12 Years Ago Today: The wisdom to know the difference

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 15, 2008, without an image.]

A cousin wrote me yesterday that she’d meant to call some of our relatives in Arkansas to see whether they were okay in the wake of Hurricane Ike, but that “like always” she’d put it off and not done so. I told her that either our relatives are okay or they aren’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
    Her reply surprised me:

Confession to myself

By Moristotle

It’s Sunday, and more than a few of my neighbors have gone to church. I know they have good reasons for going (and possibly a few not-so-good ones – “What might the Joneses, or my parents, think if I don’t go?”).

The work of my lifetime

Christian Science 
as I see it

By Cynthia Barnett

Christian Science has been in my family for four generations, but I’ve always known it would have been the right religion for me even if I had not “inherited” it. I love Christian Science because it gives me a God I can accept from both reason and revelation. Relying on it all my life for guidance, comfort, inspiration, and healing, I have not been disappointed. It works.

A prayer for Memorial Day

Created by altering a certain political cartoon^*

Apologies to Honest Abe

By Bob Boldt

I composed the following prayer because I have had it up to here with all of the militaristic jingoism rampant this holiday.

Ask Wednesday: Does it help to pray for weather?

What do you think?

By Morris Dean

I turn the question back to you, because I don't really know, although I admit that I confidently assume it doesn't help to pray for weather. Do you pray for weather? Do you find it useful?

Thor's Day: Holy humor 3

By Anonymous

Edited by Morris Dean

When my daughter, Kelli, said her bedtime prayers, she would bless every family member, every friend, and every animal (current and past). For several weeks, after we had finished the nightly prayer, Kelli would say, "And all girls."
    This soon became part of her nightly routine, to include this closing. My curiosity got the best of me and I asked her, "Kelli, why do you always add the part about all girls?"
    Her response: "Because everybody always finish their prayers by saying 'All men'!"

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

Thor's Day: Holy humor 2

By Anonymous

Edited by Morris Dean

Little Johnny and his family were having Sunday dinner at his Grandmother's house. Everyone was seated around the table as the food was being served. When Little Johnny received his plate, he started eating right away. "Johnny! Please wait until we say our prayer," said his mother.
    "I don't need to," the boy replied.
    "Of course, you do" his mother insisted. "We always say a prayer before eating at our house."
    "That's at our house," Johnny explained. "But this is Grandma's house and she knows how to cook."

Thor's Day: Holy humor 1

By Anonymous

Edited by Morris Dean

The preacher's 5-year-old daughter noticed that her father always paused and bowed his head for a moment before starting his sermon. One day, she asked him why.
    "Well, Honey," he began, proud that his daughter was so observant of his messages, "I'm asking the Lord to help me preach a good sermon."
    "How come He doesn't answer it?" she asked.

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

Ask Wednesday: Vernon DeWayne Voss on killing cancer naturally

Even if the doctors consider it whacko

Edited by Morris Dean

My cousin DeWayne Voss was a boyhood friend. We played chess together, we boxed (although hitting each other in the head quickly lost its appeal). We drew cartoons and made posters for church. He would invite a few children from the neighborhood and we would play tent revival – DeWayne taking the role of the preacher, of course. He was as gifted an orator as he was a cartoonist. (Some of his current cartoons are starting to appear in our "Fish for Friday" column.)
    I learned earlier this year that DeWayne, whom we now call Vern, has cancer, and several weeks ago he and I had a long telephone conversation from his home in Tucson, Arizona. What Vern told me was so remarkable, it seemed almost imperative that the story of his dealing with the situation be shared with others. We are grateful that he agreed to be interviewed. [Our questions are in italics.]

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'."

Thor's Day follow-up: Where the "Kingdom of God" is

Deconstructing prayer in sestina

By Morris Dean

You said that talking with God is one-way¹:
we can talk "to" God but can't talk "with" Him.
You told us that God is imaginary
and we are really talking to ourselves—
or "with," I suppose, if we should answer.
What, then, do you say about fulfilled prayers?

Thor's Day: Talking to God

Imaginary friend in sestina

By Morris Dean

For this I need someone to talk to, God.
I had a few imaginary friends
long ago—when I was an only child.
It was helpful to have someone to talk
to when no one else was there to tide me.
For what's up here, now, I have to have You.

Thor's Day: How does belief in prayer affect how you regard the here and now? [a survey]

Blatte's Fractals: Apophysis

By Morris Dean

In last week's column, I stated that

your doctor will almost surely nod and tell you it can't hurt to pray and have prayers said for you. So go ahead. And we won't object either. If it makes you feel better, where's the harm?

One reader took exception to the concluding question. While acknowledging that "there may not be any harm in prayer itself," he said that there is harm in prayer's "connection to religion," whose purpose, he said, is "to give people an 'out' when bad things happen in the real world." He said that having such an out encourages people "to take the real world less seriously than they should" because "there is a next world where things will be made right." He contended that if people took this world more seriously, and took better care of the world and of themselves here and now, maybe they wouldn't be needing a doctor—or prayer—in the first place.

