i'd like to do a song of great social and political import

one of those aspects of religion that's created difficulties for me in recent years is the meaning and purpose of prayer.

it's a complicated thing, to say the least. as humans, we want a fuller understanding of who we are, where we came from and why. we want things -- help, wisdom, material things, love -- and if we believe in the existence of a presence or being or reality or force greater than the whole of the universe's individual parts, generally speaking, we'd like to know more about whatever It is, and we'd like to be closer to It. moreover, if we believe along the lines of genesis 1:27, we'd like to better understand what it means to have been created in God's image, and become closer to that which we resemble.

so, what better way to get closer, to better understand, than to speak directly to God?

my difficulties with prayer fall into two categories:

1) the whole petitioning God thing just seems wholly infantile and irrelevant a lot of the time. in an age when people in general have a lot of trouble articulating pretty much anything in a thoughtful way and when individualism and personal worth are disproportionately thought to outweigh "the greater good" at all costs, it's too easy for "prayer" to mean "list of demands." this seems to me to be a step backward from getting closer to God (or from understanding anything). this is not to say that petition is altogether a negative -- but the proportion of requests to other forms of communication should be much lower than i think it tends to be.

2) to piggy-back on that idea of individualism and personal worth: while these are by no means bad things, when applied excessively to prayer they provide an easy escape hatch -- and by that i mean excuse -- for people who are uncomfortable with congregational worship.

now, i will be the first to say that there's nothing wrong with being uncomfortable with going to church or shul or what have you. some people just don't like other people witnessing them doing anything religious. some people are creeped out by group recitation or responses. some people feel alone in a crowd and would rather just be alone alone. some people dislike some of their fellow congregation members. some people simply don't understand what the purpose of attending services is. these are all valid experiences, and truthfully, i relate to most, if not all, of them.

but to decide that, based on one of those things, you're just going to be a christian or a jew or a muslim or a hindu or a buddhist or whatever else all on your own, purposefully separate yourself from a religious community and label it "introspection" is to deny the most basic elements of your nature. human beings are meant to be around other human beings. asceticism and purposeful temporary self-isolation aside (i'm not about to call out jesus for his 40-day wilderness stint while we're in the middle of lent), we are social creatures. if we are religious, we are then compelled to believe that our religion must also be social.

i think a certain view of prayer -- that its purpose is to be a direct communication between an individual and God, like a hotline -- fosters this attitude. i also think that, unfortunately, this tends to be the most widely-held view of prayer. i don't believe God needs you to direct a specific message, grammar and content edited, to "His" office on a cloud somewhere. i believe prayer is for our benefit, for our comfort and contemplation. and in light of that, i believe the community is important in prayer. i think we understand God and ourselves by being in the presence of one another. it's easier to look at your neighbor and identify God in him or her (see: fellowship; seeking and serving Christ in all persons) than to look at yourself.

let me interject here that i think meditation and personal reflection apart from a community setting is good, and healthy. i'm talking about completely severing oneself from the community. if you've concluded that you don't believe in God, okay, that's a decent reason to stop attending services. if you're physically unable to get to services, that's also a decent reason, though any decent community would help you get there (or bring the service to you).

i think it's supposed to be a little bit uncomfortable to worship around other people. whatever logic can be applied to spirituality tells me that some part of one's spiritual experience must be community-oriented. and the more we practice being an actual part of a community instead of just tolerating it, the more we get out of it and the more comfortable we become. more importantly, that's what my instinct and experience tell me.

as i was in sort-of-academic mode this past thursday for the last Taste of Judaism class, this whole struggle in my head over prayer and attending church and whatever else was not exactly the first thing on my mind, but it was brought there immediately when we read the following passage.

Prayer is not a matter of coming to God with our wish list and pleading Him to give us what we ask for. Prayer is first and foremost the experience of being in the presence of God. Whether or not we have our requests granted, whether or not we get anything to take home as a result of our encounter, we are changed by having come into the presence of God.

In congregational worship, regularly scheduled services on a Saturday or Sunday morning, I have come to believe that the congregating is more important than the words we speak. Something miraculous happens when people come together seeking the presence of God. The miracle is that we so often find it. Somehow the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. A spirit is created in our midst which none of us brought there. In fact, each of us came there looking or it because we did not have it when we were alone. But in our coming together, we create the mood and the moment in which God is present.

We don't go to church or synagogue at a stipulated time because that's when God has office hours. We go because that is when we know there will be other people there, seeking the same kind of encounter we are seeking.

-- Rabbi Harold Kushner, Who Needs God

for the moment, my mind is settled. i could go into an entire segment right now about exactly how much that passage screams scc, but for now i'll leave you with one more, my new favorite (of course), that summarizes the balance we have to remind ourselves to maintain:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? When I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?

-- Mishna Avot 1:14