Child- in hushed voice- " Thankful...the day"
Mom- " We ask thee to bless our family"
Child- "Bwess my family"
Mom- "Please bless the food"
Child- "Bwess food"
Mom- "We are grateful for the prophet, Thomas S. Monson"
Child- "Prophet Thomas S. Monson"
Etc, etc, etc....
Now I don't know if any of you have been present or apart of something like this, but this is something i'm quite familiar with. I love it when my family is together and it's time for a family prayer of some kind and it's a wrestle amongst the nieces and nephews as to who gets to be the lucky one to say the prayer that time. Often times when they are 3 years old or so they usually require some help from an adult present. I tried to accurately depict what they turned out to be sometimes. A lot of times as children are learning, they get the bare basics of the prayer and that's where it stays.
See the video below for a toddler who is well learned in Praying.
The act of praying typically starts out at a young age, as latter day saints it is what we are instructed to do. In the book of scripture called the Doctrine and Covenants it says, "And they shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord." (Chapter 68)
Praying has been around since the beginning of time, literally...Adam himself offered many prayers. For me, I feel like the knowledge of Prayer has been passed down orally and that is how I came to know what the purpose of it was and how it was done.
There was a group of people in the Book of Mormon, who at one point knew of religious acts and were a religious people but they had no written text of these religious things. For a time the knowledge was passed down orally, but shortly after that there were many aspects of that knowledge that were simply lost. Oral knowledge has an incredible amount of importance and in some cases could be the only knowledge that we have on a certain subject.
I realize that today we do have the scriptures and that does teach us of the importance of prayer, but I personally don't know of many things in today's world where all we have is an oral knowledge, which is part of the reason why i'm interested in starting this unit so i can learn more. I'm sure there's lots out there!
So I simply wanted to start it off with something that i felt was in that direction and hopefully it's something that many of you can relate to. Prayer is an oral knowledge for me and It's been a big part of my life!
It is interesting to note that there are so many different types and forms of prayer. People chant, repeat memorized lines and sing. They can stand, kneel, face a specific direction, or bend at the waist. It's amazing how many different variations of prayer there are.
ReplyDeleteHahaha. Funny video. Prayer is definitely a form of oral knowledge. However, I think how most of us are taught to pray (dear heavenly father, thank you for this..., I need this..., amen" has put us in a kind of rut. I read this quote the other day (I'd post it but I don't have the book with me) and it said something about how prayer shouldn't be this organized "chant" or repetition of words- it should be something individual. I would have to agree as when I have prayed "unorthodoxly" those have been some of the most spiritual and revalatory moments I've ever had.
ReplyDeleteVery funny and interesting Kody! I liked how you talked about little kids prayers because those are a lot more like recitations than adult prayers (hopefully), and because you started with that it was easier for me to see hoe prayer is a form of oral knowledge. I think oral knowledge is largely cultural as well and our prayers, i would say, certainly follow a specific pattern unique to our LDS culture
ReplyDeleteAmen.
ReplyDeletePrayer is definitely interesting. In Arkansas (and I assume all public schools) prayer is banned in the classroom. It's separated from the general knowledge institutions in a very direct way, so the only way to learn it is through outside sources like family and the home.
Another way that praying strikes me as a form of orally passed down knowledge is in the specific way we use the language when we are praying, at least as LDS people. We still use "thee," "thou," etc. when we pray, even though we would never use them speaking. The archaic form of the words survive because praying is passed down as an oral ritual that is performed in a very specific way, at least in front of other people. We have heard those words used over and over as we grow up, so we use them ourselves without really thinking about it. I think this is especially interesting because "thee" was origionally the familiar or even disrespectful form of "you," which was the formal version. "Thee" is a cognate with the "tu" that is used in Romantic languages like Spanish and French. However, since the bible was written using the "thee" form, the word has come to be used almost exclusively in religious settings, defying it's rather more humble origins.
ReplyDelete