Thor's Day: The courage not to pray

Primo Levi in Konzentrationslager Auschwitz

By Morris Dean

In 2007, Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) dedicated The Portable Atheist to Primo Levi (1919-1987). Levi spent a year as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where, Hitchens comments, he "had the moral fortitude to refuse consolation even while enduring the 'selection' process."

Thor's Day: Now I lay me down to sleep

Augosuggest
yourself to sleep

By Morris Dean

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Thor's Day: Prayer

Last week, as I went out one morning to check the trap I'd set the night before, I felt an impulse to pray, to pray that the trap would be empty. For, though I'd agreed with my wife that we would try to remove the rabbits from our back yard, I still hated the thought of their being made to leave their Eden. I especially hated to think that the first one trapped would be taken to a nearby wood and released alone, away from its family.

Pray more, prey less?

There was a break-in this week not far from where I live. The thieves took a TV and a gun and a few other things. Sentiments expressed over the burglary included sadness that some people prey on others and prayerfulness that the thieves will be caught and punished.

At our department luncheon on Monday, while waiting for our pasta to be brought by the single waiter serving our table of twenty-eight university staffers, someone wondered aloud at how much Legos had evolved. "So many more options for my grandchildren than I had."
    "I had Lincoln Logs," another luncheoner chimed in.
    I had to smile, imagining them and me playing with toys fifty, sixty years ago, and more. "I had clods," I said, barely able to suppress a laugh.
    "Clods?" the Lego guy asked.
    "Clods. Hard lumps of clayey earth." I could no longer suppress my laughter. I was remembering an incident when I was four or five. "My cousin DeWayne and his parents came over when I was taking a nap. I never knew they were there. But when I woke up and pulled out my box of clods from under the bed, a lot of them were broken or smashed. Loose dirt covered the bottom of the box. I was chagrined."
    "Is that what they mean by dirt poor?" the Lego guy said.
    "I guess," I said. "I said, 'DeWayne, you'll never play with my clods again!'"

Years later, I guess it was in 2004, before the national election, I got an email from DeWayne. It was sent to about twenty-five people, mostly friends of him and his wife, I learned later. His wife probably sent it, actually. The email reminded us to pray for President Bush and let God tell us whom to vote for.
    I resented this sanctimonious, wrong-headed admonition so much that I replied to say so, copying everyone on the distribution list, just so they'd all know that I wasn't a member of that crowd.
    Right, pray for Bush, the do-good predator, presuming to bring the God of Freedom to the Middle East, where the God of Complete and Utter Submission to the Will of Allah prevails.
    This time it was DeWayne, or rather his wife, who said she wasn't going to play with me anymore. She blocked email from me, and I haven't heard from DeWayne since.

Some questions for Pastor Ullage

Pastor Ullage, thanks for providing a summary of your sermon on P.U.S.H.: Pray Until Something Happens.  I'd like to follow up with a few questions, if I may:

1. Why didn't you count your wife's coming into your study as "something happening"? I mean, her leaving seemed to qualify, so why not her arriving? Aren't you being awfully selective in what counts as a happening?
2. When she was sitting there not interrupting your praying, what were you praying about (or for)? Your billboard didn't have room for you to specify what, if anything in particular, we should pray about while waiting for "something" to happen, but I can be forgiven for expecting your sermon to address this.
3. Actually, your "Amen!," immediately following the information that "she got up and left the room," rather suggests that you were praying for her to leave. Is that what you were praying for?
4. In connection with Question 1, was the reason you didn't count your wife's coming in perhaps because you weren't praying for that to happen?
5. With regard to that, apparently not much is happening in your relationship with your wife. Would you care to comment on that?
6. Do you do marital counseling as well as prayer counseling? Which do you figure you're more competent to do, if not equally competent in both?
7. When something happens that you weren't praying for, is that because someone else was praying for it, or do some things happen without anybody's praying? How is that possible?  

Pastor Ullage's signature homily

Brethren, I say unto you, God hears and answers prayer. Nothing happening in your life? God can make it happen.
    God can make it happen. Let me hear it back!
    God can make it happen!
    Amen! God can make it happen. And you can pray to make it happen! When nothing's happening in your life, PUSH! Puh-ray until something happens!
    Puh-ray until something happens!
    God can make it happen!
    Amen. Just this morning, Brothers and Sisters, I was in my study, and nothing was happening. So I prayed. And I prayed. And I kept on apraying. And I prayed some more.
    And my wife opened the door and came in. She sat down and kept quiet. She knows not to interrupt me when I'm praying to God. And she sat, and she waited. And she waited some more, until finally....
    She got up and left the room. Amen!
    Something happened.
    God answers prayer!
    And I got the idea for today's sermon. Pray Until Something Happens, Brethren. When nothing is happening in your life, God can make it happen. And you can make it happen through prayer.
    Turn in the hymnal now to Push Through to the Promise Land....
_______________
October 10 Word of the Day from dictionary.com: ullage: –noun 1. the amount by which the contents fall short of filling a container, as a cask or bottle....

I prayed for a miracle

But it snowed at our place anyway.

Siegfried likes it, though; we can't let him out often enough to suit him.