That's when I started considering how easy it becomes to understand how religion begins. So far back in history began sun-worship, prayers to Surya, or the Egyptian Ra, or the Native Indian's Sun spirit. The gratitude for a divinity for what it gives us - warmth, heat, light. Despite these elements being inanimate or abstract - scientifically speaking - we have developed a sense of personification in these elements.
One might question: can we give gratitude to something that does not perceive it? Well, similarly, we show angst at bad weather, or kick a stone and show anger at it for having tripped us up, or even more frequent - mutter curses at our computer....so why not?
Our ability to demonstrate a reaction, or an emotion is not only arbitrated by the reception of it. We react because we can. We feel because we can. We demonstrate pleasure and displeasure regardless if it is toward a person, a situation, or an inanimate object. Our ability to do so is what allows us to be.
So perhaps, our habit of demonstrating thanks to some ambiguous superpower isn't so much about our gratitude or prayers being heard, but actually about having been said.
This reminds me of a quote I stumbled over a long time ago:
And this reminds me of something Kiara (a-shared-thought.blogspot.com) wrote, something along the lines of...when we pray we aren't given the answer to the prayer right away but rather, we're given the opportunity to achieve what we asked for. And I think that this is what prayer itself does, in its own fashion - it guides us. Not just in the tentative idea that there is a superpower to hear us, but that we can hear ourselves. For us to understand what it is that we are feeling, what we want. Sometimes we might think we want something, and it isn't really defined. But once we put it into something resembling a request, that's when we can really consider the consequences, repercussions of what we want. It's sort of a blueprint for the house we want, or map towards where we want to go. When we know where we want to go, that's when we can make better preparation towards getting there.
When we express gratitude, whether acknowledged or not, that demonstration allows us to understand what it is that we do take pleasure in, what we like, and this is how we become more aware of who we are. It's sometimes the very smallest things which make us understand this, just like a step out in the morning, waiting for the bus.
