Today we discussed prayer. I was raised Catholic, and have found disfavor with some of the ritualistic ways you are to blindly follow through Catholic dogma. I find that there is a God, not just because science can't explain certain things, but that God describes that which is perfect. And life is perfect.
But back to Prayer. Since becoming more active in the homeschooling community here in my town, I have been part of several group blessings, many openings and closings in prayer, and none of them are familiar.
Some are even abrasive. For one, most everyone overuses the word "just" and in doing so, negates it. "Lord, I just thank you" and then immediately followed by "And Father, I just want you to bless this group" which obviously is a second list item messing with the first and therefore...but that's semantic and I'm that way. But seriously, cut down on the "just" interjections. It's filler, like the word "um."
Also, many leaders are poor speakers. Their prayers are more like...rambles. I get very uncomfortable. "Do you people not prepare?" I end up thinking.
I voiced this to my husband who was raised with several aspects of Protestantism in his multi-faceted family. He says that these prayers are honest, moved in the moment, from the heart and moved because that is how the individual feels.
My counter-argument is that Catholics pray a recitation--that when speaking or thinking these words, the weight of history comes down upon you, the voice of Jesus because these were the words He taught you to speak comes down upon you, the hierarchy of Pope and Archbishop all the way down to me--this hierarchy becomes flattened and we are the same entity, we are a community, and to speak these words moves you--really,
really moves you.
He said, that's Dogma.
Catholics, he said, were the first to successfully employ the power of sound and music to move a group of people, as in the movies when you feel the way you feel but you can't really explain why. Catholicism--just walk through the door and you are greeted by a sound that you
feel, whether that sound is silence or music.
I agreed. Catholicism is tactile. You kneel, you touch your host, your chalice, your holy water. You breathe your incense, you touch your books, the organ reverberates through your bones. You shake hands and greet those around you, clamoring over others to get a single tip of a single finger in contact. You are physically touched when in mass.
But back to the prayer, when you speak a prayer, though Dogmatic to speak, though designed, he asserts it is merely a recitation and that negates the necessity for comprehension.
I point out that when speaking a prayer as written brings the gathered closer together, that those listening are in sync with the orator, but with this Protestant prayer (as we have blanketly called it) the listener is one moment behind, a follower. He says that in Protestantism, there are groups of things you can say, and that with experience, I can follow the speaker, and how the speaker is moved. I can hear where their spirit takes them without disconnect. I acknowledge that I have little experience with these prayers.
The banter ended organically, after I mentioned that there seems to be no art in this new kind of prayer. Which, I countered myself, is Dogma. Art is beautiful, and we are drawn to it, easily controlled by it.
I think about the words being recited. I always understood, but I am unique in that I understand a lot that others don't, and I have a drive to understand more. I know the words I say and I say, those words move me. They transport me. They take me through time, through space, they put me with God.
These ramblings, as I called them, as I feel them to be, with my husband's description of being made of recognizable parts, much like Legos I imagine, these ramblings are like waves of movement. You are moved in parts, in sections, in moments. When you pray in a Catholic gathering with a Catholic prayer, it is like a river. There are no waves, there is no grasping back at reality, there is no moment to breathe, to wait, to restabilize. You are taken away. The mass is often an hour and a half long. You are taken on a fastforward journey for an hour and a half, and when mass is closed, an entire congregation exhales. You are reminded that you breathe, and with this breath, you are unique as well as part of a whole. I don't know what it is like to sit through a non-holiday Protestant service.
I have not spoken a Catholic prayer in quite some time. I teach the children the Our Father, but my husband has this extra sentence on the end that separates me. I can't remember the words to any of the others. I grapple for them, but they elude me. The power over me is broken, like a mispoken spell.
Words that are spoken have power, whether we know them inside our bodies before we hear them or not. No,
words are not pointless, Heather. Even words we say or hear often, or grammatically find redundant. Now, to just find my peace with "just."
