I brought gender in because it related to the degree of convention or orthodoxy in the way one prays.

In the most conventional protestantism, a prayer to God as the mother would be as inappropriate as a prayer to Mary.

Underlying this, there is the whole issue of whether one's approach to the divine relationship is more militaristic/monarchical or more familial. God the towering military judge might just brush off your prayers to the nonexistent St. Christopher as 'WRONG,' where as abba/daddy might smile at your childish error and accept the prayers in the spirit in which they were intended. How stern does one need to be about correcting how people pray? That's a topic that could provoke extended discussion. There are jurisdictions where being caught in a prayer to a Christian saint would be considered apostasy, a capital crime. That's extreme, but where is each of us on this scale? Obviously we may not wish to go to the opposite extreme either, blandly supporting supposed Christians who, for example, want to pray to their cats and dogs as pantheistic extensions of their creator.

Anyways, our entry point for this discussion was prayers and devotion directed to Jesus, a member of the trinity. So the first peripheral topic that was brought in was prayers to Mary and saints. I am just honoring this expansion of the area of interest.

We're keeping it lively.