Episode 102 - Prayer

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be close to me [Music] this was a song the instrument of my being has played please dear god be close to me never really knowing if that was happening how would i what does that mean how would it feel be close to me let me feel you here i asked i asked so many times tumbling from my lips as easy as breath i begged you and so stuck on begging i felt alone all i knew was some idea of a space i was asking you to fill did you not want to be close to me did you not want to tumble into the space in my mind i had made for you and with resignation my lips grew quiet space the ache of the absence my prayers dried up silence and then i have always been close to you you said or maybe it was me that said that i'm confused whose voice was that have you been there here all along did i miss you all along was it you within me that cried out asking for us to be together to be in a kind of loving dance i'm letting my mind wake up to the knowingness that the dance has been happening all along and perhaps like an echo of something of yours woven into me a cry from within myself responding to myself was it you who wooed me into silence i thought that was my doubt and my grief my awareness of my aloneness maybe it was you who shut me up you stopped the incessant groveling from something i wanted to see something i already had here you are here i only want to stay quiet forever to go to the places you have always been and discover them trace the interior spaces of your dwelling to know the million miles of unexplored territory that you have invited me into and even in this moment like a mother growing a child sharing a body like a sun looking into the mirror and seeing the face of his father like lovers inside of each other like breath in my lungs you are and have always been so close to me [Music] it's hard to talk about prayer in a deconstructed state it's one of the most frequent things people ask me about is prayer because so many people grew up with some kind of a personal conception of the divine and then that starts to unravel and then they don't know what to do with prayer not to mention how many people even in some kind of traditional or devout spiritual practice already have trouble with the practice of in any way speaking to god it can feel awkward it can feel alienating and i've noticed people can be almost like prayer envious because i hear other people describe their experiences with prayer and they're like well why doesn't that happen to me and sometimes people uh will speak kind of metaphorically or narratively about something that was almost unspeakable so they prayed and they had some kind of an emotional response and so they'll use language like and god told me because it and they're not being deceptive it's the best language they have that fits within the tradition that they abide in but then someone else says well god never told me anything i've noticed people have deep feelings of guilt about the frequency or intensity of their prayers um and that this is not uh simply something that happens with evangelicals i've seen it in the main line i've seen it with people in the catholic tradition it's funny to me like how prayer is simultaneously so meaningful and so profound to so many people i mean that was the cornerstone of my faith experience as an evangelical and yet for other people prayer is confusing and alienating or coming apart at the seams for some people isn't it i mean the wrestle with prayers i find it is how people often walk away from faith feeling like i can't hear god or everyone seems to hear god but me so therefore like maybe this thing's not even real um and i definitely see or know that to be a lot of people's journey into deconstruction is like you said that wrestle with the divine and what is the divine and how do we speak to him how do we acknowledge him and is there a right or wrong way of doing that well there's such an emphasis on intercession and prayer like we say something or we request something and god responds and nothing really highlights the problem of evil and suffering like a god who responds to prayer and yet a world that still encounters frequent unjust suffering and if you take it like you know to the most extreme example you get to something like richard dawkins milk jug experiment where he challenges as a rhetorical device people to pray to a jug of milk instead of god and see what happens because his point is that if as is so commonly said god can answer yes or no or maybe you have covered every possible outcome to every possible event and you're projecting a response from god into an indifferent universe but as a devout evangelical going through a process of deconversion i took that experiment literally and prayed to a jug of milk for several weeks that i would get a promotion at work and i got the promotion and so like i was like does this mean that i'm no longer a christian that i should become a milkist is it like this particular jug of milk so no matter how spoiled it gets it has to remain in a place of honor in the fridge or is there some bovine deity to which my milk jug is a pleasing sacrifice and so i should just keep an unopened fresh jug of milk in the refrigerator on a continuous basis and i'm speaking a third ingest because at that point in my life i was so desperate for prayer to mean something wow well you know one of god's names is the mini-breasted one i think it's as else should i so maybe the milk just represents the nourishment of god it was jehovah the whole time [Laughter] i remember having a change in my life around my relationship with prayer when i heard people talk about prayer being like a conversation with god and realizing there is nobody else that i have a one-way conversation with that doesn't actually make sense so why am i doing all of the talking and and what kind of conversation do i have with people when i'm just asking things of them to give them to me like a laundry list so this probably happened sometime in my teens my late teens i started praying differently almost more like a like an ongoing conversation that ever ended how are you today what makes you happy today what are you laughing about and waiting for spaces waiting with spaces to hear what would happen next but being curious about having a conversation and sometimes saying like we do in conversations can i just talk today i really need to get some stuff off my chest but feeling like i wanted to facilitate a relational experience a dialogue