Prayer

Starting to pray after never having really believed in its efficacy has been an unexpected side effect of the situations affecting my family. I think I prayed a lot more when I was younger, but they were just little prayers about everyday things, like "God please help me do _____" or "Thank you God for helping me/ her/ him with _____." But even those prayers became less frequent. I didn't completely stop praying, but I think the human ego took over in the later years of high school. I took a lot upon myself and I prevailed, and that felt really satisfying because I felt like I had done it on my own. I couldn't understand prayer theologically or practically. Theologically, I didn't understand how a God that I have always been told knew everything that was to come would be influenced by our prayers. He would know that someone would pray a certain thing or not pray for something because he knows the future and therefore I couldn't accept that if I chose to pray or not to pray about something that I was actually making that decision on my own because God knew what I was going to do anyway.

I remember a study that was done recently about the power of prayer. This study found that prayer had no effect whether the person survived after major heart surgery and in fact, the person was more likely to die had they been told by their friends and family that they were praying for him or her. Sure, you could question whether such a study could actually be conducted on a matter of spirituality and whether the friends and family were of this religion or that their hearts might not have been in the right place- but I would like to think that God listens to everyone's prayers.

So I found myslelf not praying with faith because of the perceived conflicting philosophies, which I had been raised with. Like every Christian and many non-Christians, I felt like crap every time I sinned and would ask for forgiveness and every Sunday during Communion I prayed for God's assistance in my struggle of redefining my spirituality and my beliefs. That was a scary time because I had to question and refine everything that I had been taught. Luckily, I had a church that didn't present the same Christian belief system I encountered all my life. Rather, I was shown a God and Christ that proved incredibly complex and unable to summarized in a doctrine or cliche. The most valuable thing the Church taught me was that it was okay to have these questions while always emphasizing the unending love God has for all his creation. I read a few books about Christianity from non-Christian sources and despite what many Christians might think, the books did not make me become atheist nor did they discredit Christianity; rather, they strengthened and made me believe more in God and God's love. I learned more about Jesus and early Christianity and that had a big impact on my view of the Church, but it didn't negatively effect my personal spirituality.

My grandfather just had major surgery and my brother is in Afghanistan fighting. I no longer can believe that God knows the future because that would eliminate free will and severely limit the purpose of prayer, but that makes me love him more. I don't believe in a God that is any less powerful, but the only thing I can do for my family is to pray for them. The problem is that I don't know what to pray for. I can pray for my brother's protection, for my family's stress, for my grandparents' relationship as my grandfather becomes increasingly distraught and takes it out on his family.



Peru Update:
This weekend was really great. Probably the best weekend I have had here. I went with my group to see the Nazca Lines (Wiki Article). We left on Friday by bus to a Vineyard en route to Nazca, where we spent the night. We all ate at this really good restaurant that had excellent pizza and good music. The next morning we woke up early to go to the airport that has flights over the lines. I got in the small plane a little after eight o'clock with two other people in my group and the pilot. We started the flight and I could almost immediately tell that I was going to vommit. I didn't eat that morning because I was warned about the unsettling flight and I even took a motion sickness pill, but the turns got the best of me and I vomitted- all liquid/ stomach acid. But I got to see all the different shapes that were drawn on the land. Here are some photos:

Hummingbird:


Spider:


Crane or other big bird:


Tree and Hands:


Tree:


Crane, again:


Monkey:


Dog (upside down in the middle):


Killer Whale (a little left of center):


Killer Whale (to the right of the guy's hand):


Alien:


Vomit:


So there are a couple theories about how the lines originated- they are so old that it is difficult to believe that the people had the technology or understanding of geometry to perfectly line everything up to make such detailed pictures, so the most obvious explanation is aliens of course and look they even made a drawing of one too.

I will add more photos and commentary about the rest of the weekend in a day or two.