>> >What his school is not allowed to do is require that he read or pray
>> >under their supervision.
>>
>> What those who are "for school prayer" want is for
everyone in the school
>> to pray THEIR way.
>>
>> Veloci--I'd rather have freethinking--raptor
>
>I'm all for prayer -- any time, anywhere, anyone wants to lift their hearts
>to whatever idea of divinity they hold. But I'm not for anyone
"guiding" me
>or my kids in a prayer that may not express the beliefs/thoughts I/my kids
>hold. In order to come up with a prayer that wouldn't offend all the myriad
>religions out there (and those who profess none!) you'd have to come up
with
>something so bland and meaningless that the point of it all became
>meaningless as well. And as for "a moment of silence" I can
tell you that
>doesn't work either -- I used it to glance quickly at class notes, catch
>just a few moments of eyes-shut-pretend-I'm-getting-sleep, etc. I wasn't
>praying. It was essentially wasted class time.
>
When I was a child and there were minutes of silence for the passing of
people of note, it was essentially a waste of time in one sense, too. A
minute felt like forever, and we couldn't see what the big deal was. In
another sense, it wasn't a waste of time,  because we learned and
experienced how things are done in our society, so that when we were old
enough to understand it meant more to us.
The minutes of silence in my life that I remember actually meaning anything
in my life were:
When President Kennedy was shot - I was in High School, and the entire
school was literally completely silent, with a bit of sniffling. I happened
to be in a sports period when the school bell rang, and I remember standing
on the tarseal, sun beating down, thinking about the children and Mrs.
Kennedy, and wondering how it would feel if our Prime Minister had been
shot, or the Queen.
When Robert Kennedy was shot I was in college and there was a kind of
outraged mumur under the silence. People were angry. There was a lot of
anti-American sentiment - not against the people, but against a system that
had so much violence woven into its fabric.
When Pierre Trudeau died the entire country came to a standstill. There
seemed to be more than the official minute of silence, the country seemed
numb and muted from the announcement until the funeral
At 9/11 there was an utter, complete, eerie silence over the entire city.
People didn't even leave their motors idling during the minute. Even
weirder, instead of standing with heads bowed, they were looking up the
heighth of the skyscrapers.
>
The rest of them evidently left no mark at all, because I have no memory of
the events themselves, even though I know there must have been a minute of
silence for such people as Winston Churchill
>
Laurie youth is wasted on the young Phoenix
>
>

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha