The mysterious thing about prayer is that even when I’m an antsy, unfocused mess of monkey mind while I’m davvening, I still take off my tallit and tefillin with the awareness that it has worked, at least on/in me (I’ll never claim to know what prayer does or doesn’t do vis a vis God). I believe the Christian word for such an event is “grace.”
I’m curious what you mean by worked? Myself, I tend to feel relieved at having fulfilled my hiyyuv and get the resulting psychological satisfaction of having stuck to the requirements of my chosen lifestyle for the broader and more elusive benefits I get from it.
BTW, see Yerushalmi Berakhot 2:4 towards the very end. Turns out some rabbis also were antsy unfocused mess[es] of monkey mind when they davened! 🙂 [As an aside, this is precisely why I love the Yerushalmi — it feels like Talmud Raw Uncensored!]
(P.S. I’m sorry not to have gotten back to your email _yet_ — I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what I want to _do_ with that article, and therefore have been putting off thinking about it. I usually try not to be that flaky — I’m sorry!)
Hey, Will–
There is something to the feeling about being yotzei, I’m with you on that. Feeling yotzei is enormously gratifying. But for me, there’s something else, as well, another feeling. Similar to (but not the same as) if I had sat meditation for an hour–which is not an act that makes me yotzei on anything. A way that I feel as though something (my soul, you could call it, though I’m not so into the mind-body split) has been deep-cleaned, refreshed. I generally feel that this has somehow been effected even when I’m not so “present in the moment” during davvening. Don’t have a lot more to add about that, there’s something of mystery about it, and I’m OK with mystery.
Re: email, no sweat. Will look forward to hearing what you decide to do with the thing when you make a decision. We’ll be in touch.