I’m not sure the Lava Lamp at Emergingchurch.info is pre-post-modern or post-pre-modern, but it is good for literally seconds of pray-fo-tainment.
File it under “proof of concept for non-verbal prayer” except, whoops!, you’re bidden to type your prayers in. I’ve been waiting to advise you kinesthetic folk — line up, single file, no shoving but movement permitted — out there to consider moving representations (pictures, say, but be creative) of your objects of prayer towards an icon of Christ in a prayerful mode. Just let the action be, without necessarily resorting to spoken or mental speech. Nothing unorthodox about this, seeing that Christians proclaim Christ in the flesh as the icon of God. An alternative to lighting candles for everything, and speaks to the “shrine instinct” (for lack of a better term, and no deprecation intended) that some Westerners find appealing in Eastern religions.
In those churches — here I’m pitching directly to the Unitarian Universalists — that still have Christian communion, this presents an opportunity for holy baking in the mode of presenting bread for the gifts in the Eastern churches. As the bread and wine become the icon of Christ in the Thanksgiving, so the prayers (sometimes delivered with the bread written on paper, but there’s no need to get too literal here, literally) are identified with Christ the True Priest in their offering. I know this will read as superstition and folk religion to some, but I’d urge a consideration of the practice based on what we know about learning styles, and thence, to how we apply and proclaim our faith.
Consider this: I was the supply preacher to a little Universalist heritage church in South Carolina before moving to Washington. The bread was smushed Wonder Bread, diced: a format many low church folk will recognize. But the wine was the made by a man, already dead, who was well loved in the church, and they were getting down to the dregs of the last bottle. They used trays and small glasses, and had a grape juice option. A church member brought the wine each communion Sunday and recollected its vintner. The cups were prepared, the prayers said, and the communion shared. And all the excess wine was returned to the bottle for the next month. . . .
You tell me what that was about, if not an unspoken prayer.
Hat tip: Jordon Cooper
That’s so touching.