by rusmeister » January 13th, 2009, 5:57 pm
Hi, FOB!
This is why I said "may". I don't pretend to read your mind, I only respond to the word that I see.
However, it seems to me that you have surely identified the exception, rather than the rule, in referencing people who repeat those prayers mindlessly.. All of my experience points to the opposite - that people who bother with such "prepared" prayers at all are actually trying, well or badly - but it is God Who accepts our rags - to address Him. Also, I don't think it would be easy at all to establish that others who recite these prayers are doing so unthinkingly.
Words spoken from the heart are also part of the Catholic, Anglo-Catholic and Orthodox Traditions; they don't get special attention precisely because they are purely individual. However, it is clear that the Protestant world, by and large, has completely lost sight of the purpose of prayers prepared over centuries by saints and godly people who look to the Lord's prayer as an ultimate model. The danger in the Western world is entirely of making prayer an expression of our own thoughts - as they are, rather than as they should be - to God. The threat of rote prayers becoming mindless is entirely miniscule in comparison. Where are we to learn what our prayers SHOULD be like if we do not take models? If we talk ONLY about what is troubling us and what WE want and hope for, if we rarely or ever turn to thankfulness, praising God's greatness, or learning to say "Thy will be done"?
I don't wish that to become a thread derailment - but I do wish to acknowledge what I think you are right on while still maintaining what I see the greatest danger in prayer to be.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength