Friday's Work day prayer
While trudging to work at the end of a long week I was thinking of a prayer to get me through the day. Don't worry I am not about to get all religious on you I was remembering some joke prayer about asking for the strength to get through the day despite all the idiots or something like that.
A bit of google work later... there are a few versions of a joke email that gets forwarded everywhere which is in turn a corrupted version of a famous prayer called 'The Serenity Prayer'.
The Joke Version:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,You can see how apt this is when you are facing another day at the organisation where the phrase 'bureaucracy gone mad' was invented.
The courage to change the things I cannot accept,
And the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people
I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
The Original Version:
God grant me the serenityThe second version is a nice little prayer even if you don't believe in God.
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.--Reinhold Niebuhr
This all got me to thinking that really in the poem the word god could be replaced by something like " God, any other religious deity, any being or anything that has the power to help me".
In my simple thoughts of religious matters I ponder whether belief in a god is necessary for a prayer to take place. After all a prayer could be described as asking for something where the outcome is not certain. After all if a close relative is dying we still will them to survive even if we do not start our thoughts with "Dear God".
Which made me think of a thought experiment about whether atheists pray. If a person had for whatever reason jumped out of a plane without a parachute and was plummeting to the ground with about four minutes to live what would they be thinking. Well you would be thinking I hope something happens to save me which in a sense is a prayer. Proof positive.
Of course testing this would require speaking to people who are falling to their impending death. Given that most people don't willingly jump out of a plane without a parachute this could be a bit difficult.
All those thoughts because of another tedious Friday.
Note: If this article has caused any offence to anyone, this was not my intention. It was merely a random thought from my brain.
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2 comments:
I like the line, "courage to change the things I cannot accept". However, prayer is more than just asking God for stuff, i.e. health, wealth, happiness, help. That makes God out to be some grandfatherly type figure who just gives his kids what they ask for. It would also make us put the main focus on ourselves and not God.
Another famous quote similar to your falling person analogy is "There are no atheists in a foxhole."
I like the foxhole quote but I think there can be atheists in a foxhole, because you could believe in luck. If you survived the night you might think that you were lucky rather than a god saving you.
The difference between the two analogies is the 'certain death factor'. In mind there is no chance you can be lucky and survive, your only hope is for a god to save you.
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