Father James Martin: What Good Is Prayer?

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Everything Happens Studios

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We don’t always know how to move through this strange, distended season. The season before the cure or the vaccine or the answer. Before the money comes through or the job opens up or the heartbreak is over. The season where there is hope for someday, but someday is not now. Perhaps here, we need to learn how to pray. In this episode, Kate and Jesuit priest Father James Martin discuss how prayer is for everyone — believer, doubter, or no-thank you-er. You may be wondering, but Kate. I know you don’t know me but… prayer? Really? This seems a bit sanctimonious. What if I don’t believe in God? Or at least don’t believe that prayer works? What if I’m not the kind of person who prays? Why are you being so bossy about this? Full disclosure: I’m not an amazing pray-er. But I do love people who love to pray. And today I thought we could talk to a wonderful person who can help give us a little more spiritual language to be here, a little scared. A little disappointed. A little hopeful. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Kate Boehler and this is Everything Happens.
0:04.0	I'm a historian, author, aggressively fast walker, but lately in a world that promises endless
0:10.9	progress, even now in a pandemic, I've realized I just need to be a person.
0:18.4	It's hard to give up on the feeling that the life you want is just out of reach, if
0:23.7	only you tried.
0:26.0	Make this food, find that relationship, just get the kids graduated or the parents this
0:31.6	kind of care.
0:33.4	Only then will I feel different, better, whole.
0:39.3	But that's not the way this works.
0:42.1	When I was 35, I was diagnosed with stage war cancer, and here's the very fun thing about
0:47.5	that.
0:48.5	The world loves you better when you are shiny, when you are cheerful, when you still
0:53.8	believe that your best life now is right around the corner.
0:57.9	I've written multiple books on the history of the idea that you can always fix your life,
1:03.1	so I'm going to be the one to say it.
1:05.7	There are some things we can change and some things we can't, and it's okay that life
1:12.0	isn't always getting better.
1:14.7	We can have beauty and meaning, community and love, and we will need each other if we're
1:21.2	going to tell the truth.
1:23.4	Life is a chronic condition, and there's no cure for being human.
1:35.0	This is a strange, distended moment, the sameness of a world that groans for change.
1:41.0	We need justice for all and a vaccine for the 7.9 billion people who woke up this morning.
	...

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