June 29, 2009
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PRAYER OF A HUMANIST (NON-THEIST)
I believes that if you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs. (Anne Fadiman)
Date: 4/13/09
To:
Re: To Say a Prayer
The other day you told me that your cancer might be coming back, and that you had some tests done. You mentioned that you were very fearful of the results you were to receive at the end of this week. You said that you knew that I didn’t believe in god, but would I please pray for you.
As you may or may not know, I am very much into storytelling as I am a member of two storytelling networks. But, as opposed to most of the members, I am not into storytelling by standing up and telling stories to groups of children and/or adults. These are Platform or Performance storytellers. Rather, I am into storysharing where I will sit down one-on-one with someone and will try to draw out of them their own personal stories.
It is a similar thing with prayer. Instead of praying for you by myself in a room at my house, I would rather sit down with you and draw out of you the prayers that you have inside yourself. These would be both the prayers of your own felt needs and perhaps also your subconscious prayers. I feel that this would be more therapeutic and more helpful than my isolated prayers would be.