if it really was in fact a conversation then i came across this research by new bauer in 2014 who talked about some people who pray when they're getting fmri scans done have the same activation in the parts of their brain when they're praying is when they're talking to a loved one that there's this sense of overlap between prayer and having a conversation with someone that you love and treating both as an interpersonal experience so it seems that it activates the default mode network the part of our brain that helps us understand and experience past and future experiences of the self but that there's something about prayer that's not just necessarily sending off a wish list to santa claus but something relational something something interactive perhaps and the more that my experience and understanding of the self evolves the more that i see that the construction of self as individual is is a product of colonization and western philosophy and that there are very few things that we experience that are ever truly individual most are relational dialogical dyadic interpersonal and and so why isn't prayer why can't we experience it like that even if we're experimenting i might encourage people to think about asking questions as much as they ask for things i like that i found that to be really crucial to asking questions you know there are lots of different ways to pray now as you were talking i was thinking about all the different ways i've been taught to pray and the different types of prayer there is like what you describe you know the prayers of of intimacy and love of communion oneness with god prayers of petition praying for things you know bring to god all of your needs and you know he will supply them prayers for supernatural breakthrough you know for some some act of the divine to break into the natural world and then a big one i've noticed just in my own upbringing was prayers against temptation and prayers against the devil i feel like i grew up ebbing and flowing out of all four of those i just mentioned but particularly the spiritual warfare context was very much you know we don't wrestle with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers and rulers of the air and you know and our warfare is on our knees and we pray against you know these demonic forces that are coming to you know whether tempt you personally with lust yeah the rulers of the air and um that's intense yeah like it's like we're in this wrestle and we're you know onward christian soldier a metal band arms out of the air they're really writers of the following [Laughter] there was a lot of remember there was a lot of uh in the hardcore scene you know a lot of those guys were christian too yeah they were doing like intercession spiritual warfare in their hardcore metal days uh the crucifixion works well with metal yeah it does you can get those like real bloody t-shirts mm-hmm cross yeah yeah glorify them did i ever tell you about how i waged spiritual warfare when i was young what did you do and did you win i prayed to the devil whoa and told the devil that jesus's love was boundless and that it was never too late and if the devil would turn away from his rebellion not only would the devil be redeemed and go to heaven no one else would be imperiled from hell and surely satan your pride is not this important you you really was like let me undercut this whole thing right here let me go to the source i love that so much what else like if you believe yeah that god is love why wouldn't you do that and all the literal devils are from this like one angel who got angry and rebelled like it's gonna be fine it's just working out with him let's just work this thing out then i would then after i would pray to satan i would turn around and be like hey jesus if satan reaches out he means it this night is hell this is like i was just thinking that we're just seeing so much of your enneagram nine miss just show up in this you're really being the media between god and the devil you're like i know there's been an ancient disagreement here but can we all just come to the table i never talked to god about it though oh you were acting on god's power speak to jesus about it because i felt like god was more angry about the whole thing he's actually the good guy right i talked to the good god it's like jesus i know you love everybody you probably remember like before you were incarnated hanging out with lucifer and heaven those are probably good times right it's amazing i want to go back to your your statements about this like prayer against the devil prayer against evil do you remember how it felt to do that very cathartic well it places a blame right like it puts squarely something on the seat of like the reason why you know this trauma exists in the world whether people are getting divorced or you know there's corruption or somebody's illness or sickness it placed squarely you know the devil's just trying to take their life you know or the devil's stealing their money or the devil is breaking up this marriage or the devil is causing me to lust and it gives you a scapegoat and and that feels just in the human process very cathartic to have someone that you can blame and then to feel powerful and feel like i'm given authority through christ to push back the armies of hell or whatever that is and it it just gives you a seat of power it feels like you have power whether you do or don't is another question but i remember that feeling of you know victory like we can win you know this this doesn't have to be we can change the situation and that to powerless people feels amazing um and i i mean i think even in prayer now it often still does wow i mean think about it right like jesus is i mean he you know he gave those commandments you know if you pray you know like two or more gathered in my name i will be there in the midst or prayers of like you will you you know you can heal the sick or you can cast out devils right like and and i've given you now this authority right and i think to disempowered and dispossessed people to feel like this is the way we get to rule and reign is through this type of weather intercession or type of spiritual warfare act or you know believing for you know the kingdom of god to come to earth through this person getting healed i think feels very uh like you're ruling and reigning with christ so this is we're part of this kingdom army so to speak you know in a lot of the militarism language from the scripture you know gets used like onward christian soldier and