Thinking About Prayer....

I am constantly busy and it is usually my own doing. I'm currently writing my dissertation (trying to get a proposal approved at the moment). I'm also teaching at Loyola University of Chicago and presenting two papers at conferences this semester. So, my blog will probably be used as a sounding board for ideas dealing with and issues coming from my research for these different projects.

Anyway, the first project I am delving into at the moment is a paper I am writing for a conference in Rome presented by the Centre for Philosophy and Theology (called the Grandeur of Reason). My paper proposal sketched out the way that I saw prayer as a political practice in both Christianity and Islam. This is what I am trying to flesh out.

Before beginning, though, I have a few issues with the word "political." I'm not sure it is the right for what I am getting at as it tends to evoke simply ideas of government or political systems. Rather, I want to use it in a way that calls to mind the idea of prayer orienting us toward the "polis," defined in both Christianity and Islam as all people everywhere (think here of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan -- all are our neighbor).

Back to my main point though, I want to say that prayer is a practice that orients us toward the other in both Christianity and Islam. In order to show this, I will use Derrida's notion of hopsitality as a way of thinking about how it is that prayer orients both the Christian and the Muslim in such a way as to be for the other.

In both Christianity and Islam, prayer begins with an invocation of God/ Allah (I know that Allah is strictly the Arabic word for "God", but it helps keep in mind the difference in the two religions). This invocation of God/ Allah is an invocation of the Other. It is an asking of the Other to come, of a desire to encounter the Other. This encounter can only occur, though, if the one praying is open to the Other and that the Other can be encountered. The one praying cannot try to do the encountering, but must be passive and allow the Other to encounter him or her in the prayer. The invocation, then, is first an asking of God to encounter us in the prayer and to allow this God to encounter us.

In doing this, though, the one praying does not seek to dominate the encounter or articulate the one the encounter takes place. There is not an active part to the encounter on the part of the one praying; simply, the one allows oneself to be encountered by God. However, the active part of this on the one praying is the passivity - there is an active passivity. The one praying must fight the urge to manipulate or articulate how this encounter takes place so that one dictates how the encounter will take place. Rather, there is an act of simply being open, of listening, of being passive before the Other so that the Other may encounter us.

With this account of how it is that we encounter God in the prayer, we must now ask the question of what this teaches the one praying about encountering the Other? For both Islam and Christianity, the goal of the religions is love - love of God and love of neighbor. Prayer to God should teach both of these (part of the Islamic mode of interpretation is the extension of Divine Mercy to humanity and that this mercy must be extended from the Muslim to the other). It is my contention that the invocation of God in prayer teaches both the Christian and Muslim how to then go about encountering one's neighbor.

As I said, the practice of praying teaches us how to then go about encountering the other as neighbor. This comes primarily in the act of being open to the other in all that the other is or does. If we think about it, we often are open to the other only as the other benefits us or acts how we think he or she should act. Often, we ask for something from the other in order to encounter the other. Rather than just being open to the other and allowing the other to encounter us and being hospitable to this other, we place stipulations upon this encounter and do not allow it to occur purely.

As we invoke God/ Allah in prayer, it also becomes necessary to invoke the other as our neighbor. In order for this to take place, the other as neighbor must be encountered as other. This means that we must be open to our neighbor (i.e., all people) as they are without any stipulations for them to become something that they may not be. Rather, we are open to them, listen to them, offer them hospitality purely as someone other than me. Now, this is never perfect, but the practice that we inherit from prayer is that we strive to make this as perfect and pure as possible.

Part of this stems from the nature of what it means to love. We must think of love and strive to love as pure gift. This means that there is no expectation of return when we love. If we love the other as other, we expect nothing from them. This really makes sense to me when I think about it in terms of my family - if I love my wife because she has sex with me or does my laundry or whatever else, then I am not really loving her; rather I have set up an economy. Similarly, if I love my son for something that he will give me, like the idea that he will take care of me when I am old, then I have purely set up an economy of exchange. I have not really loved either. Rather, I must love them as they are - I must love my wife even when she does not want to have sex or do the dishes or laundry or whatever and I must love my son even though he may not take care of me. I must love them simply because I love them. The impetus is the same with the neighbor. I cannot love someone in order for them to come to church or become a Christian or stop drinking or doing drugs. Rather, the framework becomes one of love simply because of love, knowing that the love will hurt or be harmful or that I will be taken advantage of. If I stop loving because of any of these, then I have not really loved - I've only looked for something in exchange for my affection.

Anyway, I kind of got off on a tangent with the love aspect. This might only be a footnote in the paper. But, I'd love to get thoughts on my thesis that prayer to God teaches how we are to encounter the other as our neighbor. I'd also love some good critiques.