Kelly Cooke - outside reading

Phenomenology of Prayer
Kelly Cooke

Within ‘The Phenomenology of Prayer’ is an essay entitled ‘Prayer as the Posture of the Decentered
Self’ written by Merold Westphal. In this essay is an evaluation of what it takes to decenter one’s self
and the effect that decentering has on prayer. Westphal writes, “While I would not have said that
adoration and praise were humiliating to me, I could only recognize myself in Marcel’s description of
the self that takes itself as center. Which brings me to my thesis: prayer is a deep, quite possibly the
deepest decentering of the self, deep enough to begin dismantling or, if you like, deconstructing that
burning preoccupation with myself.” I think that this explanation of decentering is very accurate. It can
feel unnatural and somewhat disorienting. Westphal later notes that this uneasy feeling is due to the
fact that we naturally exist at the center of our own worlds. This is one reason that oral cultures
maintain deeper connections, considering that an oral lifestyle promotes a more selfless and in turn
decentered lifestyle.

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