we sing those kind of you know hymns or like things that just like we're in a battle and this is a warfare and this is not our home but you know we'll get there one day and there's mansions in the sky and i mean my favorite song as a child was the battle hymn of the republic mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord he is trampling down the vintage where the grapes of wrath are starting it's very isaac like apocalyptic you know he is loose the faithful lightning of his terrible swiss sword his truth is marching on the closest thing that i've gone to a church in a long time is this uh meditation center here and they sing that song but they change it all right really his love is marching on oh not just truth well i'm i'm surprised that's the line they change they change the other lines okay i'm struck by the juxtaposition though between like this light happy song and the the words are so yeah vitriolic it's really yeah it's something it was also i think the song was used pretty heavily during uh i could be wrong i'm gonna look this up to be sure but it was used pretty heavily you know in terms of god and country too and patri you know i think around the civil war time too like that song was uh you know there was this it was nationalism it's a type of belief that you know god was on the side of you know this country and he's losing his judgment the way abraham lincoln right when he would describe the civil war you know he talked about it as the judgment of god and that kind of connection between you know these are the effects of our prayers and our prayers are actually bringing judgment on this nation because of our own sins you know and like and i think in this the context of this country i think we can have a conversation about prayer too because in terms of how that's been used in the public square even the whole notion of taking prayer out of schools and what that means to white evangelicals in particular and how that seems like such an affront in this in this country in particular to our understanding of god's role in you know in our public sphere especially since prayer was not actually ever removed from public schools in america tell me more that any student of any faith may pray at any time of their choosing as may any member of faculty what is not permitted is a state sanctioned prayer led officially to students with required participation you may not pray over the intercom in some specific religious connotation and require students to participate which is exactly what you would want in a free society but any teacher could lead a prayer group that was voluntary and any students may choose to participate you may pray and have a bible or a quran anywhere on campus you just can't lead unbelievers in prayer you can't force anyone to pray which is a necessary part of free religious expression because it seems nice to have prayer on the intercom if someone fear your denomination or tradition is leading it but i would wonder if all of the folks who are so adamant that we've kicked prayer out of schools would have the same vehemence if someone was praying to allah towards mecca several times a day over the intercom and students had to participate in that that would actually probably feel like an attack on their religious expression in the same way that you know protestant prayers might uh seem rather inappropriate for someone who's catholic or prayers to the saints would seem very inappropriate to many evangelicals prayer has not been removed from public schools state sanctioned prayers have been deemed inappropriate and free society just fact alert that's what i said about the battle hymn republic uh it says the song links the judgment of the wicked at the end of the age isaiah 63 and revelation 19 with the american civil war and that song was written in 1861. that connection in the public space to you know god and country um and the separation of that like you're saying through our history is feels like the evangelicals feel very like you're robbing us of our heritage like of our history of expressing our faith in this type of way um in the public when i was a baptist i didn't want official prayer in schools because i didn't want some liberal methodist leading my kids do you know what i mean like it's i'm serious like no there should be no official prayer in school you know i don't want someone coming in and telling my children that in a prayer we thank god for your ancient universe no it's ten thousand years old but that relationship between six thousand prayer [Laughter] we got a young earth here the relationship between uh prayer and nationalism is pretty disturbing i mean i think about like paul ryan recently oh yeah firing the chaplain of the house over prayers he deemed too political which has since been reversed thank goodness oh they reversed it yes i think about um who gets selected to pray at inaugurations and what a signal that sends to the public like it's strategic selection it's strange for me as someone for who prayer is such a deeply personal experience to see the same practice used as a tool of public political expression or public expression at all i'm deeply uncomfortable whenever people ask me to pray aloud or in a group anymore it just feels oddly forced intimacy not to mention most of the time when i pray anymore i meditate so i'm like okay if everyone would take a deep breath clear their minds and let's have four minutes of silent contemplation like that's not what people are looking for if you had told me that you know 10 years ago i would have said you were just ashamed of the gospel of jesus christ many people would probably say that to me today here is diana butler bass is god conscious or active in the universe yes the christian tradition teaches that we are god's hands god's feet god's eyes god's god's arms and legs and heart in the world and so in so far as we do the work of compassion as we are people who are ever creating goodness and love and beauty we are then doing the work of god so that is something that is so fundamental to my sense of faith that we are the agents of god's dreams and desires here in this universe that we are enacting love and that we are engaging in this ever creative um calling that that is god we are doing that work i also do believe that there are moments where something happens uh that we really explain in the same way there's a small percentage of of things that happen that are bad that we don't understand so there's also things that we don't understand that are good and