From the Narrow Desert

That's it, really. That's what I want to say in this post -- and I say it particularly to those of my readers who might not have considered it, including those who are not Catholic, as I am not Catholic, including my Mormon brothers and sisters. The Holy Dominican Rosary is one the most precious gifts the Roman Church has given the world. It is there for anyone who wishes to make use of it. God will let you know if you are one of these.

I strongly recommend praying it daily. I strongly recommend using Latin. I strongly recommend using a physical rosary, preferably one with wooden beads. Ash Wednesday would be a perfect time to start. Plenty of information for beginners is readily available online.

To those who balk at "praying to Mary," consider the following: Was Gabriel wrong to say, "Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee"? Was Elisabeth wrong to say, "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb"? Is it ever wrong to ask a fellow Christian to pray for you now and at the hour of your death? Have the answers to any of those questions changed because Mary is now in Heaven?

Just consider it. That's all I'm saying.

Having made a rather exhaustive survey of the genre, I can say with some authority that the best story with the string green door in its title is Green Doors (1933) by Ethel Cook Eliot. I highlighted this passage when I read it several days ago, and just yesterday I happened to quote it in an email, in response to a question about my experience with the Rosary in comparison with the ad-libbed prayers more usual among Mormons.

Lewis had been born into the tradition that formal prayers which one has by heart have no functioning quality. One must make up one's own prayers, for originality is the only guarantee of His creatures' sincerity the Omniscient will recognize. But Lewis doubted this proud notion now, as he lay here, facing down into the dark, helpless with the anguish of loss. If only there were patterns: sweet, fluent channels of accustomed prayer, through which one could pour one's blind groping toward fortitude and peace! What was it McCloud had said to God in Lewis' office this afternoon? That was prayer, certainly, -- even though not uniquely and strikingly the boy's individual invention. "God have mercy on me a sinner." Yes, that would do. "God have mercy on me a sinner."

I had discovered Green Doors, a forgotten book by a forgotten author, by searching for green door on Gutenberg.org. This was on January 21.

On January 27, I was back on Gutenberg looking for something else -- I think it was Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean, a book which plays a minor role in the plot of Green Doors. When you go the the Gutenberg homepage, they display a few of their most recently uploaded books, and this time two of them caught my eye: The Extermination of the American Bison by William T. Hornaday (published in 1889, uploaded in 2006) and The Valley of Arcana by Arthur Preston Hankins (published in 1923, uploaded on January 26, 2023). I have no idea why the bison book showed up in the "Some of our latest ebooks" display, since it obviously doesn't fit that description, but it did, and I downloaded it because longhorn bison had just appeared in the sync stream. As for The Valley of Arcana, the title (and the chapter titles when I skimmed the table of contents) just struck my fancy for no particular reason.

So I'm now reading The Valley of Arcana -- a book that was uploaded to Gutenberg just five days after I started reading Green Doors. Today, just one day after I had quoted the above passage from Green Doors -- that passage and no other -- I read this in The Valley of Arcana.

They spoke a thousand words that night, . . . but they only said, "I love you." They said it in a hundred ways, lips to lips, but in no way original. Love knows no originality when it is sincere. "I love you" is all that can be said -- three words, "I love you," but they are the hinges that swing the door of life.

What an extraordinarily precise sync! Lewis is coming to doubt the idea that "originality is the . . . guarantee of . . . sincerity" -- and then The Valley of Arcana (using the same words: originality, sincere) goes one step further and says that lack of originality is the true indicator of sincerity -- mentioning in the same breath the door of life swinging on its hinges, echoing the book title Green Doors (green being the color of life).

But the parallels run deeper than these two isolated quotes would suggest. In Valley, the unoriginal-but-sincere words are "I love you." In Green Doors, Lewis tries to remember what McCloud had said to God in Lewis's office that afternoon and comes up with the unoriginal-but-sincere "God have mercy on me a sinner." But McCloud said more than that.

