{"id":1011349,"date":"2023-04-18T06:51:15","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T11:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/?p=1011349&preview=true&preview_id=1011349"},"modified":"2025-03-03T12:40:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T18:40:39","slug":"prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prayer<\/h2>\n
They taught me to pray - \"Pray for anything,\" they said -\r\n\"Prayers are always answered. Always.\r\nJust remember this: Sometimes, the answer's 'No.'\" \r\nWhat, then, the difference - whether I pray\r\nTo God the Father, or just ask Dad? Is God \r\nThat parent a child runs to, full of hope, \r\nWhen the other has said \"No!\"? Is God\r\nThe stern and angry Wizard of Oz, \r\nAdmonishing innocents for wasting His time? Is God\r\nThe permissive pony-giver, \r\nCarrying sweet butterscotch in a lint-filled pocket \r\nFull of love, yet fuzzy \r\nWith inevitable disappointment?\r\n\r\nThey taught me to pray for others - \r\n\"God bless...\" The litany of names went on \r\nTill eyelids sagged \r\nBeneath the gravity and weight of them.\r\nWas there really strength in numbers? How many times\r\nMust God be reminded of Aunt Bonny's cancer;\r\nOr Great-Grandma's aching joints;\r\nOr Billy's third son's failing business\r\n(He's a wastrel, but he has a good heart);\r\nOr Mom's failing memory (Dad's asked her umpteen times\r\nTo take the car in for its oil change).\r\n\r\nWould my prayer be more effective\r\nIf I collected prayer-cards \r\nWith signatures from the neighbors?\r\nThe didn't work so well with Dad, \r\nWhen what I wanted was a puppy<\/em>.\r\n\r\nMatthew says we ought to pray in secret - \"Your Father knows\r\nWhat you need before you ask Him.\" Matthew says\r\nWe shouldn't \"heap up empty phrases\" thinking we'll be heard\r\nFor endless words. Even as I child \r\nI heard such things and rolled my eyes: \r\nTwo hours in church, and I felt empathy with God. \r\nBut if a prayer falls in a closet\r\nAnd there's no one around to hear it\r\nDoes it even make a noise (in Heaven)?\r\n\r\nIs God suffering an eternity's forgetfulness\r\nLike Great-Grandpa - wandering inattentive - \r\nDistracted by a billion other short and simple words\r\nThat we be told we must repeat our prayers\r\nAd nauseum<\/em>? Must we demand God hear our pleas \r\nA hundred thousand times a hundred?\r\nOr will a heart-felt thanks \r\nExpressed in secret silence\r\nFor His small and wonderous surprises, \r\nBe enough?\r\n<\/pre>\n
Today’s Poet<\/h2>\n
Dan Pagis<\/strong> – an Israeli poet, born in Romania. A Holocaust survivor who spent much of his childhood in concentration camps. Read more here<\/a>. Questions posed in the following lesson plans invite us to think more deeply on poetry – specifically, Pagis’s, but we can consider them a guide to thinking about other poems in the context of human experience, as well.<\/p>\n
Dan Pagis’ Poetry (yadvashem.org)<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
April is National Poetry Month<\/a>. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo<\/a> – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).<\/p>\n
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge<\/a>, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once.\u00a0You can see the list of participants<\/a> – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.<\/p>\n
This month, my goal is to:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated<\/a> – here; and<\/li>\n
  2. Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.<\/p>\n
    Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers<\/em>, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    Prayer They taught me to pray – “Pray for anything,” they said – “Prayers are always answered. Always. Just remember this: Sometimes, the answer’s ‘No.'” What, then, the difference – whether I pray To God the Father, or just ask Dad? Is God That parent a child runs to, full of hope, When the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-1011349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 20:50:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011349"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011860,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011349\/revisions\/1011860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011349"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=1011349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}