people have referred to those things as miracles or or revelation or healings and i think that that is god's presence and god's action in the world as well it's not that miracles are a violation of the natural order but rather my sense of miracles are healing prayer revelation those things that we think are the extraordinary moments of god's action those are really things that are occurring around us in a way that we don't normally see them and so the sense of i think human awareness is that we have a visual field that is only so wide but if we learn to see with soft eyes if we learn to look towards the peripheries of human experience i think that there that's the territory where miracles or revelation or or healing take place and it's oftentimes people with who who are truly awake who have eyes to see people who become our gurus and prophets and saints that those people simply have a wider field of vision than we do and that that most of us do and that those people can point towards that activity that consciousness of god that we should all be able to see if we just opened our eyes more widely this is richard rohr well uh again to start with those who appear to to know the saints the mystics the prophets the holy ones they certainly universally assert and trust that god is very active so i wouldn't say god is conscious god is consciousness itself in fact if you and i or any human was perfectly conscious all the time which i would equate with being in union with god i think we would always give a loving response if we were perfectly conscious and i would then on the other side say that what we called sin in the judeo-christian tradition is precisely to be unconscious when you're not in this flow of universal communion and no one is 24 hours a day no one i've ever met when you're not in that conscious state you you do very unloving things deceitful things egoic things that do not build but the tear down so uh you know i can i'm almost 75 now and at this point i can clearly say god is able to be active in my life and i i don't have to call it miraculous i don't know what it is i don't understand the chemistry myself but when i trust really trust that that god would love me enough to to work with me on this or that that's invariably when it happens the way it's often put is people who believe in angels experience the assistance of angels i know that's dangerous talk for a rational post-modern person but don't knock it until you've tried it there's some kind of synergy created by trust by expectation by surrender by allowing uh and when when you don't build that bridge that that span between yourself and the mystery we call love the mystery called god it seems uh not so able to happen and yet you know i look at a lot of the healing stories even in the new testament and um there's a number of people that jesus heals who don't even ask for it they don't even expect it he just gives it and i've met people who who have been touched in deep ways and didn't even ask for it or expected and other people who do ask for it and expect it and it doesn't happen so there's throwing my own logic to the wind i do believe there is a power in the relationship of surrender love and trust there's a flow there's a communion and once that span like a spider web is built the flow comes rather naturally i mean i i have to say much of the last 30 years of my life have been filled with experiences most would call synchronicities providence accident i don't know what it is anymore but i know that i'm able to rely upon a goodness that sustains me and that is bigger than me and that believe it or not seems to think well of me [Music] more than i can think of myself i i know that can only be known experientially i think about like my evolving prayer life through my childhood and all the way up through disbelief and into mysticism and it strikes me that because the spiritual warfare stuff i had that in my world as well while i got to a point after that where i could look back and either dismiss it or laugh about it or look down on it there was something about those moments that it made me feel safe protected i didn't have to fear like it was a good way of saying you don't have to be afraid the ultimate power is on your side yeah which is really another way of saying a lot of what i think now like you don't don't you don't need to worry you're okay and i love how spirituality can evolve like that and kind of meet you where where you're at and what you need and part of the beauty about a religion like christianity where you have this strange evolving god through the bible there's all these different versions and ways of talking about and seeing and experiencing god from shepherd to warrior to king to lover to whatever all these different metaphors where i look at the world now from a mystical point of view seeing everything as god everything that arises as god manifesting it actually is interesting to think about how those what i consider now juvenile cartoonish caricatures of some sky god of some kind who's you know battling rulers of the sky or whatever uh which was a great video game it's already a metal band sorry let's take it um but god actually become from the mystical point of view god was that warrior for me like that was i was praying to god yeah and god was doing battle for me yeah christ was an intercessor that's what i needed and i think that's so much what we think about when we think about god typically in society is we often put god in that the gaps of what we want what we need what we feel like we don't have so if we feel disempowered we want the warrior god who can empower us if we feel lonely we want the friend god who can be there for us if we feel for sick we want the healer if we want wherever like we feel like we need we want and we don't have we kind of reach out to our source like please help yeah is it permissible maybe to take comfort in that to find like it sounds like you're saying that too like in those that phase of where you are where you were you took comfort in those prayers and and praying those types of prayers and they brought a great sense of security and belonging to you yeah and that's what i'm getting at is that it's that it's real even if the jug of milk answers your prayer it's a real experience [Laughter] so are we equating jesus i mean to me jesus yes is the jug of milk on the phone fundamental because at this point in my prayer life i'm i'm not a um i i don't really very rarely say any kind of petition prayer unless it's like with