Neil McCloud had been struck dumb by psychological trauma some time ago; and Lewis, the psychiatrist, had been trying in vain to help him learn to speak again. In Lewis's office, Lewis's secretary Petra intervenes and tells McCloud that her friend Teresa is praying for him.

"She is offering a novena to her for you—a novena to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Do you know the Little Flower? Teresa, she has the Little Flower’s name herself, you see—wants you to say ‘I love.’ She said last night, ‘Love is the Word. He must say that.’ She asked the Little Flower to help you say it. Say it now—Neil McCloud. Try to say, I love."

Lewis was close to them. Petra was wild, mad. But no madder than McCloud. If the boy lifted a hand, Lewis was ready. He had guessed about the revolver. He would snatch Petra back, get between them, if the man moved a finger. Then a strange thing happened. Up in McCloud’s face, Petra’s face seemed to be reflected—or rather a flame, a flame burning to whiteness that couldn’t be Petra, after all. It was an unearthly wing of light. McCloud put his hands up to Petra’s hands that were clasped on the back of his neck—but Lewis did not stir—and took them down; but he kept them, as if he did not know he had them still. He was not even looking at Petra now—but beyond her.

Neil said, “The Little Flower? Yes, of course, I know her. The kid had a special devotion to her. Mother had too. The kid thought he saw her—his First Communion morning. In his room. By the washstand. Mother believed him. She had an idea he might be a priest some day. But he won’t grow up now. He’s dead. The little fellow is dead.... How does the Little Flower feel about that—my killing him?”

“You didn’t kill him. It was a fault, not a sin, when you took him flying. Teresa says so. But see! The Little Flower has cured you, no matter how she feels. She has answered Teresa’s prayers.... Even without your saying ‘I love’! Your speech is perfect—you have spoken.”

Until Petra called his attention to it, Neil had not known that he had spoken. But it was true. His voice still hung in the room—he heard it now in echo—the warm, unstrained voice of young manhood. It was his own voice!...

He let Petra’s hands go then. He backed up against the door jamb to his full exultant young height. His face was rolling with tears, but it could not be called crying. There was no grimace of the features and his eyes were wide open. His hands were at his side. He spoke again: “I love. My God, I do love. I love You, my Lord and my God. Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Much of the time -- I'm sure my readers feel this, too -- synchronicity is just a stupid little game I play with T. rexes and tube-men and all the rest. Sometimes, though, it does live up to the hype: Meaningful. Coincidence.

Today being Saturday, I prayed the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, as is my habit. Before doing so, I decided to search online for things people had written about that particular set of Mysteries, something I had never done before. I ended up on this page, posted on May 11, 2022, just 18 days before I bought my own rosary. Regarding the Mystery of the Nativity, the author had this to say:

Mary, your trust in the Lord opened the door to God in a precious way. Teach us to trust in God so that we can bring the real presence of Jesus to others. Help us to discover the joy that you knew at the birth of Jesus!

I wonder if, in ancient times, there might've been a process in which the knowledge of a deity would spread and that would allow for stronger interactions with that deity. This would have to do with the idea of a deity's name being important, the need to invoke the name of the deity, to be regularly thinking/speaking (praying) to the deity.

This has to do with the whole idea of reality being made both by itself and the participant in reality, somehow.

Some months ago, I had a dream in which a very large rosary served as a key to a door. I mentioned in one of the comments here on my blog but can't find it now because comments aren't searchable. 

Latin is not among the 115 languages into which the Book of Mormon has been translated, so I had to do this myself. The original prayer of Alma the Elder at the Waters of Mormon, just prior to baptizing Helam, is:

O Lord, pour out thy Spirit upon thy servant, that he may do this work with holiness of heart (Mosiah 18:12).

Here is my Latin rendition:

Effunde Spiritum tuum, Domine, super servum tuum, ut opus hoc faciat in sanctitate cordis. Amen.

