Queering Prayer

What this episode covers

We’re exploring the multifaceted nature of prayer by reflecting on our personal journeys and our evolving understanding of spirituality. There are so many emotional complexities tied to prayer. It can be powerful and so connective to community when we really look at it. And when you are able to queer prayer, this can help break down boundaries and really let you reimagine what prayer can do. Takeaways Shannon shares his evolving journey with prayer. Prayer can be a means of personal transformation. The emotional impact of prayer can linger long after beliefs change. Community plays a crucial role in spiritual practices. Collective prayer can create real-world change. The allure of traditional prayer can be comforting but also damaging. Engaging with diverse prayers can expand one’s spiritual practice. It’s important to reflect on the theologies we carry. Building community requires intentional action and vulnerability. It’s never too late to form meaningful connections. Chapters (03:46) Revisiting Prayer and Theology (06:35) The Emotional Landscape of Prayer (09:44) Community and Collective Prayer (12:36) The Allure and Challenges of Prayer (15:24) Expanding Notions of Prayer (18:36) The Power of Shared Experiences (21:34) Building Community Through Prayer (24:42) The Role of Action in Spirituality (27:34) Invitation to Connection and Growth Resources:. Join the Queerness Everyday Challenge Join our online community at Sanctuary Collective Community If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, revelation, the Bible declare good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how tuning Each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast. We are excited to talk about Queering Prayer today. I feel like, I don’t know about you, Brian, but I have had a journey with prayer over the course of my life of different Yeah. Like ways that I believed prayer worked or didn’t work, or how it made me feel or didn’t make me feel. 00:00:56 And I’ve been, I’ve been working with, with some folks lately who have a very different view of prayer than I currently do, but it’s very similar to the view that I grew up with, which is making me like, I don’t know, revisit some, some thoughts on prayer. And so thought this would be interesting. So I, I, I’ll, I’ll start by sharing, you know, like I grew up in a tradition that really believed that prayer worked, and it was everything from like praying that God would make it sunny on the day of our, like church picnic to God would provide a parking spot to, like, prayer would make God forgive us our sins and, and get us into heaven. 00:01:40 And so it was very and Really quickly, like not to be too like pedantic, but like you, I already have questions. Like you said, we believe that prayer worked, right? Like, And I feel like a lot is hanging on and maybe, maybe I’ll get to that, but like I look a lot is hanging on the word worked. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was this sense of like, you, you prayed and you asked for things and God would do it, but that, and then even when it, like you didn’t get the answer that you wanted, God was still doing something right. It was this very like, twisted logic around. It was Like, God, the answer is he God always answers. It’s just like, yes, no, or not yet. Yeah, exactly.