tunesmyth

You should leave a message at the most recent post, or by private messaging me.

As this list began as a compilation of prayers which appeared in the pages of the Ecosophia blog and the associated Dreamwidth page, this list follows John Michael Greer's general outlook regarding consent and prayer: there do exist people who do not desire prayer or help from supernatural forces, and as a policy we wish to respect their wishes.

Thus although there are no limitations to who you may request prayers for, the expectation is that the prayer is on behalf of yourself, a personal acquaintance, or a group or place to which you are personally connected; and that consent for prayers has been obtained from the relevant parties. When consent is difficult to obtain or meaningless (e.g. with children, pets, the mentally impaired, or people on life support), then please make sure that you have consulted with whoever holds the relevant power of consent.

A good rule of thumb is that if a person is specifically listed by name in the prayer specifically, please make sure their consent is obtained before requesting a prayer on their behalf. More general prayers on behalf of groups to which one belongs (e.g. one's family or one's nation) don't require consent with the same level of diligence.  
 

By far the most common prayer type on the list so far is health prayer requests, so they get their own category. After that the most common is requests for spiritual protection. But please feel free to post prayer requests for anything else that you can think of, including help with personal growth and development, aid in coming to understanding on difficult problems, success at various specific endeavors, or even prosaic things like locating lost objects.

Well, again, consent needs to be there. Also, it probably goes without saying, but I will reject any prayer requests that fall outside what I consider to be the bounds of moral responsibility. (This has not yet happened.)

 

As a general rule, a prayer that remains for three months on the list without any updates is likely be removed from the list at that time. Should you be interested in keeping the entry on the list past this arbitrary limit, it is a simple matter to leave a comment or private message me before then, and the prayer will continue for another cycle. In this way, a prayer list entry may be extended indefinitely.

If you get taken off the list but wish to go back on, simply contact me to let me know that you'd like to go back on and I'm happy to put you back on for another normal cycle.

When making a prayer request on the Ecosophia Prayer List, it helps out a lot if you can be specific about what you would like people to pray for on your behalf. Most helpful of all is if you can write the wording of your prayer request yourself, in the third person. See the prayer list itself for many examples of how to word prayers. That said, if you don't do this, I will endeavor to craft the wording of your prayer in the spirit of your wishes.

I suggest taking the wording of the prayer seriously. Some prayer recipients have reported that the wording of the prayers make very specific and precise differences to their outcomes.

 

Maybe. The truism that "The gods help those who help themselves" exists for a reason. If you don't personally take any steps to improve the situation you've asked for help about, and simply try to let the prayers do your heavy lifting for you, then you're probably going to end up disappointed with the results. Not only that, but somewhat mysteriously, simply by taking constructive actions in the direction of your desires, other forces in the universe often start to arrange themselves in the same direction. Your actions become a kind of material anchor around which spiritual forces are able to gravitate.

Also, it should be pointed out that the power of prayer is generally thought to be additive, not subtractive; and so if you have a prayer that you wish to echo in the ether beyond the limits of this group's participants, you might also consider also registering your prayer with some other public prayer groups.

After some discussion on the matter, a sizable majority of the prayer list participants who made their voices heard agreed: we are of the opinion that when neither privacy nor modesty is a concern, it is generally more efficacious for the requesters of prayer to provide their real names, location, and even pictures of themselves. This both makes it easier for those praying to focus their intentions, and it requires the prayer requester to put some "skin in the game", opening the gates to more easily let in the powers who answer prayer.

Of course, modesty and especially privacy are a real concern. Also, everyone agrees that prayers to pseudonyms, or even simply to "anonymous", can be efficacious: as was brought up in the comments of that conversation, two of the most dramatic successes of the prayer list so far were on behalf of pseudonymous handles. So, with all of this in mind, here is what we will try.
 

(1) For prayer requesters who don't wish to do anything differently, nothing will change. Please continue to only share what information you are comfortable sharing of your personal information with the main prayer list, just as you have already been doing, and rest assured that your prayers will be heard.

(2) *After* you have shared your prayer already on the main prayer list, those who wish to do more to increase the efficacy of their prayers also have the option of sharing information they wish to remain discreet by e-mail. This information will be shared semi-privately only on a weekly mailing list version of the prayer list. It will never appear on the main prayer list page, and nobody will be able to search for your information on the web. If you wish to take this option for your prayer request, the e-mail address to send this information to is: "ecosophia prayer list" with no spaces at the care of the leading email domain of the company whose name is honomynous with the mathematical term for "ten to the power of one hundred".

In the message, you might include:
--the prayer target's real name
--the prayer target's location
--a (please keep it short!) description of what you want others to know about the prayer target
--the prayer target's ambition in life (taking a cue from The Crystal Silence League)
--a relatively recent photo of the prayer target (if you know how, I request that you reduce this size of the photo if it's enormous)

Nobody has actually asked this question, but it has come up before that someone was concerned that it might be an issue. I want to make clear that (provided that the target of the prayer has given proper consent) there is no "purity test" for who is included on the list, and I will not remove anyone from the list for these kinds of reasons. Of course anyone may pick and choose for themselves who to pray for and who not to pray for. My own philosophy is that regardless of our own faults and merits, we are all of us beings who can use a little divine help sometimes; it is up to the divine, and not us, to decide which prayers will be answered.

By all means leave a comment once in a while. The more people who stay in touch this way, the more we feel like a community. I think that's almost always likely to be a good thing.

Then feel free not to ever comment as well! It's really up to you. Everyone should make their own choices about that based on what makes them comfortable. As for me, though, as the person tending to this list, I'll just say that it's always my pleasure to hear that people are praying for others on the list.

Why yes you can, if you like. If you wish to be added to a mailing list to receive these prayer updates once a week by email, please send a short message to "ecosophia prayer list" with no spaces at the care of the leading email domain of the company whose name is honomynous with the mathematical term for "ten to the power of one hundred". I may also occasionally use the mailing list to send out special mails in the case of new listings that I deem to be "emergency prayers".

I've treated that matter seperately; the link is here.