Religious Scholar

Intriguing thoughts on prayer by Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) as part of a panel discussion at the American Academy of Religion conference in 2002. (Podcast)

http://diamondsounds.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-09T09_12_44-08_00

Below, I've gathered some interesting comments by Derrida from this talk, out of context, of course, and there may be some slight paraphrasing due to my note-taking and writing from memory:

"I pray all the time, even now. My idea of prayer is that it is absolutely secret and contains ritual (coded gestures)."

"My prayers have more than one age, one layer, in the same instant. There is something very childish, in the imagery, iconography of God as a stern grandfather and at the same time as a mother who thinks I am innocent, who is ready to forgive me. God is just and forgiving at same time. This is the childish layer of my prayers.

"On top of this layer there is another layer: my culture, a very critical, experience of religion, referencing the philosophers and scholars I have studied, Nietzsche etc.; the experience of a non-believer, who is suspicious of the child, resists, asks, 'who am I addressing, etc.'  In this layer of sophistication, I ask who is praying and who is receiving the prayer. I know that this way of thinking (when I pray, I think) is not simply negative, a way of asking all the questions. These questions are part of my experience of prayer. Thinking about the unnameable, etc.: it is a very skeptical prayer. Skepticism is part of the prayer. The suspension of certainty is part of the prayer."

"This layer of prayer relies on the suspensions of knowledge. To whom am I praying? Who will answer these prayers? Part of what the prayer has to be is to be authentic. My assumption is I must give up any expectations regarding The One or the more than One to whom I address this prayer if this is still a prayer."

"Of course, the child is praying for protection, etc., but I can’t tell if I’m praying to someone invisible or if precisely to these other ones in myself that I want to address. There is at the same time some suspension of any calculation. I’m not hoping. It’s a 'hopeless' prayer. Hopelessness is part of what a prayer should be. There’s hope, calculation, economy.

"I am growing old and find I am more of a child than when I was younger. Addressing a public audience now, I find I might run the risk of saying something confidential. Calculation: form: I know that praying that way, even if there is no one God in form of father or mother receiving prayer, I know by this act of praying in the desert out of love (I wouldn’t pray otherwise), I may be be doing something good in myself, like a therapy. By doing this, I try, and do not necessarily succeed, to affirm and accept something in myself, do something good to myself (that’ s my calculation) and to my beloved ones. A way of loving. A calculation that strives to integrate the incalculable.

"When I pray I try to incorporate all. I have a strange experience, encompassing all the learning from Plato to Augustine to Heidigger, all there…the world in which my prayers pray. That’s the way I pray …sometimes in fixed moments during the day, sometimes anywhere , any moment."