I spent quite a lot of time fiddling with different word orders, and I'm fairly confident that this one flows the best. My only real liberty with the text was to translate with holiness of heart as in sanctitate cordis (rather than cum sanctitate cordis). I have no real explanation for this, other than that my "ear for Latin" (such as it is, trained only on the Rosary and the Vulgate Psalms) demands it. A Google search shows that cum sanctitate cordis is an attested Latin expression but that in sanctitate cordis is about 100 times more common, so I suppose I'll take that as confirmation of my hunch.

As always, I welcome feedback from (and this is a very low bar!) more competent Latinists than myself. Me, I'm just some guy with a Bible and a dictionary.

This morning I taught an English grammar lesson to an adult student, about the use of can, could, and be able to. The exercises in the textbook included these sentences:

5. I can't understand Michael. I've never ____________ understand him.

6. I can't see you on Friday, but I ____________ meet you on Saturday morning.

7. Ask Catherine about your problem. She might ____________ help you.

Mr. Johnson / Doctor Johnson / Captain Johnson / President Johnson

Uncle Robert / Saint Catherine / Princess Anne 等。（並非 the . . .）

One of these little guys has been stalking me for the past few days. The photo is from Wikipedia, not my own, because he's extremely camera shy. It's an appropriate photo anyway because it shows him the way I usually see him: running off with a look on his face that says, Oh, no! He's seen me again!

The front edge of the Magician’s table features a series of three carvings. The first appears to be ocean waves, the second is unrecognizable, and the third is a bird in flight. Comparing it with the bird on the Ace of Cups, which clearly represents the dove of the Holy Spirit, we see that they are almost identical in shape. The cup-shaped capital of the table leg just below the Magician’s bird reinforces the connection. While the dove on the Ace of Cups is white and flies downward, the Magician’s dove is red and flies upward.

What did the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys mean to Waite? I could have sworn that they appeared in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin as symbolical titles of that personage, but that turns out to have been a hallucination of memory.

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs . . . (2:12-13).

I saw that the wall was covered not only with leaves but with hundreds and hundreds of what were unmistakably figs -- still green, but quite large.

The evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray.

Apparently I am not the only Mormon to have been directed to pray the Rosary. Michelle Wiener posted this in 2020:

I haven't spoken much about this -- much less written about it -- but in a sacred experience I had a couple years ago, I was told to "pray the Rosary." While this is common to many Marian-type apparitions (this was not the Virgin Mary speaking, but it wasn't Heavenly Mother, either!), I tried to make it clear that I was not Catholic, but Mormon. But She would not take "no" for an answer. 

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him (Matt 6:7-8).

As far back as 2018, when I was no longer an atheist but had not yet returned to Christianity, the synchronicity fairies were directing my attention to the Holy Rosary.

My father was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Mormonism before I was born, and my experience of Catholicism has been pretty much limited to attending funerals and reading. Until a month ago I had never so much as laid eyes on a rosary. Nevertheless, the nudges continued, and on May 29 of this year, I walked into a Filipino-run chapel and asked where I could get -- well, I only knew the Chinese for Buddhist mantra beads, but they figured out what I meant. Only later did I realize that I had bought it on a Sunday, breaking the Sabbath.

Once I had my rosary, I tried praying it a few times but kept getting hung up on doctrinal snags. Can I recite the Apostles' Creed if I'm agnostic about the Virgin Birth and the Second Coming? Doesn't thy kingdom come imply a Synoptic worldview I do not share? And do I have any reason to think that Jesus' mother really has any of the goddess-like qualities ascribed to her by tradition?

(I had similar issues with the Pledge of Allegiance as a schoolchild. Surely my allegiance is to the country itself, not the flag; history makes it hard to believe any nation is "indivisible"; and "liberty and justice for all" are obviously ideals, not realities. In the end I whittled it down to "I pledge allegiance to . . . America . . . under God" -- remaining silent for all the rest.)

