Over at Faith and Theology, Ben Myers is posting for a week on theologian William Stringfellow. His most recent post contains a wonderful quote from Stringfellow that stands as a helpful corrective to most of the naive and superficial forms of prayer that often proliferate in our churches and individual lives:

“The event of prayer, certain acts called prayer, the very word ‘prayer’ have gathered such ridiculous associations. That is not only the case with the obscene performances, which pass as public prayer, at inaugurations, in locker rooms, before Rotary luncheons, and in many churchly sanctuaries, but also the practice of private prayer is attended by gross profanity, the most primitive superstitions, and sentimentality which is truly asinine…. When I write that my own situation [during my illness] in those months of pain and decision can be described as prayer, I do not only recall that during that time I sometimes read the Psalms and they became my psalms, or that, as I have also mentioned, I occasionally cried ‘Jesus’ and that name was my prayer, but I mean that I also at times would shout ‘Fuck!’ and that was no obscenity, but a most earnest prayerful utterance” (A Second Birthday, pp. 99, 108-9).

Thoughts on this? In particular, and in anticipation of this week’s upcoming podcast, can you think of some ways in which Stringefellow’s theology of prayer lends itself to helping us answer questions about faithful responses to questions of human brokenness, evil, and god’s place in those things? In other words, are we going to respond to human brokenness and evil with the soft and superficial ”God, this has happened in order that your great plan could come about”, or rather, are we going to respond honestly with a shout of “FUCK”?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 10:45 am and is filed under Zac's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.