Prayer- D Flashcards
(11 cards)
Themes- prayer
Faith
About- prayer
- Duffy exploring and identifying alternatives to prayer to provide comfort for people who feel unsupported by religion
“Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself”
-collective and connected
-personifies on its own accord
-imply there are no Gods to pray too
-unexpectedly something in the form of an unconscious prayer appears
-something deeper and involuntary takes over
- as a believer we struggle to fin gods grace and as a non believer we cannot pray as we do not believe it does us any good
- faith is something natural and instinctive not confined to formal religion
“The sieve of her hands’
-the way her fingers are splayed physical things can slip
-implies that happiness and life is slipping from her grasp
- attitude of despair
- image is sorrowe filled
- sieve allows whinges to get through
- she lifts her head at the sound of a tree
- the small revival of hope
“Minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift”
-hypallage
-not the tree singing but the birds in it
-positive connotations of the natural world and pleasure and comfort humans derive from it
-person finds comfort in the bird song
Suggesting tree sings a delicate tune
- its an unexpected beauty (sudden gift)
- faith like comfort can be found in ordinary natural things
“The truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain”
- we can’t escape the truth even if we try and avoid the distress it brings
-the pain we would like to dismiss, disturbs us at night
“Latin chanting of a Train”
Repeated sound of train chugging away turns into prayer
-moving trains produce a rhythmic sound which can be comforting
- reminds us of mass (context)
- recalling the chanting of the Latin mass when he wass a boy
- even though he may no longer believe the memory holds comfort
“Grade 1 piano scales console the lodger looking out across the midlands town”
-consoled by simple piano scales played by a child
-he is aware of his loneliness and isolation
-soothing repetition of sounds are like the familiarity of a forgotten prayer.
-not religious like prayer but offers order and calm
- suggesting faith like comfort can arise from routine not just religion
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“Then dusk, and someone calls a child’s name as though they named their loss”
-at dusk children are called back home, as if to protect them from the darkness outside
-it’s physically and spiritually dangerous
-reminder of loss of the protecting voice of parents
-adults still year for a parents protection in moments of weakness
- mourning and longing
- depth of human love and grief
“Darkness outside. Inside, the radios prayer- Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
-rhyming couple
- even when dark the reassuring repetition of shipping forecast can provide solace.
- finnisterre means end of the earth and rhymes with the first line, suggesting a circulatory ending.
- soothing
“ some nights although we are faithless the truth enters our hearts”
- truth can still reach us
- faithless suggests lost hope and emptiness but truth suggests lasting moral or emotional insight that pierces through disbelief
- ambiguous
- ## we have no faith or we have broken the trust of others
