prayers

...and, of course, I always believed that we asked God, in the Lord's Prayer, to "lead a snot into temptation."

David Moreau

I used to think that 'Grace' at the table went: Gone is Great! Gone is Good! Let us spank him for our food. Amen...

Drake Healy

When I was little I used to think that if I didn't do the sign of the cross before praying God would not listen to me, so when I would forget to do it I would start praying all over again even if I was almost finished.

Josie

I used to believe that prayers were like phoning God ie when you made the sign of the cross it was like dialling the number and after you said your prayer you HAD to do the sign of the cross to hang up or God would still be able to read your mind and he'd know if you were doing or thinking anything bad. I also believed that if you were interrupted during your prayer you would have to stop and make the sign of the cross to hang up and THEN you could attend to the interruption. I was about eight years old when I started to doubt this belief but then one day we were saying prayers in class (Catholic school) and the teacher made us do do sign of the cross but then another teacher came in and our teacher just stopped. My friend leaned over and whispered to me and said "Be good, God can still hear us because we didn't hang up". Thus my unusual belief was reaffirmed for another year.

Norah-Ireland

When I was in Kindergarden, the first Gulf War broke out. I didn't understand war, but I picked up enough to know that the Americans were fighting Saddam Hussein. One day my mom told me to pray for my enimies. That night, my prayers included "...and please let Saddam Hussein be blown to smiterines!"

bjc

I used to believe that if you opened your eyes while praying, that for however long you had your eyes opened, you had to keep your eyes closed for that much longer after the prayer was finished. So i started closing just one eye, and the other eye that i kept opened would see who else would need to keep their eyes closed after the prayer

Kelsey

when i was little, i thought your prayers would come out of these machines (just like fax machines) and that God would sit in the clouds read them all day.

jenny

when i was little i thought that when they say "thanks be to god" they were saying "thanks peter god" so i thought that the lady who always said that was named peter, and i wondered why she had a boys name.

Emily

I never did understand why it was "Our Father, who aren't in heaven".

Edith

I was raised a catholic and went to a catholic school but I was well into my teens before I could stop saying 'Hell Mary, full of grace etc'...

Buzz

when I saw those prepare to meet thy god signs I thought they were beauty parlours for religous ladies only!

knuckles

I saw this once as a child's intepretation of "Our Father which art in heaven": Our Father Whichard in Heaven ... "

Bruce

Always before supper we would say the prayer: god is good, god is great, let us thank him for our food amen. Well whenever i said this prayer i would always say: goddess good, goddess great, lettuce thank em for our food amen. One day it just clicked that ive been saying it wrong all my life.

Meghan

When I was young we started attending church for a few years. I had never been in a church before, and was actually half-Jewish. Every Sunday the pastor would ask everyone to "say the prayer the Lord taught us", meaning The Lord's Prayer. Because he introduced it like that, and because nobody looked in their hymnals while they said it, I thought that it was so sacred that it wasn't allowed to be written down. I thought there was some long, mysterious ceremonial process to learning it, and that we would never be allowed to learn it or say it, since we weren't "really" Presbyterians. (To my mind, you weren't "really" a certain religion unless you were born into it.) I found it in a book at the library and memorized it in secret, as an act of adolecent rebellion. I couldn't for the life of me understand why Mom was proud when I spontaniously recited it to her after a fight.

propchick