1) I'm not a fan of that Devotional for that reason among others. The Divine knows what each person needs; you and I do not. Nor is it ever ethical to pray for someone without their consent. If you want to pray for someone, and they have given permission for this, then by all means pray for them with all your might -- but this kind of prayer for entire categories of people seems arrogant to me.
2) Here again, I have a different view. Terrible as it is, war is sometimes necessary; pleasant as it is, peace is sometimes disastrous. Periods of prolonged peace in history are generally periods of increased repression and tyranny -- as the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tsu pointed out a very long time ago, tyrants love peace, since peace makes it much easier for them to hang on to what they've stolen. Once again, the Divine knows what the world needs; you and I do not.
There's a character in Dickens' Bleak House, Mrs. Jellaby, who spends all her time and energy on schemes to benefit the people of the distant African country of Borriobooli-gha, while her home, her family, and her community all suffer from neglect. It's a clever satire on a very common habit, and one that pervades our culture's ideas about spirituality in particular. "World peace" is an abstraction; it can also be a distraction; and taken as an abstraction, without qualification, it need not be a good thing at all. (A world beneath the heel of a powerful tyrant with efficient secret police would be a very, very peaceful place, after all!) Thus I recommend that you consider focusing your prayers and your blessings on the people, places, and communities you know, so that you can build peace and the other social virtues from the ground up.
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branchandroot
Re: Prayer ethics
Date: 2025-03-10 05:06 pm (UTC)2) Here again, I have a different view. Terrible as it is, war is sometimes necessary; pleasant as it is, peace is sometimes disastrous. Periods of prolonged peace in history are generally periods of increased repression and tyranny -- as the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tsu pointed out a very long time ago, tyrants love peace, since peace makes it much easier for them to hang on to what they've stolen. Once again, the Divine knows what the world needs; you and I do not.
There's a character in Dickens' Bleak House, Mrs. Jellaby, who spends all her time and energy on schemes to benefit the people of the distant African country of Borriobooli-gha, while her home, her family, and her community all suffer from neglect. It's a clever satire on a very common habit, and one that pervades our culture's ideas about spirituality in particular. "World peace" is an abstraction; it can also be a distraction; and taken as an abstraction, without qualification, it need not be a good thing at all. (A world beneath the heel of a powerful tyrant with efficient secret police would be a very, very peaceful place, after all!) Thus I recommend that you consider focusing your prayers and your blessings on the people, places, and communities you know, so that you can build peace and the other social virtues from the ground up.