This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/belief/2013/feb/15/prayer-attentive-that-which-other
The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 2 | Version 3 |
|---|---|
| Prayer is not pious. Like art, it simply needs attention to that which is other | Prayer is not pious. Like art, it simply needs attention to that which is other |
| (8 days later) | |
| Five-twenty in the morning. Unless taken by the cruelties of insomnia, this is the time of day when I am drifting midway through a process of conversion from unconsciousness. Before the thought of tea even, the radio whispers calm assurance that there is more to reality than the small pocket of warmth within which I am currently enveloped. | Five-twenty in the morning. Unless taken by the cruelties of insomnia, this is the time of day when I am drifting midway through a process of conversion from unconsciousness. Before the thought of tea even, the radio whispers calm assurance that there is more to reality than the small pocket of warmth within which I am currently enveloped. |
| And this assurance is always something beautiful, perhaps even the most intensely religious moment of the day: "And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at 05.05 today." | And this assurance is always something beautiful, perhaps even the most intensely religious moment of the day: "And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at 05.05 today." |
| Carol Ann Duffy has called it the "radio's prayer". Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Irish Sea. So the day begins with an imaginative circuit of the British Isles, eliciting some rare instinct of general benevolence towards its inhabitants. With the worries of the diary yet to intrude, my first thoughts are carried along by this familiar liturgy, transporting me to places I have never been and encouraging me to reflect upon the lives of people I will never meet. | Carol Ann Duffy has called it the "radio's prayer". Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Irish Sea. So the day begins with an imaginative circuit of the British Isles, eliciting some rare instinct of general benevolence towards its inhabitants. With the worries of the diary yet to intrude, my first thoughts are carried along by this familiar liturgy, transporting me to places I have never been and encouraging me to reflect upon the lives of people I will never meet. |
| Still half asleep, I am taken to vast stretches of icy waves in dark, lonely places. Yes, there is more to life than the contents of my bed. There is more to life than me. | Still half asleep, I am taken to vast stretches of icy waves in dark, lonely places. Yes, there is more to life than the contents of my bed. There is more to life than me. |
| Some people, I suppose, may think of prayer as a peculiar way of making things happen in the world. And it would indeed be a quite a fringe benefit to religious belief if it granted believers the ability to change the course of the universe simply by closing their eyes, squeezing their hands together, and submitting a request to the divine omnipotence that things be otherwise. Yes, it is easy to be sarcastic at the philosophical naivety of this view. But is this really what people do? | Some people, I suppose, may think of prayer as a peculiar way of making things happen in the world. And it would indeed be a quite a fringe benefit to religious belief if it granted believers the ability to change the course of the universe simply by closing their eyes, squeezing their hands together, and submitting a request to the divine omnipotence that things be otherwise. Yes, it is easy to be sarcastic at the philosophical naivety of this view. But is this really what people do? |
| The great Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury throughout the 1960s, was once asked how to pray. "I just get down on my knees and hope for the best," he replied. In other words, there is not much that you have to do other than make time for it. For Ramsey, prayer was not the heaping up of pious chatter. It was not a peculiar way of getting things done in the world. Rather, it was about listening and waiting – being attentive to that which is beyond oneself, a form of concentration on that which is other. | The great Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury throughout the 1960s, was once asked how to pray. "I just get down on my knees and hope for the best," he replied. In other words, there is not much that you have to do other than make time for it. For Ramsey, prayer was not the heaping up of pious chatter. It was not a peculiar way of getting things done in the world. Rather, it was about listening and waiting – being attentive to that which is beyond oneself, a form of concentration on that which is other. |
| The experts in prayer are therefore often strange misfits, otherworldly in so far that they eschew any practical calculation of utility. Prayer is like art, or rather prayer demands the sort of attention that art demands. It takes time. It requires silence. This was why the grumpy genius of the Welsh priest-poet RS Thomas refused even the presence of a vacuum cleaner in his austere vicarage out on the tip of the beautiful Llyn peninsula. | The experts in prayer are therefore often strange misfits, otherworldly in so far that they eschew any practical calculation of utility. Prayer is like art, or rather prayer demands the sort of attention that art demands. It takes time. It requires silence. This was why the grumpy genius of the Welsh priest-poet RS Thomas refused even the presence of a vacuum cleaner in his austere vicarage out on the tip of the beautiful Llyn peninsula. |
| In his poem Sea-Watching, he spoke of years of watching out over "Grey waters, vast / as an area of prayer that one enters". But what was he looking for in this apparently meaningless wash? What "rare bird" might come into view? And he answers, tentatively, that, over time, this absence begins to manifest itself as some sort of presence, a "beautiful emptiness". It is not so much that this constant attention changes the world outside, but that it changes the person doing the watching. Those who "wear out their eyes as others their knees" find that their perspective has shifted. The world has become a strangely bigger place. | In his poem Sea-Watching, he spoke of years of watching out over "Grey waters, vast / as an area of prayer that one enters". But what was he looking for in this apparently meaningless wash? What "rare bird" might come into view? And he answers, tentatively, that, over time, this absence begins to manifest itself as some sort of presence, a "beautiful emptiness". It is not so much that this constant attention changes the world outside, but that it changes the person doing the watching. Those who "wear out their eyes as others their knees" find that their perspective has shifted. The world has become a strangely bigger place. |
| Even in London, as the early tube rumbles to life under my own vicarage, I can feel a little of this remarkable expansion of the soul. Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Irish Sea… | Even in London, as the early tube rumbles to life under my own vicarage, I can feel a little of this remarkable expansion of the soul. Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Irish Sea… |
| Twitter: @giles_fraser | Twitter: @giles_fraser |
| Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. | Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |
| Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. Enter your email address to subscribe. | Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. Enter your email address to subscribe. |
| Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |