Plan is for lots of prayers for Modesto over six days

http://www.modbee.com/2010/04/18/1131992/plan-is-for-lots-of-prayers-for.html

Although prayer is a widely practiced tradition, for some us the old, “I’ll pray for you” is as meaningless as it is offensive.  I’ve attended many parties, holiday celebrations and barbecues where we all pray.  Sometimes there is insistence on holding hands, I can’t even hover quietly in the background, I have to hold hands with some fat guy and hope there’s no peeking as I refuse to close my eyes.

As a child my mother told me that prayer was our way to communicate with God and strengthen our relationship with Him.  I tried in earnest for many years to have this dialogue, but it was as vacuous and one-sided as a chat with a man about ‘feelings’.  I didn’t understand it, laying there, talking to my ceiling.  I knew I could ask for things, I remember praying for a Nerf football, blue & orange like my mother’s  alma mater, Syracuse.  I hadn’t told anyone but God I wanted it, mostly to see how my prayer would come to fruition.  It didn’t, unless you count 20 years later when I bought one for my oldest son.  Those are some mysterious ways.

The concept of prayer befuddles me.  We are asking God for things because He doesn’t know He needs to intervene unless I ask?  Really?  There was 6 year old boy named Alex with the defective kidneys, I babysat him for years.  We were always praying for Alex’s kidneys to get better, when that didn’t work we prayed for someone close to him to be a donor match.  When that didn’t work we prayed he would come up on the national donor list.

Logically, you’re asking an omniscient being to do your will, when he does it’s ‘answered prayer’, when he doesn’t it’s ‘his will’.  God wins either way, so does it really matter if you pray at all?  Not really, despite the fact that God – in any sort of prayer/dialogue way, doesn’t exist.

Do amazing things happen?  Absolutely.  Whether you pray or not.  Go ahead-if it makes you feel better, but that’s all it’s doing for the world.

In the end, prayer has no business in any facet of American Government, if I petitioned for a “National Day of Ouija Board Playing” it should be as unwelcome as any other religious nonsense.

I enjoy the liberties I’m granted because our government is not convoluted by dogma.  I’d imagine trying to coach soccer in a Burka might be a little awkward.