Prayer

I have been asking myself why I am so interested in Prayer and devotion. It's a hard question to answer in a way because I am totally not religious. Although I have had periods of my life where I was exposed to religion in an intimate setting, it never really resonated with me or felt like it answered any burning questions, which seems to be what pulls people in when they are invited into religion. When i was sixteen I was very involved with a Hari Krisna group in my home town, and attended many celebrations and events with them, but the form that their devotion took often made me uncomfortable. There is a sense with hinduism that sometimes living people get mislabeled as vehicles for deities themselves, and can abuse this role. I found this with the Sadhus I met in India, who appeared to me to essentially be beggars but with a culturally legitimate explanation for their life choices. I also have had periods of contact with christian communities, including friends and family, and attended lectures and events in christian groups, but I never found a real point of entry and found the answers to my questions a little too easy. 
So why am I obsessed with the concept of prayer? It could be because prayer is the unifying aspect of all religions. All religions show their devotion in some form, and so often this becomes visual, and so often this visual form of devotion becomes opulent and decadent beyond the budget of the creators. The shrines and votives and places of worship so often don't even carry the name of the craftspeople that toiled over it's design and creation. There is no 'artist' only a work of art. Often in the western hemisphere's interpretation of religion, there is a clear and very human object of devotion, with a clear crossover of imagery across eastern orthodox catholicism and jewish devotional artwork. In eastern religious artefacts it becomes more conceptual, with depictions of animal gods, more use of text in artwork, and in the case of islamic artwork, no human or animal form will be seen due to the belief that it is idolatry, and thereby a sin against God, as declared in the Qur'an.
Another thing that inspires me about prayer is that it is essentially the same concept as casting a spell: the devotee recites an incantation of their aim or desire in the hopes that it will be heard and granted, even sometimes without a real belief in the god they pray to. I find prayer interesting because it is in some way a compulsion more than a learned behaviour, which, I believe, is why it is so widely practiced. It starts in an ephemeral form; words that are often private, sometimes going unspoken and remain in the realms of thought, and moves into visual and tangible things, representations of our dedication, our investment in our beliefs. The concept of making earthly offerings to unearthly beings is contradictory, but also makes sense- we are visual beings and there is a certain catharsis in being surrounded by beauty. It becomes a form of art which is exempt from the rules, boundaries, and exclusivity of the art world. It is it's own genre.