amelie sometimes i'll let's pray about this or but i feel like my life is constant prayer so when i'm thinking about like when i talk to you guys i'm talking to a person i recognize that's a story in my brain like who am i talking to you when i'm talking to you william i'm talking am i talking to your pulmonary system am i talking to your auditory system am i talking to a certain part of your brain am i talking to your brain i'm just talking to a story in my head called william i'm personifying your body so when i'm talking to the source to the all to the whatever and personifying it it's the same thing i'm doing when i'm talking to my wife so it really can be as personal as any other personal experience in the world without necessarily needing to literally believe that that's all that god is is a person limited by one locality with one consciousness i think about like amelie needing me to be her daddy and the different ways that might manifest and i'm happy to be her warrior happy to be her friend i think of uh this little trivia but the other the other day we were at a party we live in los angeles wheat is legal here what it is it is the other day i was at a party and there was uh some edibles i thought hey try one of these for the party it was a little stronger than i had anticipated i've heard about this yeah i texted you about it it kind of put me on my ass and i just kind of laid there being the i told you the text being the infinite yes to every possibility and that was my experience i just felt like i was just yes all i could that was just yes and from that yes everything is manifesting every possibility that could happen that love that would say yes oh that'll hurt me but yes that's kind of how i see god in a little a little bit like if you need me to be this cartoonish sky god for now here it is yeah and it presents itself as something that's helpful to my being into my existence into my to my life and how is that not a gift from god and how is that not god manifest as a idea of a sky god yeah and for anyone who might be put off by the connection of uh edible marijuana and the divine in a single narrative that's okay as i imagine some some of our listeners are like yes and so our listeners are like i knew it i knew it and others are in stunned silence um that's the most biblical thing possible uh the bible is a narrative it's a set of narratives that portray a social imagining of god developing over time in response to societal conditions like is god someone who wanders in a garden is god someone who wrestles physically and bodily with someone he's got a burning bush he's got a pillar of fire is god a mystery dwelling in a temple who can only be heard from in zion is god uh a mysterious force that emanates through the entire world is god incarnate in god's own son is god a spirit that appears at pentecost and dwells within people or is god in a post-biblical context a trinity of beings who exist in relationship that is an idea that would have astounded people who were alive at the time christian scriptures were being recorded yeah there's not to jewish people today about that idea like i saw a pretty profound heresy sure yeah you're not monotheists as of my muslim friends so frequently remind me we christians are not monotheists yeah like so which one of those is god well whatever we are speaking of when we speak of god all of those things have been ways that people understood god and related to god and because we are relational beings we require that relational capacity to relate to god the anthropologist tanya lerman spent years studying prayer and when i read her accounts of what she saw what i love about anthropology is they not only collect the data but anthropologists also collect and share narratives right and when i would see these accounts where she would join a women's prayer group for an extended period of time and listen as they talked with each other and then would kind of go one on one with them and talk with them about their prayer experiences and i think of a a story of a of a single empty nest mother who had weekly outings social outings with jesus and how she would um select what she was going to wear and just devote time in prayer in a public setting no one else knew but that she and jesus were out together and and seeing these moments where people facing everyday mundane decisions were in conversation and relationship with the divine to make these choices and she referenced some research in in this work that showed that uh people who pray consistently and believe in a loving god can experience emotional benefits that are similar to seeing a professional therapist i mean that's that's a profound quality of life improvement regardless of whatever metaphor is taking them to that the benefits are true and genuine and measurable of course my main science squeeze dr andrew newberg of course has studied prayer in the brain extensively and seeing the way it can lead to a richening and a thickening of cortical matter in the prefrontal cortex which is manifest as improved focus or concentration you can have a similar cortical thinking thickening in the anterior cingulate cortex which uh neuroscientists would understand right now among other things is the seat of compassion and empathy we see lower blood pressure among people who pray we see reduced stress we see an increased capacity to forgive others and forgive the self we see a decreased sense of fear of people in their social out grouping like there are profound life-altering benefits to these practices but what we understand is they all require some metaphor or personification of the divine to be effective the brain as hillary referenced earlier must be in relationship with the divine not as a a concrete noun or object but but as a friend as a as a loved experience can we also just add to that as well that the those studies at least the ones that i've read to do better when someone believes god to be loving merciful gracious and forgiving versus one a god who's vengeful wrathful retributive uh just yeah clarify that because not all perceptions of god are healthy or beneficial for the angry god does have some benefits neurologically people who believe in a wrathful god tend to have boosted impulse control so if you'd imagine that god is angry and might smite you you have good behavioral controls you tend to have more consistent religious service attendance you tend to have a higher degree of devotion to the practices of your religious tradition there's a high correlation