Transition from Fundamentalism to Agnosticism, part seven

 

[Rabbi] Kushner [whose book I was reading in 2005] said that prayer is just to remind us to be grateful for things, on a regular schedule, including for things it would not otherwise occur to us to be grateful for. God needs no praise, but He knows we need to feel gratitude. When I wrote about this on 7 March 2005, I felt as if I agreed with him. The answer to our prayers “is not an explanation but an experience. An often-overlooked benefit of prayer is that it changes us, so that we no longer envy the wicked.”

Three days later, I wrote, “My valleys of shadow, compared to others’, are often little mud-walled arroyos, such as I will soon see in the desert, but they seemed pretty dark to me anyway, and if you cannot climb out of them, they are deep enough.” I was already looking forward to my trip out west to see the desert wildflowers.