This isn't a big issue, as it's more of a pet peeve. As some of you have heard me say before, one of my biggest irritations is that we can't think of a better name for things that annoy us than "pet peeves". Curse you, inventor of idioms.
Anyway, one of the things that annoy me the most tends to be background music for prayer. It's hard to pray with a soundtrack. I first noticed this in church, as the tradition is for someone to play music while the pastor prays. It isn't soft and in the background, either. It's dramatic, inspirational-sounding stuff. The natural reaction of the pray-er is to raise his voice a bit dramatically. It's unavoidable, as I later discovered.
The other day I was joining silent prayer in a group while the leader was playing the guitar. It sounded nice, but the result in my head was a more dramatic prayer in my mind. I don't know how silent prayer can be dramatic, but that's what happened. And dramatic does not = heartfelt, so I had to pray away the resultant guilt according to custom. And that's such a bother.
Like I said, this is a minor irritation. I just hope it doesn't become too popular, or we'll be seeing CD sets in Christian bookstores entitled "Soundtracks for Prayer", or something like that. Then we'd be talking a major issue.
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2 comments:
Sorry.. I understand your annoyance. I feel the same way at church and I don't usually like to play during prayer at school. I just kind of felt moved to this morning. Sorry if it distracted you.
I'm sorry if I offended anyone, as this wasn't really directed at anyone. It's inevitable, and NOT just at school. This one was also meant to be taken even less seriously than the others. Especially after the last two posts I did which seemed a little heavier.
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