Thor's Day: Please add to your prayer list

Odd man out

By Morris Dean

When I installed Thor as a sort of hearth god for Moristotle & Co.'s religion column (July 12, 2012), I had no idea how it would turn out. And I certainly had no inkling that Thor would perform seeming miracles in fetching such rich and totally unexpected material for publication. Two weeks ago, for example, there was the gift of email exchange titled "A little skirmish over 'the War on Christmas'."
    Then, to perform today's miracle—apparently even in cooperation with another god!
    This one all started the last Friday of 2013 with an email sent by a cousin to me and a dozen or so others who are mostly also cousins, under the subject, "Update on [our aunt]":

Cousin #1: I am writing to let you know that [our aunt] is in the hospital and needs your prayers...Our sister-in-law has been in the hospital since August. The power of prayer has worked for her, so I believe it can work for [our aunt]. If you don't already have her in your prayers, please add her to your list.

I thought about the request for a day before replying:

Thanks for the updates. I'm glad of [our aunt]'s improvement. But if prayer is effective, shouldn't that behoove us to petition for more than seems to be being requested here? Maybe pray that we all stop aging and suffering our various ailments and other afflictions? Maybe even that we begin to get younger and stronger again? Sounds like too good a deal to pass up.

The cousin must have been online right then, for she responded in seconds:

Morris, I know that you do not believe in God or Prayer, but some of us do. I can take you off the list when I ask for a prayer for anyone if you want. I believe “what will be will be,” but what does it hurt to say a prayer for someone? I have a friend that is going to have open heart surgery soon and another one of our friends bought a prayer card from his church for a year of prayer for our friend. Maybe we just get a sense that we are doing something good when we pray for someone.
    We don’t ask for things to improve our standing in life—i.e., riches, new cars, stop aging, being skinny—but we pray for our loved ones. If it is time for them to leave, our prayers would be, “Don’t let our love one suffer.” None of us want anyone to suffer for years when they are in pain and nothing can be done medically.
    I don’t try to change your beliefs, and don’t need any remarks back. Other than if you want to be taken off the updates on family.

Excited by her evident willingness to discuss what her limitations for praying are, I trudged on:

Why, if prayer is effective, DON'T you pray for more improvements in conditions? I don't understand what your limitation is.
    But if you really DON'T believe it's effective after all, but actually believe that "what will be will be," I don't understand why you pray at all. ???
    Why do you seem to be recommending we tell people we're praying for them rather than, for example, saying, "I hope you get better soon"?
    I do hope that [our aunt] will get better and her suffering be as little as possible. I'm glad to receive news that she's on the mend.

    Unfortunately, I forgot to ask her how much those prayer cards sell for....

There was no immediate response this time, so I just waited. Maybe I would hear from one of the other cousins.
    Sure enough, in a few hours:

Cousin #2: Our God is not limited by your limitations in understanding or believing in Him. We all know where you stand and you know where we stand.
    You seem to be unable to just let it go, as [Cousin #1] asked. The only positive thing you said was your last sentence, “I do hope that[our aunt] will get better and her suffering be as little as possible. I'm glad to receive news that she's on the mend.”
    If you don’t want to be included in family prayer requests, just say so…otherwise just delete the email and don’t respond. And by the way, we still pray that somehow God will be able to reach your heart.
    Heavenly Father, we pray for your healing and easing of pain for [our aunt]. She believes and trusts in you, she’s your child. We commit her into your care.

I needed overnight to figure out how to reply to this:

Dear [Cousin #2], thank you for speaking up in [Cousin #1]'s stead to enlighten me about the limitations on what we can pray for. "God is not limited by your [i.e., my] limitations." From that it would appear that [Cousin #1] COULD reasonably pray for more than she currently is. I hope that will come as good news to her.
    Also thank you (and whomever else you include in "we") for continuing to pray to empower God to reach me. If God CAN be made more powerful, maybe you all are just the ones to effect it.
    I DO wish to be included in the family prayer request notifications, for a couple of reasons. One, that may be the only way for me to hear news of [our aunt] and others I care about. Two, I'd like to be able to alert everyone quickly in the event that God reaches my heart and compels me to join you all in prayer rather than to just go on hoping for the best and cheerfully resigning myself to whatever comes.

By then, Cousin #1 had already written to Cousin #2 also:

Cousin #1: [Cousin #2], thank you for understanding and speaking out. I had decided not to respond to Morris any more about the subject of God.
    Love to all

She seemed to be disinviting me to reply. I sure hope she will let me stay on the prayer request distribution list anyway.
    And Cousin #3 had already joined the conversation as well:

Cousin #3: Great news on [our aunt].
    Family is family. We have to except all and what makes them happen to do [what they do in?] times like this. As this year has been the worst for my family, praying helps us a lot. Prayer is not for everyone and that is okay, but do not say that it doesn't help those of us [it helps?].
    William Morris [what my cousins called me when I was a boy], you need to come to a family reunion and reconnect with us. We are a fun group.

