Wednesday stuff
Apr. 7th, 2004 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdToday, I work a half day, and then I'm off for 4. I LOVE working for a Catholic collge.
On the nature of prayer:
I heard the "I'll pray for you" twice in the last two days, and got to thinking about the differences in the statement.
Once was from my mother, because she was genuinely concerned that Bunny was in the hospital. She meant it as comfort and I took it as such, much as I would take a bowl of her stew. I thanked her.
The other was from a homophobic beta reader (why she volunteered is beyond me) whom I had out-argued. The tone was coercive, and the subtext was "I'll pray that God brings you around to my way of thinking." My comment was "Ouch! The Drop-dead Line of Christian Contempt. Please don't bother. if God was going to 'fix' me he would have done it when i was so earnestly pleading with him back in my teens."
Prayer is a potent thing. It can be used for good: to comfort, to aid as Mom did. Or it can be used to bully and coerce. Then it becomes the blackest form of black magic, regardless of who it is directed to.
Unfortunately, because of my attitudes and beliefs, I get the Bully-mode more often than i get Helper-mode.
I always respond, because most folks aren't expecting a comeback to "I'll pray for you." And it's always "Please don't. With your attitude about it, all you're doing is making black magic." That ends the conversation right there. About a line after they wanted it to.
Trying to figure out how to go in for a seminar in which HR tells us exactly how much they're going to gouge us for this year.
Mudd is objecting to medicating Obi. Reading the side effects, I can't argue. We're trying b-mod first.
On the nature of prayer:
I heard the "I'll pray for you" twice in the last two days, and got to thinking about the differences in the statement.
Once was from my mother, because she was genuinely concerned that Bunny was in the hospital. She meant it as comfort and I took it as such, much as I would take a bowl of her stew. I thanked her.
The other was from a homophobic beta reader (why she volunteered is beyond me) whom I had out-argued. The tone was coercive, and the subtext was "I'll pray that God brings you around to my way of thinking." My comment was "Ouch! The Drop-dead Line of Christian Contempt. Please don't bother. if God was going to 'fix' me he would have done it when i was so earnestly pleading with him back in my teens."
Prayer is a potent thing. It can be used for good: to comfort, to aid as Mom did. Or it can be used to bully and coerce. Then it becomes the blackest form of black magic, regardless of who it is directed to.
Unfortunately, because of my attitudes and beliefs, I get the Bully-mode more often than i get Helper-mode.
I always respond, because most folks aren't expecting a comeback to "I'll pray for you." And it's always "Please don't. With your attitude about it, all you're doing is making black magic." That ends the conversation right there. About a line after they wanted it to.
Trying to figure out how to go in for a seminar in which HR tells us exactly how much they're going to gouge us for this year.
Mudd is objecting to medicating Obi. Reading the side effects, I can't argue. We're trying b-mod first.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-07 07:28 am (UTC)I had the usual difficulty explaining, but I tried, and then she asked "What do you do at your... church services?"
I explained that anyone who wanted to could get up and speak as the spirit moved them. She looked extremely dubious, but before she left she assured me that she would pray for me.
I think that this was a genuine offer not of either bullying or comfort but because she was afraid that, with my beliefs, I would go to hell. So I thanked her: because, even though I do not believe any such thing, to her, evidently, the risk was real, and she was offering me something real to help.