The Spirit kept nudging me to pray the unmodified Holy Rosary, though, and in the end I just asked God point-blank how I was supposed to do so in good conscience. Three very clear communications appeared in my mind:

1. Don't worry about doctrinal quibbles. It's supposed to be like singing a hymn, not writing a theological treatise.

2. Recite it in Latin. That will help bypass the discursive side of your brain.

3. How is it that you've never read Histoire de la magie?

So I printed out the Rosary prayers in Latin, brushed up a bit on church-Latin pronunciation, and prayed the Rosary in Latin. I was surprised at how easy it was, how readily I took to it, and how rapidly and fluently I was able to pray. As promised, the change from Latin changed the mood from one of doctrinal nitpicking to pure devotion, and that in me which had considered the Hail Holy Queen just a bit much was somehow able to pray the Salve Regina with sincere fervor. Not for the first time, Latin has proven to be almost magical. Latin! The mundane, no-nonsense language of the Roman Empire -- but Virgil transfigured it, and so, apparently, has the Church. I suppose this is something like Sheldrake's "morphic resonance," and that reciting fixed prayers in their original language allows one to tap into the faith of all the other Christians through the ages who have uttered those same words.

Speaking of magic, I downloaded A. E. Waite's translation of Éliphas Lévi's Histoire de la magie -- which, surprisingly, I really had never read before -- and started on it. At first it wasn't at all clear what it had to do with anything, but eventually I came to this passage:

[T]he popular forms of doctrine . . . alone can vary and alone destroy one another; the Kabalist is not only undisturbed by trivialities of this kind, but can provide on the spot a reason for the most astonishing formulae. It follows that his prayer can be joined to that of humanity at large, to direct it by illustrations from science and reason and draw it into orthodox channels.

If Mary be mentioned, he will revere the realisation in her of all that is divine in the dreams of innocence, all that is adorable in the sacred enthusiasm of every maternal heart. It is not he who will refuse flowers to adorn the altars of the Mother of God, or white banners for her chapels, or even tears for her ingenuous legends. It is not he who will mock at the new-born God weeping in the manger or the wounded victim of Calvary. . . .

[A]ll that is expedient and touching in beliefs, . . . the splendour of rituals, the pageant of divine creation, the grace of prayers, the magic of heavenly hopes -- are not these the radiance of moral life in all its youth and beauty? Could anything alienate the true initiate from public prayers and temples, could anything raise his disgust or indignation against religious forms of all kinds, it would be the manifest unbelief of priests or people, want of dignity in the ceremonies of the cultus -- in a word, the profanation of holy things. God is truly present when He is worshipped by recollected souls and feeling hearts; He is absent, sensibly and terribly, when discussed without light or zeal -- that is to say, without understanding or love. . . .

Every definition of God hazarded by human intelligence is a recipe of religious empiricism, out of which superstition will subsequently extract a devil.

I’ve been praying the Rosary in Latin once or twice a day for about a week now -- I started on June 23 -- and I can report that it's doing me good. I know that some of my Romantic Christian associates will dismiss this as an atavistic behavior, a futile attempt to return to a less-conscious form of Christianity. Against this I can only report my direct experience so far: that 20 minutes spent reciting the Rosary prayers is 20 minutes spent in the presence of Christ. Yes, presence is precisely what I get from this. It is not really a form of communication with God, nor is it really meditation. It is something else, something that I needed, and the various spiritual agencies that have guided me to it were right to do so.

Your mileage may vary.

Please, God, save us from this terrible storm -- oh, never mind, it's just stopped!

-- traditional prayer

Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

-- the Dread Pirate Roberts

Just yesterday, I posted on how Tooth Fairy Chen (Taiwan's dentist-turned-health-dictator) had broken his promise of a month ago and decided to mandate birdemic pecks for people like me. This obviously prompted some pretty serious praying on my part, and promises of the same from some of my readers.