between religious legalism and a wrathful depiction of god but it also um puts people in kind of a chronic state of stress so they they experience increased amygdala amygdala activation so they it's easier for them to become fearful or angry they get increased blood pressure increase stress levels and they become they can become very fearful of people in their social out grouping because the important thing in keeping this angry got happy is maintaining uh social and doctrinal purity um you'll find that people that have a loving god image uh i think like if i were to think of like a really great loving god person that you might know richard rohr would be super loving god because he may have like his doctrine and he may have his orthodoxy but he's not terribly stressed if someone else doesn't share it whereas people have that angry god depiction and i'll make assumptions here but i think of someone like franklin graham for whom conformity to a set of doctrinal norms is very important and for whom deviation from behavioral prescriptions in the religious tradition put individuals and society at existential risk it turns out if you brain scan and you do blood tests on people in that state it is an ongoing stressful way to live for a human animal and to even quote jonathan martin he's like i don't even know if franklin graham is smart enough to have a set of doctrinal practices but let's be fair franklin graham may be a serial killer that is not a serial killer is he the golden state killer angry god right so like angry god is loving god usually doesn't have enough juice if like so if you're dealing with addiction issues sometimes there are people in the data who have had radical and important behavioral changes in response to a religious fundamentalism which centers a wrathful god what we have found in many cases is if the road stops there the behavioral changes can be temporary they can be years long but it seems in many cases they're a necessary maturing is an embrace of a loving god and an increased sense of freedom uh because you can only control your behavior for fear of retribution for so long [Music] so i think about people in therapy we're trying to change and they try and change by by being self-critical and it leads to shame which often drives the behavior that they were trying to change in the first place and so when i say to people if you can learn to see that god loves you here and now before you change and if you can learn to be okay with who you are here and now before you change then ultimately when you change it will be because you're ready to change and because you already feel loved and you might not need to engage in some of those behaviors anymore instead of changing to feel loved and then you're only as loved as as long as you can maintain behavioral change in response to that for most of my life and let's be clear there's it there's not a binary angry or loving it is a spectrum and for most of my life i was probably toward the middle there's a lot of loving god there's a lot of angry god as a good southern baptist i was obsessed with sex and sexuality from my entire young adulthood into being a married man i constantly air quote struggled with visual sexual attraction towards women and felt constant shame about it would pray about it ask god to forgive me ask god to transform me i did everything short of whipping my back with a belt or whatever to try to suppress this desire and the more i tried to suppress it the more intoxicated i was by women's bodies and i never acted on and i've been faithful in marriage but it was it was this kind of there's a book that was very popular in the tradition called every man's battle which literally depicts the masculine experience as being one defined by a struggle with sexuality and then i became an atheist and i realized god wasn't watching me and didn't care if i looked at women's bodies and then i became aware because i took a primarily biological view of reality as opposed to a faith-based ones that women's bodies aren't that different their attraction mechanisms aren't that different than men how do you know if a if an organism has a visual component to sexual attraction if the animal has eyes that's really the qualification for is there a visual component to arousal and my lack of shame and my shift in recognizing women as just other homo sapiens it was like a switch flipped and i almost overnight had no struggle with overly sexualizing women's bodies but it's only because i lost the shane's base prohibition so counter to what i always thought if i lost the shame based prohibition i'm going to run around groping women no when i lost the shame associated with it i ceased to struggle with the problem to begin with yeah wow what i want to come back to is this conversation about well-being and prayer because i think that there's a lot of christian circles that don't actually care if prayer makes you feel good or enhances your well-being the importance of prayer is about am i talking to who god really is and some sort of focus on objective truth and some sort of focus on the biblical interpretation of of god and and praying in a way that's biblical and reinforces my traditions values i think it's good and well if there are certain kinds of prayer that impact well-being but i think there's some communities that wouldn't really care if it makes you feel better or has any health benefits if it doesn't seem like it adheres to the tradition then it doesn't matter if it makes you feel better or worse i often get when i talk about this on stage in conservative institutions someone will raise their hand and say well does muslim prayer do the same thing and i go oh yeah of course and you can almost feel like a oh no because they wanted like a special right just for christmas so i saw this study uh by whittington in 2010 that showed that there were six different types of prayer that they were able to measure and they gave people these measures on well-being that looked at self-esteem quality of life meaning in life satisfaction of life and so these six type of prayers that they studied were adoration confession thanksgiving reception and obligation obligatory prayer so it turns out that the three forms of prayer that actually boosted people's measures of well-being were adoration thanksgiving and reception whereas the types of prayer that actually decreased well-being measures were confessions supplication and obligatory prayer wait wait wait repeat that again because that's good yeah that was good