The founding of Pennsylvania as a “commonwealth” embodied a vision of the general welfare and demonstrated that leaders sometimes can catch hold of profound insights. Selflessness, for example, isn’t our normal instinct. But why ask for divine help if there’s no intention to take it, even if it runs against the grain. Higher truths have a habit of being at odds with the ways we normally do things. The other requirement is that if the shut mouth/open mind moments do occur, that participants be ready to act on the higher truths they receive. So if the three days of prayer and fasting got to the point where minds became open, maybe something good may yet happen. Otherwise, if we just yap at a Higher Being with all of our personal obsessions, we remain locked into our own little worlds. It can get us out of ourselves enough so that we can see the common good and the relatednessof all life. It is this approach, I believe, that can open the door to grasping broader understanding of where and how we live. It is the “keep your mouth shut” school or prayer which allows an awareness of a fuller reality to penetrate our wired minds. That is the “listening” kind which silences the mind enough to hear what a Higher Being is trying to say rather than bombarding HB with a laundry list of demands and suggestions. I’m no expert on prayer, but of the varieties of it that are practiced, one in particular seems to me to offer hope. But it’s harder to judge results down the road, depending on what the participants in the prayer and fasting took away from the experience. She shows the kind of motivation that enlighted the Biblical prophets who sought to remedy society’s ills.ĭid it work? Well, if you judge the results just by the brutal black and white of the state budget approved on June 30, no. She attached her prestige to a specific objective that posed the risk of making her look foolish. It wasn’t an amporphous, self-centered goal (“look at me”) but a civic minded one that affects every citizenof the city. Mayor Thompson’s mission wasn’t to be bathed in the warmth of public approval but to find a way out of a human mess. I heard a genuine note of humility and self-effacement in Mayor Thompson’s words, and the group of leaders seeking public “succor,” as they used to call it, weren’t preening for attention. So what was this vigil and does it deserve a scrap of credibility?įrom the evidence I see, this was an unusually sincere, authentic expression of seeking help, A prayer event in a fancy hotel in the glare of television cameras is a show, whatever else it may presume to be.It is clearly for the benefit of the public figures who stand to gain by it. The Humanist Examiner said “many doubt efficacy and propriety.” “If all the brightest minds in Harrisburg’s government can’t solve the city’s financial crisis,” wrote Jeff Cox for at the outset, “maybe God can.” To protect his “realist” credentials, he added that the city “may not even have a prayer.” She enlisted a dozen or so Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders last week in a three-day prayer and fasting vigil for “a more cooperative spirit” that ended with an ecumenical service. There were “things that are above and beyond my control,” she said. Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson braved the doubters and scoffers. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor
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