religion: prayers

i was only taught how to say Hail Mary in Chinese, but somehow during the meal, my family always say it in English. As a kid, I tried to catch up as much as I could, and for quite a long while, my English version of Hail Mary was: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blesssssssss..... fruitssss...Jesus....ssssss.....death. Amen

I used to believe…

When I was little and we would say the prayer "God is great, God is good let us (lettuce) thank him for our food, Amen". I always wondered why we were talking about lettuce and thanking God for our food in the same prayer.

I used to believe…

When I was younger I would say my prayers, and then I would sit an imagine god examining my prayers. I pictured him saying to himself "What a good prayer" or "what a good girl she is..I'm sending her a pony."

I used to believe…

When I was a little kid ithought that when you prayed you prayers went into a bubble and floated into heaven then when god wanted to hear them he would pop them. I was so afraid of sendim=ng him to many that he would be mad! So i only prayed a couple times a day until i was like 9!

I used to believe…

As a child I always made sure to say my prayers every night. I would especially ask God to forgive me for any lies I may have told. You see my Mom would tell me that the devil would come and pull my tounge out of my mouth at night while I slept if I told lies. As I was going to bed each night I always pictured this happening and never forgot to ask for God's forgivness and protection.This may sound harsh on my Mother's part, but it also made me detest lying and therfore made me a very honest person...one of my best qualities!!

I used to believe…

When I was younger I believed the reason I never got caught doing naughty things at school was because I said my Our Father everynight. I thought the line that went "and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" actually went "and lead us not into DETENTION, but deliver us from evil". it certainly made sense to me.

I am a Catholic, and as a child I naturally got some words confused as many other people here did. At one point the church says "I am not worthy Lord, but only say the word and I shall be healed", I believed it went "only say the word and I shall be YOU" (our priest has a bit of an accent). I thought that being God would be a terrifying duty, having to take care of everyone in the world at once, and that we should scared of taking on such as task. I always said this line a little smugly however, knowing that if God ever asked me to take his place i would take on the responsibility full throttle.

I used to believe…

My Mum tells me that when she was a child she used to think the words of the Lord's Prayer were "Our Father, we chant in heaven". She thought, we chant in church so we must surely also chant in heaven.

I used to believe…

When I was about 6 I didn't know how to pray. My mom told me to just talk to God, or something like that. So I did. Then I told my mom my prayer didn't work because I didn't hear an answer. I thought praying was like talking on the phone and God would talk to me back.

I used to brlieve that when you are about to go to sleep, and you pray, and your laready laying dowm, when you close your eyes to pray. When your finished praying, I always thought you had to open your eyes and close them back or else Jesus would think your prayer would go on ond on.

I used to believe…

When I went to a private christian school for first grade, there was this song they taught you that went "Read your bible, pray every day and you'll grow, grow, grow" and then "Neglect your bible, forget to pray and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink" and I took it literally. I would freak out if I didn't try to read at least one word of the bible and pray to God every day. I would start measuring myself. I even took it so far as to stop reading and praying for a while when I heard my mom complaining about how fast I was growing up and she didn't like it.

I used to believe…

There's a line in the Hail Mary prayer that goes "blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." But when I was little, I thought it was "blessed is the fruit of thy ROOM, Jesus." I was a bit confused as to what the bowl of fruit Mary kept in her room had to do with anything.

I used to believe…

Before the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, the priest would say 'We will now say the prayer that Jesus taught us'. I knew the prayer, but couldn't remember having learnt it; thus I assumed that it was implanted in our minds by Jesus before birth.

I used to believe, that if I prayed hard enough, God would let me have super-powers. But because my prayers weren't working I assumed that I was being too greedy, and each time I prayed I asked for a slightly less impressive super-power than the last time, a bit like haggling with God, I suppose. I started off wanting to be Spiderman. By the time I gave up, all I wanted was a torch in the end of my index finger and a metal box in my belly, with a sliding door, to keep my Marvel comics in!

I used to believe…

Having watched too many Hindi movies at a very young age I believed in the special effect when you look at the idol hard , the images blur , lo and behold god appears in person.I tried loooking very hard , so hard that the image blured but god never appreared

I used to believe…

Im from a catholic family. when i was little i misheard God- for Gordon and when we went to mass i thought we were praying to Gordon ... my uncle ... wasn' t till i was six and asked my gran why everyone i knew prayed to my uncle .. that they understood why i always looked confused at church.

I used to believe…

A few years ago a friend of mine called Peter came round to my house and my little sister confidently told us that he had the same name as God. It turns out that all these years instead of saying "Thanks be to God" she has been saying "Thanks Peter God"!!!

I used to believe…

For years I used to believe that God's name was Harold.

I asked my mum, "why does Harold have charts?"

She didn't have a clue what I was going on about, and asked me what I meant.

so I replied, "You know Harold, in heaven, why does he have charts?"

My Grandad's name was Harold, so my mum said, "Grandad isn't dead, he is still alive."

I got really frustrated, "No mum, Harold in Heaven! you know!"

"Our father, with charts in heaven Harold be your name, your kingdom come....."

Ok so mum finally got it, and she reminds me of it often

I went to a Catholic school, even though I was Presbyterian, and one of the boys in my class asked why I didn't do the Sign of the Cross when we said prayer. I said 'I don't believe in that part,' and before I could finish he stood up on a desk and shrieked 'MARY DOESN'T LIKE JESUS!'.

From then on, I did the Sign of the Cross anyway.