Letters to Malcom: Letter 1

The family and I were up in the Berkshires this past week where we stopped off at Shaker Mill Books, which I heartily recommend to all those who loved used books. One of my finds was a 1964 edition of Letters to Malcom: Chiefly on Prayer and I thought it would be interesting to kind of live blog my thoughts as I read through.

Two caveats: (1) I realize, that I'm way behind on so many other things so hopefully I'll follow through on this and get to everything else soon as well. (2) I have mixed feelings about live blogging (or podcasting) through a book because I think any part of a book is better understood after reading through the whole thing. So, we'll see how this goes... 

Letter 1: 
This Letter surprised and confused me, and leads me to think that perhaps I have misunderstood church service. In traditional Judaism the need to pray with a quorum in a place dedicated for prayer (like a synagogue) is a given. And both matter - one should preferably pray in a synagogue even without a quorum and preferably pray at the same time as the rest of the congregation even if not at the synagogue. Hence, Lewis' almost immediate dismissal of congregational prayer as not a subject for discussion (outside of this first letter) was quite a shock. 

Where I find more room for agreement is in Lewis' emphasis on familiarity of the service. Tradiational Judaism certainly takes this to an extreme. While every (I can only speak for Orthodox Judaism) synagogue has its own flavor, the base service is very standardized, so that any Orthodox Jew can go to any Orthodox synagogue and have a good idea of what prayers are being recited (while in the Berkshires I prayed at a synagogue with a decidedly Hasidic influence. I am certainly not an adherent of Hasidism, but still followed along without a problem). Furthermore, the standardization of prayers exists even when not praying with a quorum, though certain parts of the service cannot be recited without said quorum. New prayers have been added to the standard service over the centuries, but a fundamental change of that sort takes decades to win acceptance. So, with respect to the habitual and familiar I am entirely onboard. 

Where I may find disagreement with Lewis is in his desire for the habitual in order to not have to fix attention on the service, but fix attention on God Himself. To some extent I understand this. If someone is not familiar with the tune or has a hard time reading the words that person may concentrate on the recitation of the prayer at the expense of its meaning. Still, this does not mean that the words of the prayer are besides the point, or should be recited in a habitual manner. Our goal is to fix attention on the meaning of the prayer, understand it, internalize it, for it is through the prayer that one speaks with God. So, what is it that Lewis wants people to concentrate on? I'm afraid I have not understood exactly what he wants. 

Finally, I have to comment on the question of language. From an early age we teach our children to read and understand biblical and rabbinic Hebrew. This does not mean that everyone successfully understands every word of every prayer (which is why many prayerbooks have translations). Nonetheless, the recitation remains the same. The Pslams and later prayers that make up the daily and holiday routines are recited in their original language and it is expected that people will strive to learn and understand the original language, even if modern Hebrew (and certainly English) is different than the language of the prayers. It is not my place to critiize, but I must admit, I am at a loss as to why the general Christian population does not learn the Greek and Hebrew necessary to understand their texts in the original.  

Perhaps I've misunderstood something in all this, and perhaps Lewis will clarify in later Letters. 

We'll see...