IS THERE A VALUE TO PRAYER?

Those who believe that a personal God has a special will – a will greater than our own – think that God can hear their prayers and possibly be made to care enough about the situation enough to give them an answer. 

Those who see no evidence at all that prayers are answered say, “No, the only people who care are those in your individual circle. God, if there is such a thing, has nothing to do with it.”

Then there are those in the middle who are not positive deep within that there is a divine being with a will for humanity. Just in case there is, they subscribe to a moral code written by some religion of combination of religions.

Prayer is interpreted differently by all the above. 

Some see prayer as kneeling down beside the bed or before some vivid image. They fold and clasp their hands and give thanks or asking for blessings. Some make a habit of holding hands around the table as reciting some rote blessing that passes through us like an ineffective TV commercial. 

But it this really prayer?

prayer definition

prayer

pre(ə)r/

noun

noun: prayer; plural noun: prayers

1. a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship."I'll say a prayer for him"

synonyms:

invocation, intercession, devotion; archaicorison "the priest's murmured prayers"

4.

• a religious service, especially a regular one, at which people gather in order to pray together."500 people were detained as they attended Friday prayers"
  
• an earnest hope or wish."it is our prayer that the current progress on human rights will be sustained"

Of all those definitions, I like the third the best: an earnest hope or wish. There is something about hope that foretells and defines the future. There is something about thanks that defines and appreciates the present.

Appreciating the present is the key ingredient of happiness. 

The way be can do this is to take a small break in our routine and consciously be thankful for those good things that brought us to this moment and respectful to the bad things that also brought us to this moment. 

Our present contains all the good things that have happened as well as the bad. Nature provides the bad things to keep us moving and progressing. What matters is the nature of the movement forward. Focusing on the good we want to accomplish will keep us on a chipper and more productive path.

These efforts need not public, as they are in essence a private thing. Prayer does not even have to be called prayer to be effective. Call it meditation ... Call is a cigarette break ... Call it a pause to reflect ... Call it re-evaluation. It is all the same thing if the objective is to bring good will and happiness into the future.

SHORT STORIES

I love a great short story. Problem is, there are too few of them.

How many great short stories can you name out of the blue? Make a short list of them in the comments below.

Perhaps you are better read than I, because I can only think of three.

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. Scrooge is an icon. Dickens was paid by the word to run his work serialized in the newspapers. That is why so many of his works are tediously long.

“The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway (more a novella than a short story). Even though I forget the Old Man’s Spanish name, I still smell the sea and the fish and feel the sting of rope on my hands as the big fish fight.

I cannot remember the name of the great O’Henry story about the man who sold his watch to buy a fine hair brush for a his love who cut off her hair and sold it to but him a watch. Maybe that was not the story exactly, I do not remember, but that’s a decently good one the way I described it.

Short stories are easy to read. 

They take more time than a blog or a post, so they require more time and effort from the reader. But when they are good, they are outstanding. 

Many great television mini-series are really enacted series of short stories that follow the same characters. This allows for character development. Come up with a great character and anyone will want to know them – love them or hate them. TV dramas are simply short stories with added visual action. The script does come first.

Written short stories are often better than TV stories.

We get to visualize our own image of the character and the setting. We get the added sense of smell from compelling descriptions. 

I believe that most novels could really be told in the time is takes to read a short story. I believe that every chapter of a novel could be – and perhaps should be – a stand alone tale that either leaves you wanting more or thinking about the implications of what that story means to you.

I think that a writer can serve themselves best by writing smaller works that can later be entwined and stitched together to make a larger work.

PAYING FOR SEX

In the Old West, the first thing the dusty lone stranger did when he got to the muddy streets of the town was clean up a bit and go the saloon. He wanted a drink and companionship. There among the spittoons below the brass railed bar, he could look in the mirror behind the bar and view the buxom ladies who were quite willing to take him upstairs and make love for a reasonable fee.

Prostitution has been recognized and controlled by law for thousands of years. Sumerian records from 2400 BC speaks of kar, the term for a prostitute as a bona fide profession. The code of Hammurabi, in 1780 B.C. Specifically refers to the rights of prostitutes. “179. If a "sister of a god," or a prostitute, receive a gift from her father, and a deed in which it has been explicitly stated that she may dispose of it as she pleases, and give her complete disposition thereof: if then her father die, then she may leave her property to whomsoever she pleases. Her brothers can raise no claim thereto.”

Theodora, the wife of Justinian, was co-ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire. It is said that she took to harlotry like a duck takes to water. Procopius said that she gave her youth to anyone she me in utter abandonment,” then went on to describe her sexual exploits in detail.

Newsweek published an article in 2011 called “The Growing Demand for Prostitution.” It stated that “Surprisingly little is known about the age-old practice of buying sex, long assumed to be inevitable. No one even knows what proportion of the male population does it; estimates range from 16 percent to 80 percent.”

There are studies and statistics, however, In Cambodia, a whopping 60 to 80% of the men pay for sex. In the United States it falls to 15 to 20%. In Holland, where prostitution is legal and licensed by the government, the percentage is just a little higher that in the United States. In Japan, it is tacitly understood that a business man has the right to join with his associates in a visit to the red light district.

Many Muslims the practice Muta, a temporary marriage contract where the man pays a woman for sexual favors.

There are almost as many reasons for paying for sex as there are occurrences. Many women think that the only reason men pay is because they are too homely or anti-social to strike up a sexual relationship with another.

Some men point to the cost effectiveness of hiring a woman. They bring no emotional baggage to the table, they say. Others seek out what they cannot get at home in their married relationships. For obvious reasons, men in higher income groups spend more on sex than those who struggle to make ends meet.

My own experience, being a part of that 100% that make the male population, is quite limited. I will not go into it now, but I will write a story about this unforgettable experience in the future.

That being said, the energy expended sexual release must have some psychic value and bring some type of change to the life of the participants. One cannot expend energy without changing something. Whether that energy is released for pay or for free, something in nature changes.

Is anything free in nature? Since everything has a value in the human experience, then everything has a price. Even the act of breathing is a form of using energy, but we need to breath if we are to continue living. Breathing is the price of living for us and the cost of breathing is measured in aging.

AN ALTERNATIVE TO TRUTH: A HISTORY OF "DAVID"

On September 8, 1504, Michelangelo unveiled his statue of David. Oiginally it was a giant block of marble twenty feet high. Agostino di Duccio had accepted a commission to sculpt a biblical figure thirty years before from this block of marble, but gave up on it. The commisison passed to Antonio Rossellino, but he gave up as well.

For nearly 30 years the block of marble sat in a courtyard. The church decided that the statue should be named "David." The elders settled on Michelangelo di Lodovico as the sculptor. and commissioned him to finish the statue, which he did in less that three years.

Unfortunately, the marble had weakened from sitting so long in the weather. Michaelangelo's first attempt was not readily accepted in the highest of circles. David, it seems, had been bored and had gone off his usual Mediterranean diet. He gained far too much weight. Michelangelo, always undaunted, quickly chiseled some of the marble away, leaving us with the lean David that we know and love today.