Well, lo and behold, the very next day, the Tooth Fairy, exhibiting the flightiness so characteristic of his species, changed his mind. I can now get pecked or continue with the weekly charade of an easy-to-fake* DIY test -- which is how things already stood anyway. Of course he could just as easily change his mind back again tomorrow, but for now things are  back as they were a few days ago.

And I am left feeling that I ought to feel absolutely certain that this was an intervention of God's in answer to my prayers and those of others, but in fact able to offer only the uncertain prayer, "Thanks -- if that was you, I mean." I have still not resolved to my satisfaction the issues raised in my post "Shining Buddha problems."

Anyway, my sincere thanks for the prayers of those who prayed, regardless of whether or not those petitions affected the outcome.

* Just sayin'. I would obviously never encourage my readers to do anything of which Google would disapprove.

Who teaches children that times of quietness are doors to heaven, to bliss, to peace and happiness beyond all understanding? . . . Who teaches that quiet contemplation is really prayer? The church teaches that prayer is an activity, something you DO.

-- Roger Hathaway, The Mystic Passion

I at length came to the determination to "ask of God," concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture. . . . It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.

-- Excerpts from the History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet

Isn't it surprising that -- at the age of 14, and living in a place where there was "an unusual excitement on the subject of religion" in which many of his immediate family members were involved -- the young Joseph Smith had never once "made the attempt to pray vocally"? Not so much as a "now I lay me down to sleep"? Having children pray vocally is a virtual universal in Christendom, and surely must have been even more so 200 years ago. Smith was raised in a solidly Christian, if unchurched, family and was a serious and careful reader of the Bible from a very young age. He was not in any way irreligious -- and yet he had never prayed aloud.

The results of this first vocal prayer were spectacular.

I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction -- not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being -- just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other -- This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!

Two things stand out about this. First, this vocal prayer seems to have been much more "powerful" than his earlier, non-vocal, prayers in terms of getting a response -- first from a demonic power and then from God himself and Jesus Christ. (This is echoed in the sacred drama of the Mormon temple, where Adam prays -- laying special stress on the fact that he is doing so vocally, with his mouth -- and is answered first by Satan and then by heavenly messengers.) Second, the fact that Smith had never prayed vocally before was apparently no big deal to God. He was not told to repent for having been lax in his prayers or anything like that; it seems that his general habit of non-vocal prayer was perfectly acceptable. Vocal prayer is, in some situations, uniquely effective, but it is not required that it be habitual. "Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few" (Ecclesiastes 5:2).

This fits with my own prayer life.

I think we can distinguish between two types of non-vocal prayer. It is possible to "pray silently" the way one reads silently -- that is, verbally, in clearly defined words and sentences, but checking the articulatory mechanism so that no sound is produced. I used to attempt this regularly, but it never came naturally, and I would always find myself lapsing into non-verbal contemplation. Nowadays my occasional silent-but-verbalized "prayers" are really more mantras than prayers properly so called. For example, I might silently repeat the Hail Mary or some other formula, not as a form of communication ("not as the heathen, who think they shall be heard for their much speaking") but as a way of focusing my mind and spirit and keeping the devil at bay.

True silent prayer is non-vocal because it is non-verbal. It is neither speech nor an internal simulation of speech but the deep silence of contemplation in God -- not an activity, but a mode of being. It is surely this sort of prayer that Paul had in mind when he wrote, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and advised "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit" (Ephesians 6:18). Valentin Tomberg expresses it well in his Letter on the Magician:

With time, the silence or concentration without effort becomes a fundamental element always present in the life of the soul. It is like the perpetual service at the church of Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre which takes place, whilst in Paris one works, one trades, one amuses oneself, one sleeps, one dies.

"The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord" (Proverbs 20:27), and sometimes I visualize this in literal terms -- in the center of myself, invisible, a candle, burning perpetually with its slow and steady and silent light. This is secret prayer, silent prayer, prayer without ceasing.

