Praying to, er, God

"How then should we pray?" A question every Christian I know struggles with. I no longer pray. I don't know how. I don't know why I should. I've given up trying. Almost.

My view of God has changed. I don't even like the word 'God' any more as it has so many implications that I don't like. I've not settled on any other word and probably won't, but for now I'll use 'the divine.' But here's my question: If our view of God (the divine) has changed (theism to panentheism), should not our talk about the divine, including prayers and prayer-language, change also?

The divine I believe in is not omniscient, not omnipotent, not a being, and not masculine (at least not by traditional categories.) But all the prayer language I know is. The divine needs to be re-imagined, and all our language used to describe the divine needs changing.

So I'll start with the masculine. Catherine Keller states, "We will have to leave feminist Sunday School: getting rid of 'Him' only puts God in drag." Simply claiming that the divine is non-gendered, or that the divine 'transcends' gender is not enough. The very view of the divine that we have is of a masculine God - his power, his strength, his view of the world, etc. We need to change the way we think about the divine, but I'm not sure how to change the prayer language. So I'll move on to being.

A problem here is the first word of our prayers. "Dear God..." "Oh Christ..." "Lord..." Each of these address a being. They are words of address, intended to be used in the same way that I may address my neighbour. But the divine isn't a being. If the divine is in me, then in some way I am the divine. And so is my desk. And that tree. So maybe the entire concept of praying 'to' something is wrong.

If this is the case, then we have a problem with language itself. Language is designed for communication, for two beings to transfer ideas, meanings, thoughts. Or something like that. But if this is the case, then perhaps language is not the best (or even a possible) medium to use for prayer. But what's an alternative? Music? Physical art? Bringing to mind (as in some forms of meditation)? Glossolalia? Susanne Langer claims the word 'Hallelujah' is not language because it is not intended to transfer meaning. This is very similar to the babbling of glossolalia, and she talks about how there seems to be an innate joy humans find in making sounds with their mouth, babbling. So maybe there's something to glossolalia, something that no one else (including the divine) can understand?

An alternative to this desire (not to pray 'to' anything) would be to (somewhat) arbitrarily, temporarily divinise something, and pray to that. Hence nature worship. Hence worshipping your partner (see the Book of Common Prayer). For God is in all, and so all can be deserving of worship. Problems may come when something is divinised that shouldn't be, or when something is divinised for too long a period of time. I think the civilisation I'm in has divinised money (Christian are sometimes especially to blame here), but that's another story.

That's enough for now. Maybe I'll address omnipotence soon. And maybe I'll come to a conclusion at some point. And maybe one day I'll be able to pray again.

Why plaosmos...

So I guess I should start by explaining the name. It's obviously important to me (or I wouldn't have chosen it), and I feel it runs deep.

First, how the word came to be. I'm a theology student. I'm in a class called "The Ground of Being/The Horizon of Hope: Creation, Time and Eschatology." Kind of a long title, but if you knew my prof (Nik Ansell), you'd understand. He has a certain fascination with titles. Oh, I should probably say that I'm a full time Master's student at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto. Just in case anyone who doesn't know me ever reads this.

In this class (TGoB/THoH:CTaE) we're reading a book called The Face of the Deep: a theology of becoming by Catherine Keller (Routledge, 2003). So far in the book, Keller is basically saying that there is/was a chaos that is pre-existent, that was never created. God didn't create it, but formed it. James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (which I have not read) apparently coins the word 'chaosmos', putting together 'chaos' and 'cosmos'. I liked this. It's playing with language, in much the same way as Lewis Carroll does. I also like the idea of an uncreated chaos, but that's a story for another day.

So why not stick with 'chaosmos'? I could well have, but there were some in the class (esp. Jeff H.) who didn't like it - chaos is impersonal, neutral, completely non-ordered. Any forming out of chaos must be the ending of it, the death of it, the domination of it so that it becomes order. Good critiques, and I agree. So I had to move on. The chaos had to lose its neutrality and vulnerability. I couldn't go about my entire life seeing the forming of order to be (completely) destructive. It just didn't right true.

Which is how I came up with 'plaosmos'. This combination (of 'play' and 'chaos' and 'cosmos') takes away the neutrality. It introduces play. I'm a big fan of play. Play is infused with joy, with creativity, and with exploration. Hopefully, this blog will contain these and inspire these in others.


Another thing I joyously note is that Google comes up with no results for 'plaosmos'. And since google can't find it, it can't exist - you heard it here first! Just as proof:


I hope you enjoy reading this blog. I hope I continue to enjoy posting on it. And please, feel free to leave your comments.