the types of prayer that decreased measures of well-being well-being were confession supplication and obligatory prayer so what whittington and his colleague go on to say is that the types of prayer that actually had the most positive effects on our well-being were the types of prayer that were less ego-focused that actually had less to do with me and myself and my story and were more focused on god whereas negative types of prayer or the prayer that had a negative impact on measures of well-being actually was about the self so the interesting piece is that we might say oh well you're praying and you're only caring about prayer and it's well-being effects because you're selfish and it's about you but interestingly when it's prayer that's actually not about you and not about ego it's best for you wow yes i love that studies have also shown there's different outcomes you may want from prayer and for some people an experience of intimacy or closeness with god is an important goal and some research has shown that when you pray in like what i would call an outward spiral beginning with yourself and your personal issues your hopes your dreams your fears but then moving out to your family your friends your community your city your state or province your country the whole world go crazy the galaxy cosmos however far you want to go that kind of outward spiral makes prayer more likely to induce states of perceived transcendence or intimacy with god wow which one neuroscientist theorized came down to the way it causes activity across both hemispheres of the brain as opposed to just one we thought we'd try something a little different to finish today's episode we're just gonna give each of the four hosts a few minutes to unpack their own thoughts on prayer and how god responds to it if god does it all i love to think of prayer as tuning into the silent movement of the heart to feel one's own rhythm and energy force to feel one's own being and to recognize that that being [Music] is in unity with being itself and all other beings so what is prayer what is what are miracles what are signs and wonders i don't know what i do know is i'm a witness to it i'm a witness to unexplainable things i'm a witness to indescribable things inside and without and i think as christians or people of faith whatever your faith is i think that's the only thing we can grab a hold to is just being witnesses living epistles as paul calls them like we all just get to be living epistles to the miracle that is creation i don't have an explanation of why this person is healed and why that person's not or why did it look or why do we think god intervened here but not here i can't answer that question why 500 years of slavery i don't know why why the holocaust i don't know i really don't why didn't god intervene there sooner maybe we are the walking embodiment of god consciousness and it was up to us to intervene maybe i don't know but what i do know is that which was designated and marked as evil god or divinity comes and redeems and makes good out of it and i think that's the intention of the universe i really do is that god is working all things together for good and so the questions i have in terms of interview intervention or god that potentially intervenes is i think they keep me in my head but they don't allow me to recognize what already is in front of me and what has already happened to bring me to this moment and in that way i'm just grateful and that's what prayer ultimately is it's just a resignation of gratefulness to even just be here i know so little of god that it's difficult for me to answer whether god is conscious or not or whether that's even an applicable question to god [Music] i suspect with my understanding of einstein's theory of relativity and quantum dynamics that if god exists as some kind of being or even being itself that god cannot be conscious in our understanding of consciousness because human consciousness is defined by having a very limited awareness of space and time i can't imagine that a god who can exist on scales across light years would be capable of the kind of coherence that allows that point of view we understand that thanks to differences in relative velocities at great cosmological scales that changes in motion can sweep the relative synchronicity of two independent now reference frames in our universe across an arc of time greater than human history that contemplating cause and effect and action at that scale are simply fundamentally incompatible with the kind of model that human brains build about reality that we call consciousness as sure as i am of anything about god i am sure that god does not share a human style consciousness with us that's not to say that i don't understand god as being active in the universe i believe that god is active in everything that happens in the universe every collapse of a wave function into a distinct particle every force carrier happening between particles at the most minute scales god is active and if god is active at those scales then god is also active at every scale up from there every beautiful sunrise on a spring day every moment two people fall in love every time genetic damage turns a normal cell into a cancerous one and every time waters rise and communities are flooded god's universal and cosmic presence simply does not allow for the divine to withdraw in those moments i understand everything that happens to happen within the framework of god's action but because i'm really into physics i don't attach those actions to the kinds of reference frame that human consciousness demands [Music] now do i often hope and long for a more personal god a god that is active but can also hear me when i pray of course i do i pray to a god like that often i experience feelings of belonging and understanding between myself and the divine all the time i simply understand that these mystical notions don't mesh terribly well with a careful and considered examination of the implications have such a divine being any god that i can believe in must also accommodate the immutable fabric of space-time that can bend and warp and stretch as discovered by albert einstein any god that i can follow must act in ways that are measurable in physical reality and among those constraints i find a god that is universally present but in no way conscious in the way that i am [Music] i used to think of prayer as simply talking to god and mostly talking to god about stuff that i wanted god will you please help me get an a on my math test