Elemental Decentralization - Phenomenology of Prayer (Adam Stillabower)

     When reading the start of this work, I was intrigued by the way it starts, by talking about how prayer should be decentralized. I grew up in the church and this notion of prayer was rather new to me and gave me a new perspective on the true meaning behind it. Prior to reading this, I had always thought that prayer had to involve you and your individual connection with the cosmic deity you were trying to pray to. That connection was inherently the responsibility of the acolyte trying to commune. But it is not about coming from within yourself, trying to connect your being to that of the being, it is described by Benson and Wirzba as removing your wants and needs from yourself. It matters not about what the person has on the earth and the family they have around them, they must be able to remove all the distractions to isolate their thoughts and feelings.

    The elements of prayer are also interesting, as I was always aware that they had a part to play in the prayers of believers, but there is a reassuring structure to the way they are described in the book. The five elements are praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition, and intercession. I think it is interesting that all of these elements pertain to the idea I previously talked about, how you must decenter yourself. When you praise or thank something, you are effectively placing all attention on the individual being praised and diverting it from yourself. Confessing wrongdoing, while you are the subject of the sentiment, the mere act of confession implicates that it is in the hands of the listener to punish and/or forgive the individual. And when intercession happens, it’s the deity that is being prayed to that intervene on the behalf of the believer. So in practice, all the elements of prayer require the subject to be able and willing to decenter themselves.