Hello! Busy day. The mess in the house reached critical mass. Best to clean before it exploded!
That was my afternoon. My morning was a double dose of exercise, Zumba and yoga.
Do not ask me how I luck out when it comes to people, but I have to say again, I have been blessed with many good ones. Not the least of which is my exercise community.
That lawsuit is over. A weight has been lifted. Not the verdict we would have liked but the outcome was not as bad as it could have been. We are planning a party.
Some people would wonder why we would have a defeat party. No, in the bigger picture this was a victory! We hung together and supported our own. We came through it as a community. We go on as a community. Not a defeat at all.
Once again, it is important that we count our blessings. Gratitude and comparison. Two distress tolerance skills. It could have been so much worse.
Moving on….
I was talking to a girl I don’t get to talk to that much at Zumba. I gave her the standard spiel: “if I walk past you and don’t speak, speak to me.” I am losing my vision, not my manners! Her response to the news was to promise to pray for me.
Now, I know prayer is good for you when you are doing it. Prayer has a meditative quality and has positive physiological effects. Calling on ‘expert help’ is comforting. But what about other people praying for you? Can that really be helpful?
Common wisdom says it is a definite yes. For thousands of years people have prayed for the sick and infirmed…not to mention the blind. This is a time-honored tradition. It works; right?
Well, some sources say conditions purportedly cured by prayer are ‘soft’ conditions and it is impossible to say what really caused the improvement, if there were really an improvement at all. What is happening is just too subjective.
That is the rational, more logic based argument. In their March 31, 2006 edition, the New York Times published the scientific argument. The study in question had a group of heart patients prayed for during surgery. This group was told of the prayers. Another group was prayed for and not told while the third group was not prayed for at all. Turns out there was no difference in outcomes between the group that was prayed for without their knowledge and the group who was not prayer for. The weird thing was the group that was prayed for and knew it did somewhat worse!
Not exactly the prevailing belief, huh? We want to believe in miracles. We want to believe good wishes have some effect.
I thought about it a bit and even if it may not be the answer, I am appreciative of the help. You never know. It has been said faith can move mountains and I need a few mountains relocated.
In the meantime, in between time I am taking some advice from St. Augustine:
“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended upon you.”
Keep on keeping on.