or god will you please keep us safe on this plane ride god will you help my team to win the baseball game today but then when i would read my bible and see verses like pray without ceasing it honestly seemed like a lot to ask for i mean imagine speaking without seizing or even thinking coherently without seizing [Music] i think of when my daughter amelie has friends over sometimes and they seem like they might be able to get close to speaking without ceasing but even they stop occasionally for a breath for a snack or a show or something were we really supposed to pray without stopping like while i'm talking to you right now i'm supposed to also have a completely separate conversation thread going with god underneath what i'm saying how annoying and impossible but what if that's not what prayer is what if prayer was thought of not just as communication what is what if it was more like abiding in presence in the moment in surrender to whatever it is that all of this is coming from if if prayer is more about a way of being than it is about talking or asking or even thinking then you could imagine why a statement like pray without seizing might not just be a ridiculous thing to say it might not just be some half cocked spiritual goal but maybe prayer isn't just about communication with some separate entity out there that's what it is for me anyway at this point prayer for me is about being fully present and surrendered to what is with an open heart so sometimes my prayer includes talking much more often and it includes listening sometimes my prayer looks like diligently you know editing a podcast and pro tools other times it looks like being fully present in my body while i'm pushing my kids on the tree swing in our front yard and in that framework of prayer i guess i'd have to answer the question does prayer work or a question like does god hear our prayers with a resounding yes i mean that doesn't mean that my ego gets to drive the universe with its requests of the divine it doesn't mean that i get everything that i want but it does mean that i can live my life in a way that aligns more with the grace and flow of the great river that gives rise to and as all of this [Music] not long ago i was listening to a sufi teacher tell the story of a faithful dervish that went something like this the dervish had been wandering the earth searching for god the divine the mystery and he settles under this tree day and night he cries out god come to me and show yourself where are you crying out again and again where are you where are you finally the divine pipes up chuckling and says from somewhere within the dervish who do you think is the one crying out perhaps the longing for god is the sure and certain sign of god's presence not absence but it's the crying out of the heart that is the proof of god is god herself living through us crying out into the world anything that longs for god and to be part of or get closer to the mystery itself is of god it's my understanding that longing comes from god within us or as we say deep calling to deep i believe that god is active in the universe and maybe the universe itself or the force moving it all forward i often see god showing up in people's healing process something that happens when we're changing and we're healing and there is a kind of new life taking place what is it in a person that has them reach out for help one more time while the other part of them feels hopeless and worthless and like a burden the blade of grass growing up between concrete the person who at the last minute calls the helpline instead of attempting suicide when a paper cut heals [Music] any of that anything that moves us towards wholeness and healing fullness growth thriving that is god active in our lives and when we don't get in our own way and have space and support to look for those things they are everywhere it's the whole thing really a significant shift in my spiritual practices came when i started thinking about prayer as a conversation [Music] if i'm having a conversation with god why does it seem like so much of this is just me talking i remember trying to shut up mentally and trying to listen in every sense of the word and i would try to do this all the time the listening what would i hear god say if i was listening sometimes something would come to me that felt both like it was coming from within me and something both bigger and deeper [Music] i always had a particular sense of it that it's hard to describe sometimes i get the sense when seeing the first cherry blossom tree in the spring or seeing a father being patient with his son who is trying to get his attention and it sort of hit me that this whole thing is a conversation and that if we shut up we can start hearing it all but all means that i'm part of it too one of the notes in the song one of the comments in the conversation the great cosmic prayer god speaking through all created things and me shutting up to listen was also the prayer itself [Music] much of my study has been about embodiment and what we experience snow communicate live feel in and through our bodies a few years ago i started thinking about how that relates to prayer if i believe that prayer is a conversation right now i'm working on that being more god speaking and me listening i started to wonder if my body was also a place where god would or could or did speak or move i had experienced sometimes a feeling like i knew something cognitively that i couldn't quite explain what about if that happened through my body what if my touch on the shoulder of someone hurting was part of the prayer of god speaking through me to someone hurting what if the way i danced at the wedding that one time where everyone else at the end of the night was sitting down and i was still dancing the only one all by myself because it felt so good to be free and to move and to have this dialogue between music and my body maybe that was prayer and the conversation and that evolving love story between and among all things included what i feel and move and do in my body too and so maybe that is also god the speaking this moving this breathing this living everybody for listening to the liturgist podcast today's hosts have been science mike william matthews hilary mcbride and myself michael gunger this episode was edited by me and greg nordin produced by victory palmisano production assistance by cory pig management by brent cradle thanks as always to our patrons who make what we do possible here at the liturgists much love to everybody