The unknowable power of prayer

In reading “Far-Off Healing” [May 2], I could not help but think about the old Peanuts comic strip in which Linus and Charlie Brown ponder one of faith’s imponderables, how many angels fit on the head of a pin, the answer being “10 if they are skinny and 5 if they are fat.” Trying to gauge the effect of “distant prayer efforts” of one faith or another seems to be just that. We will never know the answer, and I doubt that, in looking closely, a “scientific study” will be able to say much one way or the other.

Some things should just be left to faith; think of the implications if a “study” concluded that prayer from one religious standpoint had more effect than that of another. It would simply add to the cultural, social and religious disputes that have done much to divide the country into “red” and “blue” states.

Greg W. Garrotto

Los Angeles

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While spiritual healing is as ancient as human history, our collective understanding of it is still in its infancy.

Until humanity gets a clearer awareness of the nature of the supreme manifesting power as it applies to individual experience, our science will remain unable to accurately determine its effect on health.

Robin Gregory

Carmel