Friday, December 6, 2013

Ashley Bowles- "The Phenomenology of Prayer" #1



When you pray to God you are opening up to Him.  If you pray and ask him to forgive you of your sins it can “strip the soul” of the bad. 
Benson and Wirzba wrote in the introduction of “The Phenomenology of Prayer” that “prayer effectively strips the soul of its pretense and makes it available before an inscrutable God…prayer leads to a breakdown of language as the believer enters a ‘dark night’ or ‘blinding light’ like those described by the great mystics (pg. 2).” 
            The soul of pretense means you must be genuine, and “available before an inscrutable God,” an example of a time could be after Adam and Eve did what they did the in garden and then they were being pretentious by covering themselves. 
            It goes on to say “prayer can also be described as the ‘intensification of experience,’ that is the flow experience.  Prayer is a connection between you and God.  It may be the way a believer connects to God.  Some people may connect to God through song, but prayer is a form of talking to God.  

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