One night a long long time ago . . .
I distinctly remember lying in my bed staring at the shadows on the ceiling and saying my prayers to Jehovah while becoming annoyed with myself at how rote and over familiar my thoughts had become.
It just didn't feel authentic.
I steeled myself to the task and began again, apologizing for the insincerity!
My mind quickly wandered. I switched into an analytic mode. "What's wrong with me this evening?"
Then it came to me with startling clarity. I WAS TALKING TO MYSELF!
I was like a kid with a Teddy bear having a conversation and projecting upon my cuddly stuffed toy the 'personality' I wanted it to have! I was like the little girls having a tea party with their favorite dolls making chatter for each distinct personality. All of it imaginary but feeling so real!
It was ONLY ME as mental ventriloquist projecting a feathery nothing into the Universe as fragile as a soap bubble floating airily above me.
Wow. This realization came with some impact attached--it knocked the wind out of me.
I remembered an incident when I was a boy. I pulled the threads together in my mental tapestry and stepped back to see the pattern. . .
I loved playing "cowboy" since I grew up in Ft.Worth, Texas and watched way too many cowboy TV shows with Hopalong Cassidy, Hoot Gibson, Johnny Mack Brown, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and a host of others.
I dressed up in my Hopalong Cassidy outfit and strapped on my two six-gun cap pistols and mounted my faithful stick horse and rode around my front yard making the sounds of the horse and my own gunfire (as well as ricocheting bullets.)
Why do I mention this? Because, as I was telling you, I had just realized lying in my bed one night I had been fooling myself about prayer and this boyhood incident flashed into my head.
There I was in my front yard on my stick horse popping my cap pistol when I looked across the street and saw Mr. Washington on his front porch staring at me. My neighbor had this strange expression on his face which suddenly made me self-aware.
Then it had hit me: I was 13 and TOO DAMNED OLD to be acting like a child any longer!
The same was true of praying. I was fooling myself, lost in my own imagination.
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WHEN WE ARE PRAYING, we are simply talking to ourselves!