As for vocal prayer, I recognize its unique power and believe it should be used sparingly. Very occasionally, my private prayers take vocal form -- once or twice a year, maybe. And although my experience with such things is very limited, such experience as I have suggests that when "miraculous" results are needed, vocal prayer -- and especially prayer in Latin, for some reason -- is uniquely efficacious. Exorcists reportedly say the same thing.

The need for vocal prayer in exorcism may tie in with Joseph Smith's first vocal prayer -- the immediate effect of which was to trigger a demonic onslaught. When we speak, the devil hears. When we keep silent, the candle of the Lord is invisible to him. "Yea, I tell thee, that thou mayest know that there is none else save God that knoweth thy thoughts and the intents of thy heart" (D&C 6:16).

A recent post by S. K. Orr (well, "recent" by my slow-thinking standards, anyway) has had the effect of eliciting some firm intuitions about prayer and getting me thinking about how best to understand them. The post is quite short and well worth reading in its entirety, but here are the essential bits.

For the past couple of years, I have daily passed a man on a bicycle on the way to work. . . . And for at least a year now, I have said a prayer for the bicyclist every time I pass him. As I near him, I lift one hand and usually whisper something like “Protect him, Father,” or “Bless him in his day, Father.” . . .

Sometimes in these quiet hours, I wonder what the bicyclist would say if he knew a stranger says a prayer for him every morning when briefly passing by. And I wonder if any stranger has ever prayed for me for no other reason than seeing me and feeling the nudge to do so. I like to think that someone, at some point, has done so. It is not for me to say whether or not I have been spared harm on a particular day because some unseen watcher lifted a hand and whispered some holy words on my behalf.

I am not a prayerful person, but this post convinced me that I need to be. Mr. Orr's daily prayers for the bicyclist are undeniably good and important; it remains only to understand why and how -- and, of course, to "go and do thou likewise."

The post touched on a lot of "problematic" issues regarding prayer and confirmed that, problematic or not, they are real and must be dealt with. Here I will lay out some of those problems, and the conclusions I have come to after dwelling on them for a few months.


God sometimes does, because he has been asked, things that he would not have done if he had not been asked.

Orr speculates that he may "have been spared harm on a particular day because some unseen watcher" prayed for him, and implies that his own prayers may have caused the bicyclist to be spared particular harms that would have befallen him otherwise -- that, despite God's goodness and his love for the bicyclist, he would not have protected him to the same degree had he not been specifically asked to do so.

I think we pretty much have to believe this. It hardly makes sense to ask God for specific things unless we believe that our asking affects the probability of those things happening -- unless we believe that we can sometimes change God's mind and persuade him to do something he would not otherwise have done.

But it seems strange that a loving God who is willing and able to help and protect us, and who "knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him," would make his help and protection conditional on being asked -- and asked by anybody, apparently, even a perfect stranger.

If God would help me only if I asked him to do so, that would be understandable in terms of his respecting my freedom and giving me ultimate control over my own life. One thinks of the famous line from the Apocalypse: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him" (Revelation 3:20) -- which presumably means that God will become active in a given person's life only if that person invites him to do so. If, on the other hand, God may also intervene in my life because someone else invited him to do so -- which is what the efficacy of petitionary prayer for a third party implies -- then it's as if he stands at the door, knocks, and waits for anyone, even a random passerby on the street, to open the door. If he doesn't need my permission to intervene in my life, why does he need anyone else's? If he is willing to come in without being invited in by the homeowner, why not without being invited by anyone at all?

(To be clear, I assume that God does often intervene without being asked, but we are here considering those cases in which petitionary prayer has made a difference -- cases in which God intervenes because he was asked and would not have done so otherwise.)


Even if we want the same things as yesterday, we still need to ask for them again today.

