it is misleading at best.
Einstein's god

Doreen wrote:

It is the way the universe works

The god intoxicated man

Spinoza's pantheism, unlike some other forms, was very impersonal in how God was conceived. As a result, many people considered him an atheist and some even labeled him the "Greatest Atheist". Others, however, argued just the opposite. German author Novalis labeled him as a Gott-trunckener Mensch (a God-intoxicated man) because God, even if impersonal, played such a central and commanding role in Spinoza's writings.

(n) pantheism:
(the doctrine or belief that God is the universe and its phenomena (taken or conceived of as a whole) or the doctrine that regards the universe as a manifestation of God)

Post by **stilltrucking** » November 3rd, 2007, 12:05 am

done
sorry about all the quotes

Post by **YABYUM** » November 3rd, 2007, 6:15 am

there is only you. there is only you staring at you. there is only what you tell you. you tell you your own beliefs. Be Leaf.

Post by **izeveryboyin** » November 4th, 2007, 10:20 pm

"Be leaf. Just fuck and be leaf."

Brilliant.

--k

Post by **stilltrucking** » November 5th, 2007, 8:13 am

Yes it is
I was hoping a poet would come along and say it better than I can.

"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. Each man is questioned by life and can only answer to life by answering for his own life, by being responsible. Responsibleness is the essence of human existence." Victor Frankl

Post by **hester_prynne** » November 5th, 2007, 5:27 pm

If you're alive, you're prayin all the time, right? I mean, er.....
yeah....
H

Post by **stilltrucking** » November 5th, 2007, 6:02 pm

every breath
a wordless prayer

Post by **Doreen Peri** » November 5th, 2007, 7:15 pm

stilltrucking... your new avatar... is that a photo of you?

I am going to pray to you tonight.

Post by **stilltrucking** » November 5th, 2007, 8:04 pm

Thanks DP
now I am worried

My sister went through some heavy medical melodrama this past year, one time after an MRI the tech said "I'll pray for you." It scared the beejeezus out of her. She thought maybe the tech saw something aweful in the scan. For days afterwards she kept hearing Bob Dylans
"It is all over now baby blue"

I looked all over for the image source. That source I give does not say what church it was found in. Supposedly it is from a church in Rome circa 530 AD.

avatar source

I put the link in my profile but you know it only shows up on posts I made after I edited the profile.

Hester nailed it for me
we live we pray
it takes a poet to be succinct

I hope this is not too off topic but:

I listened to a show on NPR about nightmares, the researcher said most of the dreams we remember are the bad ones.

Maybe so but I have had some beautiful dreams too. One of them was about a black Christ. In the dream he never said he was jesus, but that is who I thought of when I woke up feeling refreshed. He was one cool dude.

I love my dreams good or bad
cheap entertainment.

every breath
a wordless prayer
to a god who is not there

Because there is no here or there for me when I try to conceptionalize god.

I don't know who this Jesus Christ is that Bush talks about, nobody I want any truck with.

I only went into all this because Izzy asked

Do you pray? To what diety?

Post by **Arcadia** » November 5th, 2007, 9:32 pm

I have the feeling I already saw you in that robes, s-t. I looks more a bizantine image than a roman one, but the link says it´s roman!

mmm... oriental-roman?

Post by **Arcadia** » November 5th, 2007, 9:51 pm

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