Me: Dear [Cousin #3], I too was glad to hear that [our aunt] made it back to the care center okay. I hope that she'll continue on the mend.
    I appreciate your insight that the simple act of praying can sometimes comfort the ones praying [assuming that is what she meant]. That can work whether the prayers are heard or not. Is the main function of the family prayer group to try to make its members feel better about their inevitable suffering, or to try to make the one suffering right now feel better by telling them that "everyone" is praying for them?
    Thanks, too, for assuring me that I am still invited to family reunions. What sorts of fun do you all like? Apparently not that of discussing fundamental things you don't agree with. Maybe you all prefer playing games like odd-man-out?

Since Cousins #1 & #2 seemed to have dropped out, I didn't know whether to expect to hear again from Cousin #3 again either.

I guess I forgot that some other cousin might...well, not join in exactly, but more like intervene.
    Under the new subject line, "This needs to stop":

Cousin #4: Morris, my initial instinct while reading this e-mail thread was to just keep my thoughts and opinions to myself. Each of us has the right to our own thoughts and opinions, and I learned a long time ago that just because a thought hit my brain that sometimes it should not come out of my mouth. After reading your responses today, to both [Cousin #3] and my sister [Cousin #2], I have read enough—and I think this sarcastic commentary toward those of us who believe in the power of prayer needs to cease.
    There isn't any formalized "family prayer group" trying to make anyone feel any way about anything. The initial e-mail was to let this collective group of family members know about [our aunt]’s current health situation. Some of us who do believe in the power of prayer responded that we would keep [our aunt] in our prayers, and your responses to that went off in directions about prayer that didn’t have anything to do with [our aunt]’s health. I don’t believe your responses today are in any way opening up a "discussion of fundamental things" that I don’t agree with; I feel your responses today were sarcastic and condescending. I don’t have near the intelligence or education that you have, Morris, and there have been many times that I have enjoyed reading your words, as I have learned a lot from them. I respect and admire your intelligence tremendously. But I am not ignorant, and I know when someone is "speaking down" to me. Let’s end this email pettiness and get back to what the initial e-mail was all about—our collective love and concern for [our aunt].
    I respect your right to not believe in God and/or prayer; please respect my right to believe in God and the empowerment He has provided me through my freedom to pray to Him. I will not try to change your beliefs and do accept and love you as my cousin; I hope that you can reciprocate and extend this same courtesy to me and anyone else on this family distribution list.

Me: Dear [Cousin #4], what a GOOD message! Thank you for taking the time to write it. I regret that you or anyone else of my loved ones should have thought I was speaking down to them. Your feeling that way would seem to account for the stern, if lovingly crafted, reprimand you thought I needed to hear. I laud you for manifesting the same email seriousness that I myself intended. You are evidently more skilled at expressing seriousness than I am.
    I share your love and concern for the last of our collective parents, [our aunt]. I was dwelling on memories just this morning of your dear father, who of all his family treated me most frankly "man to man." What a gentleman he always was to me! I well remember my wife's and my last visit with him, as he was suffocating to death and on oxygen, but still smoking! And your sister came by for a few minutes out of her busy life to say "hi." That was some years before the most recent time I had the pleasure of visiting with you for a few minutes, at the...airport.
    I was also remembering [an uncle and his son]'s lending me $50 to help me attend divinity school in Scotland. That attendance proved important in my religious development, by demonstrating profoundly the lengths to which rationalization will go to try to justify superstition¹. I needed that to access the faculty of skepticism, which had been suppressed in me by strong doses of religious indoctrination as a child and youth.
    I respect your right to believe about God as you choose. I acknowledge (and think I understand) your sense of power gained through prayer. Thank you for respecting the fact that the thought of praying makes me feel foolish and stupid.
    I accept and love you, too, and everyone else on the family distribution list, out of heart feelings for our common roots and the assumption of everyone's good intentions.

But before I had even finished reading Cousin #4's email, let alone responded to it, we heard from Cousin #5, under the original subject line.

The phrase which keeps coming to my mind is “Me thinks he doth protest too much.” Just saying!

At this point, of course, a paraphrase from Shakespeare² doesn't go amiss.
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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

1. An example of a rationalization [or "theological half-gainer"] for believing in God might be:
   

   After I pray, I feel better.
   Therefore, God exists.

   Or:
   

   When others pray for me, I feel better.
   Therefore, Jesus has my back.

2. Act 3, Scene 2 of Hamlet, Queen Gertrude [replying to her son's question, how does she like the play they're watching?]: "The lady protests too much, methinks."

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