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<div>What exactly is a "two-story" universe? Do you mean some people thinking of "up" and "down" or "sky" and "earth" when they speak of belief in a "personal God"?</div>
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<div>How silly. And how intellectually insulting to those of us who do believe, not in an "up there" and "down here" universe but in a supernatural Creator.</div>
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<div>I totally believe in a very personal God and in His supernatural nature and in afterlife. But God is very much in my life here and now.</div>
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<div>So I would ask again, what do all of</div>
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<div>you mean by a two-tier universe, and how does everyone presume to define that for other people or ascribe belief in it to people they've decided are part of that naive class of persons who believe something you don't consider real.</div>
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<div>Nothing two-tier about it. All pervasive, all-present.</div>
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<div>Susan</div>
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<div><font style="color:#333333"><i>Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid</i></font></div>
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<div class="elided-text">On Sep 17, 2016 7:18 PM, Dharmalingam Vinasithamby via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:<br type="attribution">
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<div>That’s right, it was Captain Sully’s prayer that helped him land that plane. Without it, he would not have been present to the situation and in command of all his resources.
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<div dir="ltr">All of us have been in moments of crisis, even if not as dramatic as Captain Sully’s, where we have called upon the full force of our consciousness and desired that we respond appropriately to save our neck and that of our fellow beings. Even
those who “pray” to their god of a two-storey universe do engage in authentic prayer without knowing it. That RS1 short course on prayer is right on target.</div>
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<div dir="ltr"><font size="2" face="Arial">On Sunday, 18 September 2016, 2:51, Terry Bergdall via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">The movie "Sully" opened in movie theaters around the US last week. I was interested to see it because of an "earthrise" witness that I wrote on prayer seven years ago. I was trying to illustrate the RS-1 practice of grounding religious language
in life experience. Given this dialogue initiated by Susan in response to Bishop Spong, I thought I'd re-post it again here. See below:
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">PRAYER AND CAPTAIN SULLY</span></b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">, 9 April 2009</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">I just returned home from a trip to New York. As is typical when flying from LaGuardia, we had a spectacular view
of the city’s skyscrapers. This time my fascination was greater than usual as I found myself looking for the spot where, in January, a plane like mine crash-landed into the Hudson River. You probably heard about Captain Sully and his plane’s encounter with
a flock of geese, how its engines stopped shortly after take-off, his quick review of options, and his management of a crash from which every one of the 150+ passengers survived. </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'"></span></div>
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-indent:0.25in"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">As I looked down on the same river, I was reminded of an interview I heard shortly after this occurred. Someone asked Captain Sully “Did you pray while
this was happening?” “No,” he said, “but I imagine there were some in the back taking care of it for me while I did the flying.” </span></div>
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-indent:0.25in"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">I may be overly presumptuous but both the question and answer seem to be predicated on a popular image of prayer whereby one’s self is put in the fore seeking
favors from a supernatural entity and, in this case, pleading for an escape from a life-threatening danger. I have no doubt that everyone on that plane was experiencing a prayerful moment, but genuine prayer is something far different from this counterfeit
perception.</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-indent:0.25in"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">Prayer means acknowledging and bowing my head to the sheer awesomeness of a prevailing mystery that is totally beyond myself. It is the mystery that I first
recognized in the questions of my childhood -- why I am here? why must I die? what should I do? what is the purpose of life? I encounter unmitigated mystery precisely because these questions are ultimately unanswered. Genuine prayer allows us to grapple with
the silence rather than fill the void. Prayer is standing before that reality (the name that we cannot know according to the ancient Israelites, i.e., “God”) and framing everyday actions, as well as responses to extreme circumstances, in a life-affirming comprehensive
context. It is never an escape. “I don’t pray to change God,” C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying, “I pray to change myself.”</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-indent:0.25in"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">Captain Sully’s actions make me think that he was in a very profound state of prayer as he landed that plane. He was intensely focused on acknowledging
the real situation while bringing all of his experience and knowledge to bear, including extraordinary resources to remain calm in a moment of extreme crisis. Given popular perceptions, I can also appreciate his unwillingness to call it prayer.</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-indent:0.25in"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">Which raises questions for me. Most of the time, topics of an overt religious nature, like prayer, never even come up in my daily encounters. When they
do, it seems that about half of the people I meet are more-or-less content with the shallowness of popular religion while the other considers it to be totally irrelevant. This, of course, is a gross oversimplification and there is a lot of grey in between
but it highlights a quandary. How do I authentically engage everyone, religious and secular alike, to celebrate and act upon both the possibilities of life and its overwhelming limits? It is even more complex when different religious traditions are thrown
into the mix. No matter how much I work on resolving this, there is no simple answer. </span></div>
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<div style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-indent:0.25in"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">It is in wrestling with life’s questions that we make our prayers. Though he’d probably be surprised to hear it, </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'arial'">I’m
grateful today for Captain Sully calling me to mine. Amen.</span></div>
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