#aye

O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You. ↗

— John Irving

#god #prayer #religion #religion

God's will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that. ↗

— Sarah Palin

#environmental-degradation #god #industry #palinisms #prayer

Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray! ↗

— Karl Rahner

#christianity #god #lord #meditating #meditation

Satan dreads nothing but prayer. His one concern is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, he mocks our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray. ↗

— Samuel Chadwick

#prayer #samuel-chadwick #satan #religion

I don't believe in school prayer. I think it's total nonsense...who is the teacher there that is going to have them pray? And is the teacher going to be Catholic or Mormon or Episcopalian or what? It just causes all sorts of problems. And what are the kids praying about anyway? Does it really matter, does praying in school...what are you doing it for? The whole thing just opens up all sorts of elements of discussion. I think it's crazy. ↗

— Charles M. Schulz

#prayer-in-school #religion #school #school-prayer #religion

Many questing young people and stressed older people nowadays seek relaxation through meditation. They look for it in Hindu, Buddhist and other Eastern religions. They are often surprised to learn that there is such a way within the Christian tradition, a way that is known as contemplation. ↗

— Ray Simpson

#christianity #contempative-prayer #contemplation #eastern-religion #meditation

My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you! ↗

— Frank Herbert

#god #prayer #religion #religion

It is possible to induce incorrect notions of cause and effect in most people in just a few minutes. All that is necessary is to expose them to rewards which they believe they are generating based on their actions when in fact the rewards are randomly awarded. People will latch onto any seeming success and repeat it, even when they have to explain repeated failures as well. It appears practically impossible, or at least very rare, for humans not to be influenced by immediate experiences of concrete results. This is true even if the experiences turn out to have limited theoretical validity. The moment of surprise is not when people repeat alchemical failures but when they begin to do something else. ↗

— Naomi Janowitz

#magic #magical-thinking #prayer #religion #ritual

We could all use the power of prayer now and then, but it seems to me that the people who are sure they have a direct line to heaven are most often calling collect with bad news. ↗

— Mark Abramson

#prayer #religion #religion

Actually, the substitution of the reality-principle for the pleasure-principle denotes no dethronement of the pleasure-principle, but only a safeguarding of it. A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results, is given up, but only in order to gain in the new way an assured pleasure coming later. But the end psychic impression made by this substitution has been so powerful that it is mirrored in a special religious myth. The doctrine of reward in a future life for the—voluntary or enforced—renunciation of earthly lusts is nothing but a mythical projection of this revolution in the mind. In logical pursuit of this prototype, religions have been able to effect the absolute renunciation of pleasure in this life by means of the promise of compensation in a future life; they have not, however, achieved a conquest of the pleasure-principle this way. It is science which comes nearest to succeeding in this conquest; science, however, also offers intellectual pleasure during its work and promises practical gain at the end. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#delayed-gratification #religion #renunciation #science #religion