Tuesday, May 3, 2016

In Defense of Drone Prayer

When we pray the Lord's Prayer together, the point is not to "think hard" about the meanings of the words and to mean them. As a child, I remember being told that it was important not simply to say the Lord's prayer, but to pray the Lord's Prayer--that is, to really mean it. So my attention became focused on thinking hard about the words. I no longer say or pray the Lord's Prayer in such an effortful manner. Rather, the point is to let the drone of these words that we know by heart become a think place. For Simone Weil, one of the twentieth century's remarkable Western spiritual figures, saying Lord's Prayer consistently brought her into a thin place, and not because she was paying attention to the meaning of the words.

-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 159


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