After hearing "Bless him this day, Father" every day for a couple of years, God surely must have figured out that Mr. Orr wants him to bless the cyclist every day, making further prayers of that sort unnecessary. But somehow, saying "Bless him this day" every day -- rather than saying "Bless him every day" once -- is the right way to do it. In most areas, repetitiveness tends to make things meaningless, but in the case of prayer -- despite the warnings against "vain repetitions" in some of the Gospels -- repetitiveness lies very close to its heart.

And just as it is right to pray for a particular day, it is right to pray for a particular person -- "Protect him, Father," not "Protect everyone who needs protecting."


God sometimes influences us to ask him for particular things.

"I wonder if any stranger has ever prayed for me for no other reason than seeing me and feeling the nudge to do so." The one doing the nudging in such a case would presumably be God himself -- which is pretty strange, if you think about it.

"Hey, that person could use some help. Why don't you ask me to help him?"

"Okay. Would you please help him?"

"Sure!"

Wouldn't that be a very strange conversation if it took place between two human beings? Why do we accept it as a normal way of interacting with God? It really makes sense only if the first person cannot act unless the second person asks him to. I hope it will be understood that no blasphemy is intended when I say that it reminds me of nothing so much as certain versions of the legend of Faust, where the devil can only do what Faust commands and is therefore always trying to persuade him to command particular things. In a Faustian context, that makes sense, but this is God we're talking about.


Prayer is expanded agency, serving as training for theosis.

It occurs to me that most of the philosophical problems associated with efficacious petitionary prayer are the same problems that are associated with ordinary human agency.

Why would God intervene in a person's life because I asked him to? If intervening is the best thing to do, God ought to do it whether I ask him to or not; if it is not the best thing to do, he ought not to do it even if asked. But we might with equal justice ask, Why would God allow me myself to intervene in anyone else's life? -- or, for that matter, to make decisions about my own life? If God knows best, why does he allow anything of importance to be decided by anyone else? Suppose I see a homeless man and, instead of asking God to bless him, I just give him a twenty. Will the effect of that gift ultimately be good or bad? Only God knows, and therefore (so the logic goes) God ought to be the one to decide, and ought accordingly either to force me to give or prevent me from doing so. But God respects our agency, or free will, and cares more about preserving that than he does about seeing to it that the Best Possible Thing is done.

In the gift of petitionary prayer, God has given us what we might think of as a sort of expanded agency, subject to "parental controls." If he granted each and every one of us unlimited magical power, so that we could literally do whatever we wanted, the result would obviously be disastrous, so he grants us direct and absolute control only over a few things -- but he also gives us the potential ability, through the medium of prayer, to "do" anything that God himself can do. We are far too ignorant, immature, and irresponsible to be given free rein with this kind of power, but we are encouraged to try out hand at it, as it were -- to ponder how we think the divine power might best be used, to put these proposals to God, and -- sometimes -- to see those proposals carried out.

By encouraging us to pray and ask him to do things, God is quite literally encouraging us to play God -- in the same sense in which little children play, and are encouraged to play, at being adults. To engage in petitionary prayer is to put oneself in God's position, decide what you think he ought to do, and then say to God, in effect, "If I were you, I'd so such-and-such." How jaw-droppingly presumptuous is that? And yet it's something God actively encourages, even commands, us to do. One thinks of the story (in Genesis 18) of Abraham, negotiating with God over the destruction of the cities of the plain: "That be far from thee to do after this manner . . . Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Abraham seems to have been well aware that he was rushing in where angels fear to tread -- "Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes" -- but he proceeded nonetheless. And he was called the Friend of God.

All of this makes sense if we assume that the primary purpose of prayer -- as of everything else in this life -- is educational. And what we are being educated for is theosis, becoming Gods. That is why God expects us, through prayer, to take an interest and an active role in how the divine powers are used and even, as ridiculous as it may seem, to give him our requests and recommendations. Probably the vast majority of those recommendations will be rejected, or implemented only in part, but that's all part of the learning process. "The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth -- but I have called you friends" (John 15:15).