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I was asked to present at an LDS singles conference on the topic of prayer and meditation. I decided to pick Prayer as a Creative Act as my theme. I also assembled my presentation in such a way that it was impossible to cover everything I had in mind to cover. This was inspired in part by a poem (if we can call it that) by Gabriel González Núñez (eng, esp) and in part by a sense that, rather than just the impression of chaos, my presentation should, because of its theme, actually embrace chaos.
I promised to post a fuller sense of the possibilities here.
After my introduction (I’ll put that in a separate email/post in a couple days) I had them vote on where we would go next. This is what the second group chose:
We had time to cover Praying in song, Other faith traditions, and The Evolving Metaphor of the Tree. The first group, incidentally, also discussed those three, albeit not in the same order. Guess you 18- – 30-year-olds have consistent taste!
I won’t put everything here—just a bit—sometimes the links are enough—but if you want to hear more about what I was hoping for, leave a comment here on Thutopia, over at Thubstack, or hit me up on Thwitter.
(Incidentally, if you don’t mind things being idiosyncratically arranged, you can see my actual [and fuller] files here.)
What the groups voted to talk about it is in bold and italic below. As you will quickly notice, we didn’t have time for that much. Which is great! because it means we had actual discussion which is more valuable than me blabbing anyway.
🛐 Bless this [our daily] bread
Why do we bless the food? (This a socratic pickle my brother likes posing and the lack of a good answer has made me rethink much about the way I pray.)
🛐 Poetry
🛐 Fiction (click over to the files to see the excerpts under discussion)
🛐 Location (I had minimal plans for any of these; I fully expected to pose a question and then turn it over to them.)
Church
Home
Mountain
Wilderness
🛐 The Evolving Metaphor of the Tree (lots of exciting news on trees the last few years but most of what I talked about came from this recent book review; for this I mentioned the history of tree symbolism [including Mother God and rugged individualism], then just gave some fun facts and asked them to create new religious metaphors using trees)
Canopy in the sky
Canopy in the soil
🛐 Praying in Song
A Child’s Prayer (my conversation-starter was an experience I had doing something stupid in Nauvoo)
We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (first, this song is not really about prophets; second, I wanted to seed the conversation by talking about the Howard W. Hunter incident)
The song in your head right now
🛐 Paintings of the First Vision (this link goes to the raw materials I used for my presentation last year and what I planned to pull up for this presentation this year; this link goes to the notes for that presentation; and this link goes to that presentation itself)
Adrienne Criddle McConkie
🛐 More on not fainting
The Gospel of Luke (the phrase comes from 18.1 which we would have discussed in multiple translations before moving into the parable it introduces)
🛐 Other faith traditions (ALL of these are much more complete in my notes; look for the file Other faith traditions in the folder xx and check out the relevant images in the top folder)
The four forms of prayer in Catholicism (I’ve also see it as three or five forms, but it’s the same basic list.)
St Teresa on (not) praying bashfully (St. Teresa of Avila has a LOT to say on prayer, but I thought this was particularly great—hit up my files to read the excerpt)
A tidbit from the Quran (“Resort to patience and Prayer for help. Truly Prayer is burdensome for all except the devout, who realize that ultimately they will have to meet their Lord and that to Him they are destined to return.“—I also wanted to set this next to the Parable of the Talents to see what would happen.)
The Buddha on prayer (although I had several sources, this is probably the most succinct)
Sacrifice of animals (I had no plan for this one. Just looking to see where we might go.)
Ohlone Prayer in the Four Directions (I was really hoping for this one, but Mormons love their Buddhism.)
🛐 The Old Testament (I had ideas for defamiliarizing prayer using each of these; reach out and we can talk about them!)
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Anyway, that’s all that makes sense to put into the world in this format. I’ll post the intro in a few days, but do talk back about anything you want me to clarify or explain or debate.
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