Sacred Communication/Journey Fall 2017

We've discussed prayer and what it is intended to accomplish a bit in class. We said that prayer requires some discipline because it is not something that is intended to be a "when you need it" type of thing. Prayer isn't about getting what you want; a lot of people use prayer to do this and obtain something physical in their life. Prayer helps deepen our experience and its meaning. We talked a lot about prayer being a way of decentering yourself; you get to remove yourself from your everyday life and a lot of people believe prayer to be a humbling act/experience. I think that people can pray in many different ways and not just through the normal, bowing your head and talking to God in a quite place or church. I am a religious person and I've found that praying through music is much more meaningful and easier way for me to express myself to God. By using music as my method of prayer, I am able to rejoice God and not ask for anything in return. This is what I bel...

Sarah Jackson September 26, 2017 In class, we learned that there are four axioms that make a place sacred. Not all people have a spiritual experience when they enter a sacred place. They do not connect or engage with the place, be it local or universal. The place cannot be chosen, the place chooses itself. Lastly, a sacred place was once ordinary and made extraordinary through ritual. An example of this from my own life is my trip to China right before I turned eight years old. I had found it interesting to go to temples and gardens which held spiritual significance for certain people. Sadly, I was not one of these people. Clamouring onto my parents, I asked when the next meal was or if we could hurry up so we could swim in the hotel pool before our tour guide pushed us onto another bus. I stood on the ground where people meditated and gave thanks, but I walked through it all blindly. In Landscapes of the Sacred , Belden C. Lane states that identifying a sacred places is “inti...

Backpacking with the Saints by Belden Lane was the book that brought me back to God this summer. I got into the practice of reading the book almost every night before going to bed but had a hard time getting through the book because of the ideas that Lane kept bringing up. I would begin to read until I came across an idea that forced me to ponder the wonder of the idea instead of just moving on in the book. The book really captured many of the experiences and feelings I was experiencing durning my time in the woods. Belden Lane before he begins the book talks about how you can't read this book on your couch. Lane says that in order for this book to have an affect you need to be ten miles back in the woods far away from the nearest road. It was at that moment that I knew I was reading the right book. The other concept that he brings up that really took me for a loop was the idea, that if you look at creating/the woods as God's presence manifest in physically then walking on...

"Secondly we learn how prayer is the task of a lifetime, so that even those who have been praying all their lives may not have gotten much farther than kindergarten." (page 19). Even though I am still very young, this quote stuck out to me as very relatable. My Pastor back home is a man of prayer! He prays at least 3 or 4 hours a day, and before he was a pastor in this role, he used to pray even more than that, as he had more time on his hands. Moreover, he attributes all the fruit his church produces to the power of prayer, and can give endless stories to prove how this is the case. Spending time with him in prayer meetings is always a learning experience for me, but this is not the amazing part for me. The amazing part for me in learning from him is that he constantly talks about how much of a student of prayer he still is today. This is both encouraging and discouraging for me. Encouraging because it makes me more peaceful that my prayer life isn't where I want it to b...

Well it took me a while to post something, but I guess late is better than never. When I saw this class on my schedule at orientation, I didn't know what to expect. I displayed interest in this class through my online modules they had me do prior to Setting Sail, but I was given no information on it. I only knew what my brother and former high school biology teacher had told me: "Find Kip Redick, and take a class with him." Two months later, I walked into my first RSTD 236 class and I had no idea what was going on. We were talking about the cosmos and other abstract ideas that I had never been introduced to before; but after a few more classes, I realized that it wasn't as abstract and confusing as I had thought. Everybody has a cosmos. Everybody's cosmoses has objects in it that make their cosmos what it is. Everybody has other people in their cosmoses that interact with their reality in a fluid way. Everybody has a way of explaining their cosmoses, such as an id...

 Victor Turner and Edith Turner discuss the idea of "communitas" while on a pilgrimage in their book Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture . The pilgrims ditch things that they are familiar with in search of something deeper than themselves. Though they leave alone, pilgrims often find others who are on the same search as them forming a community between them. The community of pilgrims share food, shelter, and burdens. This support system reminds me of the "communitas" in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The individuals gathered under the Lord's name shared all they had, provided for any who was in need, and they broke bread together. Many of the apostle came from different walks of life but they were connected through Christ. This level of communitas reminds me of the people I share a house with. We are all "pilgrims" of sorts. All of us left home and entered into Christopher Newport University (a new place) with our own projects ...

