Dear Lord...

 

Right now I am praying. 

If my cursory observations are correct, so are 82 million other Americans. Praying that our American Experiment wont come crashing to an end on November 5, 2024. Or December 15, 2024, when the certified votes are certified. Or on January 6th, 2025, when the certified votes are counted. Or on January 20, 2025, when President Harris is inaugurated.

I think we can all agree that it's not praying that will secure our future and the future of mankind. It's voting. 

And getting 100 or 200 thousand people off the couch (no JD Vance joke here) to cast a ballot for sanity. Because oddly enough, that's all it takes to save us from voluntarily driving off a cliff, a la Thelma and Louise.

But this post is not about politics. 

It's about prayer. That's right, I'm about to touch the other highly charged rail of American culture -- religion.

Not surprising, I'm going to focus on the Abrahamic faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Mostly, because I know very little about other religions. And because when it comes to prayer, these three have the most low hanging fruit.

Perhaps one of those low hanging fruits clobbered me on the head. Maybe an unripened gourd, because frankly when it comes to prayer, I don't understand it. Nor the notion of self appointed prayer warriors.

I get the warm, communal feeling one gets when sitting in a congregation and davening, or bowing, or singing with 500-600 of like-minded believers. I am not immune to that. And fondly recall sitting in a synagogue with my family joined in the bonds of fellowship.

My problem is with the process. That is, how are prayers supposed to work? 

If god, G-d, The Lord, The King of Kings, knows all and has a pre-ordained plan, why are we convinced we can change that course simply by asking for it? Seems kind of wishy washy for the Host of Hosts.

Moreover, since clergy, of all stripes, are always asking us to "pray with us", is this a numbers thing? That is, does a prayer become more effective if it is chanted in unison? By hundreds? By thousands? Millions?

Is volume the deciding factor? I can assure you the wailing and the crying and the pleading were quite loud during the famines in Africa, or during the Middle ages when the villages ravaged by the Black Plague or even from the cold forsaken barracks of Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka.

Why then did these prayers fall on deaf ears?

I'm going to take a leap of faith (sorry) here and suppose (just for a moment) I were the Master of the Universe.

There I am minding my own business, collapsing Black Holes, sending galaxies to their demise, moving the tectonic plates along the Pacific's Rim of Fire, when suddenly, I start hearing voices.

The voices grow louder.

And louder.

Then it comes in clear. 

Frustrated fans in the Keystone State are bemoaning the fate of the Pittsburgh Steelers since the departure of Ben Rothlisberger. 

"Wilson is washed up and Fields is a washout."

Do I stop my celestial business to attend to this matter, restore Rothlisberger's arm to full strength, and divinely alter the fate of the AFC North? 

No, I do not. Why? Because I'm the Almighty. As is ALL and as in Mighty. And as history has proven, I (god) cannot be bothered by 'prayer.' You humans need to knock it off.

Or, as JD Vance famously said to his son, "Shut the hell up."