In fact, my track record of fervent petitional prayer has been about 85% in the no column, some of which pisses me off more than I can say.

Mine is probably about the same, although looking back I have to admit that some of them really deserved a no, and at least one of the yeses worked out in such a way that I'm fairly certain God was laughing her ass off at me. You want that? You want just exactly that? REALLY? Well, ohhhh-kay, I think I can contrive to give you exactly what you're asking for, no less and no more, and see how long it makes you happy. ... Yep. Thought so.

Some of the no's, though, have been shitty and heartbreaking.

Oh man, y'all, I just about lost it just now on a conference call when the last item on a long list of client requirements was:

Describe your mythology on Facility outsourcing

The solution I came up with was, in the hour or two before I had to give a talk, I would put on the soundtrack to Merrily We Roll Along and sing along through the entire thing. That show has all kinds of tricky phrasing and rhythms -- there is no way to sing it without thinking about where to breathe. So, by the time I got to class to give the talk, my brain and mouth had gotten into the pattern of working together and phrasing things properly, and it was much easier to talk in front of the class, since getting the breathing right had at least temporarily become sort of automatic.

This is pretty freaking brilliant. Did you come up with it by yourself?

I think the word magic is hella messy, as long as it applies to both Jilli and David Copperfield.

ita, I love you. This just made me smile.

prayer is not pretending to exert control or pretending anything, but more like visiting with a friend/mentor/parent. Sometimes I get what feels like an answer, often not, sometimes I don't even say anything myself and it's more like two old friends hanging out in companionable silence, each puttering around and doing her own thing but happy just to be sharing space.

EXACTLY. It's just that the spirits and ideas that I spend that sort of time with are ... not the same as the ones other people spend that sort of time with.

You can all back away from the crazy lady now.

You're not crazy. Trust me.

I'll shut the hell up henceforth about faith & such.

I wish you wouldn't. As crazymaking as it gets, one thing I really, really love about Buffistas is that we can have the uncomfortable convos. Sometimes, it gets heated and bitchy and RARRGGGH, but even then, it's a dialogue. People do disagree, and sometimes vociferously, but I think there is always a core of "I am trying to listen to what you are trying to say about what you think."

Which, IMHO, is sorely needed in the world.

I don't always participate in religious conversations, or muffaleta convos, or cilatro or whatever...but I always read them. And I always feel like I walk away with new perspectives. Do I agree always? Hell, naw! But I think the more ways we can look at problems always adds to the possible, someday, maybe we-can-get-alongness.

I also don't want you to shut up about it, Steph. I think especially this kind of conversation gets touchy, but I hope you know that I like and respect you enough to come to it openly and honestly.

I went away for an hour to finish an essay, and there were 100 new posts on religion. Wow. Interesting stuff to read!

Calli brings up the point that dismissing religion as magical thinking is implicitly dismissive to magic believers as well.

I was going to say something along those lines earlier, till I realised I didn't know quite how to express it. But, having several close friends who are pagans, I do dislike the use of such beliefs as a go-to dismissal of non-atheistic positions.

Sadly, I've also seen religious faith bring my mother down through troubled times. She honestly believed until she slipped into her coma that she didn't beat her ovarian cancer because she didn't pray hard enough.

I know that form of faith, from my years of being told I must have 'demon possession' because of mental illness, and the like. It doesn't have any personal hold over me anymore, but anytime someone offers to pray for my 'healing' (by which they usually mean praying that I'll stop undermining their belief that socially constructed norms are something that everyone can rely on forever), I get very pissed off. It's not too common in my extremely diverse church community, but I still come across variations on this theme. When feeling bold enough, I respond to such people that I'll be praying for them to realise that life is varied, non-standard and unpredictable, in all the diversity that God created. (Although too often I just mumble 'thanks' and limp away as quick as I can.)

I mean, I'm the daughter of two people who were so hurt by the Christian Church that they gave up on Christianity entirely, one becoming a Buddhist and the other a humanist. I know that Christians can be frustrating as hell (semi-pun intended). For me, that just makes me more determined to find a way to 'do' Christianity in a way that respects others' beliefs or lack of belief, while also being true to who I am. This is no small undertaking. Especially when I fell in love with an atheist from a very different culture than mine. But it's all good for my faith. Eventually!

You can all back away from the crazy lady now.

You express it more clearly and coherently than I could. Oh, and I too avoid petitional prayer, almost to the point of ridiculousness. To be honest, I don't always believe it has any effect, in any way we can understand. For me, the ritual of prayer (it's very ritualistic, in my form of Anglicanism, which is important to me) is far more about God changing my thinking than it is about me trying to talk to God. I get a bit nervous of approaching the deity too directly. I'm supposed to be trying, though, for confirmation class. Hmm, really ought to be doing more of that before I actually get confirmed.

Edited several times. Must learn to read before posting.

This is pretty freaking brilliant. Did you come up with it by yourself?

Yeah. I used to listen to music and sing along as a way to de-stress and calm myself down, and then I noticed that I always started by having to think a lot about the phrasing and messing up a lot of things, but by the time I got to the end of an album, it was much less difficult, and the effect would carry over into regular speaking for at least a little while. It doesn't last long, though, and in order to keep it going for a little while, I usually have to kind of run the songs through my head while breathing as if I were singing them, until it's my turn to talk.

I used to recite the Lord's prayer often at the appopriate time and place. I was never praying. Just going along with the flow until I got ornery/old/resilient enough to stand there silently.

This is where I see religious practice being very close to magical practice. Standing with a bunch of people chanting the Lord's Prayer is no different, to my mind, to people standing in a circle chanting an invocation to the Goddess. A power is being invoked, and it may go nowhere resembling the ear of a diety, but directed purpose and awareness is there.

Yeah, I really hope no one is feeling piled on or not listened to in this.

In this sense, belief is acceptance of something as true that is unseen and unprovable;

And religion is the only thing I can think of where the general thinking is "and that's okay." Regardless of your take on why that is or if it's good, bad, or indifferent, I think it's at the heart of why this conversation is so hard to have. Because most of the words we use to discuss things that are not or cannot be proven or demonstrated, and yet are asked to take as fact (or real or something non-judgy, please) do have a negative connotation, in varying degrees. So then we try to shift them over to this discussion and things that are meant neutrally or questioningly come across as far more pointed and direct than they ought, on both ends, I think.