Natural Learning By SArah Clark September 21st, 2017 When I walked into Sacred Communications Class for the first time on Tuesday, September 5th, it was hard to know what to expect.  I had just gone through add-drop overrides to get into this class after having countless recommendations to take it.  I expected to walk in and be drowned with material I needed to catch up on.  Instead, I felt like I walked into a natural, relaxed classroom.  I had never been in something like it.  I was used to my engineering classes that follow a very structured textbook learning plan with homework, labs and projects that tack on faster than you can write it in your agenda.  If I miss a class, I could miss a letter grade.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my major classes, but this was different.  Class feels organic and not forced.  Students would freely share differing opinions and personal experiences.  I am still learning a lot, but it is natural. We ge...

Matthew Hutchins 9/8/17 I am sitting in class often just captured by the meaningfulness that going on in our class. The ideas that have been shared in class about prayer have simply open my mind to another way of thinking about prayer. I used to see prayer as a communication tool and that is just how we talk to God. Prayer is more than just communication but a way to humble yourself from yourself, a check on your ego. It takes on a whole new meaning when action is put upon yourself instead of just expecting God to do something for you. I have been able to reflect on this through my practice in prayer and it has really changed the way I start my prayer. It gives me some context as to why I pray and opens my practice into a new freedom. In the book one of my favorite quotes in the first chapter is when the author says that prayer is not a detachment of the self in order to attach to God but rather a detachment from ourselves "in order to see and use things in and for God" (22...

Matthew Hutchins 9/18/17 I think I am just beginning to understand what to means to decenter myself from religious culture that I often find myself in. It takes such a long time in order to remind myself who I am and who God is around me in the context of wilderness and journey traveling. It is almost like being surrounded by all of the religious traditions slowly add on more and more laws and rules that you must do in order to be a religious type of person. That is why I think I need spaces like one Victor Turner talks about a space where the subject become ambiguous. I need spaces like the Nolan trail or a wild, rugged wilderness area in Montana. It is in those places I think I find myself again, a place where Matthew does not rule and I can exist as a human being amidst other living beings. The most simple way of living allows myself to be who I have always wanted to be. Then when I return to the life surrounded by tradition I can live with reason and purpose again. Those places ...

September 17 2017   In The Phenomenology of Prayer, Merold Westphal explains that to to truly pray, we must de-center ourselves. When I was little, my parents gave me a formula on how I should pray. I would thank God for that day, ask us to bless my family, and to “give me sweet dreams so I could wake up and have a good day tomorrow. Amen”. I never actually praised God by de-centering myself and listening to what he had to say. How exactly do we dethrone ourselves?   Westphal explains that people need to think less about how God can help them with future endeavors and more on what he has already done. People should pray with disinterested delight, praying for the sake of praising God. To truly pray, I needed to thank him rather than set the expectations I had for the next day. De-centering oneself is difficult. I have trouble doing it because, even if I’d pray just to praise God, I can feel the demands piling up in the back of my head. Through this book I’ve learned that I hav...

When talking about the elements of prayer, the author of The Phenomenology of Prayer claims that praise is where we need to start. Prayer is the "deepest decentering of the the self." Prayer should begin with adoration, acknowledging the power of the higher being. From the faith background in which I was raised, the idea of removing yourself from the center of the universe (humiliating yourself) and putting God at the center is how to live a spirit-filled life. Wholeheartedly yielding yourself to the Spirit is no easy feat, Galatians 5 explains that the desires of the flesh (personal projects) are against the desires of the Spirit (wholly other's projects). This ongoing struggle is the life of one who has faith in Jesus. The more time spent praising God in prayer, the more preoccupied one will become with God and submitting to his will, empowered by the Spirit, will then become our project.

September 15, 2017 The Introduction of The Phenomenology of Prayer talks about the main parts and themes of prayer; it is pretty much a lead on the question, "Can prayer be a phenomenology?" When the book addresses  the posture needed to pray, I immediately thought about my posture when I pray: eyes closed, hands clasped, and head bowed down. As I read on, I discovered the real meaning of the proper praying posture; it does not matter if you are laying down or sitting up, what matters is whether your whole body is engaged or not. "Posture is possible only to a deeply de-centered self." My takeaway on that quote is that you must be engaged internally and externally when engaging in prayer. As I read the chapter, I related to a lot of the text. I pray for the same reasons listed in the book, "for myself, my loved ones, forgiveness, and thankfulness." When commencing my prayer, I greet God. "Praise is the first element of prayer." I think prai...

  Merold Westphal talks in his essay within Phenomenology of Prayer about how modern Christians have such a hard time praising God in prayer because it isn't about us.  It is a call for Christians to think less about themselves in prayer and instead fix our eyes upon the Lord.  The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, says "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."(Galatians 2:20).  If one were to look at prayer through that lens that Paul provides it would be far easier to praise him acknowledging that they, as they are, are being crucified as Christ increases while they decrease.  This assurance that Christ is increasing as we are decreasing (John 3: 30) is very beneficial in one's prayer life being more prone to simply praise God for who he is as opposed for what he has done for us.