An example that I encounter is from the Daily Prayer for Orthodox Christians, taken from the Synekdemos: "I place all my hope in you, Mother of God, Keep me under your protection." I am unsure how this could be correct and I cannot bring myself to pray this. I mean this as no disrespect the the Theotokos, but rather, that I try to place all my hope in God.
I know people have said it on here a thousand times, and it used to annoy me, but I'm starting to believe that it's true: Many of our prayers use ridiculously flowery language that is way over the top, just like the bloated titles of some of our hierarchs. The line you mention is in my Jordanville Prayerbook, and I might have had some troubles with it if the very next prayer wasn't "My hope is the Father, my refuge the Son, my protection is the Holy Spirit. O Holy Trinity, glory to Thee."
So it's pretty obvious that not all of anyone's hope is exclusively in the hands of the Mother of God. So I believe in a technical sense one could say that this prayer is factually inaccurate, but I don't have any issues praying it because I know what the intention of the prayer is.
You already know my views on so-called flowery language, I think; so no comment there.
But thank you, thank you, for putting this prayer
in context.
Orthodoxy is a whole. As Asteriktos put it on this thread, it combines many disparate ideas. This is because Orthodoxy is Incarnational. Difference does not imply division or opposition or subjugation. Through the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Second and Glorious Coming of Christ, we are all invited into the wholeness of God.
Furthermore, we are the Israel of God, those who
struggle with God. If ideas and concepts are important to us, there's going to be some ideas and concepts that we struggle with. IMO, we should resist the temptation to ignore them. Rather we should learn from and grow in the struggle.
We should put prayers we are having difficulty with in the context of the Divine Liturgy, of the Scriptures, of the Fathers, of the other prayers, and try to understand how they fit. We should
want them to fit. If we ignore or dismiss them, we are assuming that disparate=opposed, and that assumption cuts against the whole loving, unifying movement of traditional Christianity.
Probably none of us would have a problem saying, 'all my hope I place in Thee O Holy Spirit', even though someone could say, 'well, what about the Father and the Son'. We know that in no way does the distinction of the hypostases diminish the unity of the Godhead (and vice versa). But Jesus came to make us by Grace, everything He is by nature. Allow me to go out on a limb, then, and say that in an analogous way to what I said about the Holy Spirit, when we commit ourselves to the protection of the Mother of God, we commit ourselves to God's protection.
Jesus Christ Himself became the one Mediator precisely to share this ministry with all. And His sharing of it in no way diminishes its unity.
Broken and distributed is the Lamb of God; broken but never divided; ever eaten, yet never consumed, but hallowing those who partake.