What constant prayer can achieve

(594 words)

It was way back in ’08 when I first proposed that America needed a “National No-Prayer Week.”

The premise was that maybe after more than 2,000 years of fervent prayer — prayer for everything from world peace to that the floating guppie would reanimate —  maybe God had fallen behind, that maybe He could use a break. 

I wasn’t suggesting anyone stop believing in God. Just for one week quit bugging him.

This was back when I mistakenly believed I could solve all my occupational woes by crafting one big idea that would have me simultaneously hailed as either a visionary on Fox News and a heretic on CNN or vice versa.

Remember 2008? It was a time of conflict, ignorance and widespread division that fell along political and cultural divides.

Or as I call it, “The Good ol’ Days!”

But with all the global tumult, I’ve put a renewed focus on saving the human race through prayer. 

Only this time instead of suggesting we stop praying my idea is that we start praying … and NEVER stop.

It may surprise most of you, my heathen friends, but I’m a praying fool. I pray all the time, most notably at the family dinner table. It’s a role I relish because I want our daughters to know we can, in my opinion, address the Almighty in casual terms about mundane matters. 

I think we construct obstacles between ourselves and our Creator when we say our prayers with speech that feels foreign coming out of our own mouth. 

It’s why, too, I conclude prayers with things like asking God to tell Tom Petty we still miss him.

This alertness proved helpful Easter Sunday when I turned the holy communications over to the females. I did this because I’m in a bit of a prayer rut.

My prayers have become mopey and aggrieved, not like I’m addressing our deity, but like I’m complaining to the Wendy’s drive-thru manager over the dorky kid giving me a medium Coke and charging us for the Biggie.

“Dear God … Please rid the world of coronavirus, rampant injustice, poverty, petty hatreds, the tyrannical rule of Roger Goodell  and all the other punishing crap that makes being alive such sorry condition. I mean … Dear God!” 

So insolent. So disrespectful. I knew I needed a break.

So on Easter, I began my aloud prayer with, “Dear God … thank you for this food and for all this government-sanctioned family togetherness. Oh, man, our blessings in that realm sure are ample. I’ll now, Lord, turn it over to Val, Josie and Lucy who I now invite to share with you in silence their gratitudes and concerns.”

The immediate effect was peacefulness. The house was blessedly still and quiet.

Ten seconds passed. My head was bowed and my eyes were closed I suspect the girls were already beginning to exchange nervous looks.

Ten seconds is a long time to be thrown into a blind date with The Creator.

At 20 seconds, I began to wonder who’d break first. I could, by now, feel their eyes on me, waiting for me to conclude. But I had no intention of relenting. I wanted them to pray ’til Kingdom come.

Maybe God would answer their prayers.

Maybe He did because at 30 seconds Val abruptly interjected “Amen! Let’s eat.”

Who knows? Maybe Mommy’s action was exactly what they were praying for. Someday I’ll ask. 

Either way, it’s more evidence my supper table schemes are working.

The kids listen to my prayers!

I just wish I could be sure God does.

Related …

National No-Pray Week

When idiots pray

America needs snitch prayers

Proper prayer posture

How come there’s no Mrs. God?

If I should die before I wake ...

(714 words)

Give my shoes, the tri-colored Giorgio Brutini dandies, to the funeral director. I want to go my great reward in stylish footwear. I don’t understand the how or why, but in the past two years I’ve developed an odd shoe fetish. I now  look at the Johnston & Murphy catalogue the way I used to look at Playboy. Either way, I imagine proper afterlife footwear will matter and I want to make a good first impression.

Donate my golf clubs to the First Tee organization so they’ll go to some less fortunate. Nothing has made me more persistently miserable than trying to properly strike a golf ball. Conversely, few things have made me as happy as the time I’ve spent either anticipating golf or talking about playing golf after we’re done. First Tee’s a wonderful organization for perpetuating the furies and joys of this confounding game.

I have two quality Cross pens. Give the gold one to Josie, the pearl one to Lucy. Tell them the pens are sentimentally significant to the old man. I commemorated the publication of my two most recent books with the splurge and signed lots of books with each. Then tell them that one day, guaranteed, each will lose these pricey pens. They will feel bad, like they let me down. Tell them not to fret. They’re just pens. I like my pens, but I love my daughters.

I have about 15 Tommy Bahama camp shirts. Wearing one makes me feel perfectly relaxed. Perhaps because it’s rare I’m wearing one when I’m not holding a bourbon on the rocks. Have a party at the Tin Lizzy and let all my friends fight over their favorites.

Please give my wife an introduction to a handsome handyman who’s good with a wrench. After 25 years with me, she’s deserving of a man who can fix a leaky toilet, mobilize a busted vacuum cleaner and is eager to wage war with nature when the lawn gets a shade past shaggy. Please, too, preserve the dignity of my memory by keeping the courtship chaste through at least 2027.

Give all my Winston Churchill books to some bone-headed liberal so that he may absorb some of the warmth, wit and wisdom of one of history’s great conservatives, to me the most interesting man since Jesus Christ.

Give all my FDR books to some bone-headed conservative so that she can absorb some of the warmth, wit and wisdom of one of history’s great liberals and see why Churchill with an open-heart revered him more than he did any other man alive.

Am I forgetting anything?

I am.

My internal organs!

Give my kidneys to a pair of young single mothers who without the donation would orphan darling children who need their mommies. Give my liver to the army vet who’s struggled both physically and spiritually since the goddamned war. Let it be my liver that leads to a change of heart and may he grow beloved as he devotes his life to helping others.

My heart? Let’s give that to the dear granny whose own, though full of love, is weakened by hereditary defect. Let it be my heart that beats for her as she delights yet another generation of lapped loved ones.

Save the best for my eyes. Give them to the boy born blind and let him see the exact same things I saw. Let him see all the glory, the smiles, the kindness, the beauty and the all the hope that’s hidden in the pessimistic darkness.

Lastly, bestow upon the whole world my native optimism which has sustained me through so much unbidden tumult. It’s useful even when it’s foolhardy, giving birth as it does to the conviction that we’ll beat this and what will emerge in its ugly shadow will be a better, more tolerant place of cheer we can all share.

And on that day let there be a grand jubilee like the world’s never seen, a party of universal revelry  …

On second thought, screw it.

Gimme all my shit back. Right now — starting with the shoes.

I’m not done kicking ass and, by God, I intend to look sharp while I’m at it.

And tell Mr. Fix-It to stop staring at my wife or he’s first!

Related …

Handing it to arm transplants

Full body donations & why I’d want the body of a black female

Weekly World News & baby born without a nose

Mom’s going to Pitt! A body donation update

Insights on eyeballs

Maybe world needs a "National No-Pray Week" (from '08)

One of the banes of returning from vacation is the e-valanche of electronic messages in our in-boxes. We are besieged with pleas, queries and so many pornographic advertisements that many truly worthwhile e-mails get deleted without even a cursory glance.

Think you have it bad?

Imagine how God must feel. 

Heaven knows, we are a prayerful society. Americans of many faiths pack the places of worship at least once a week and pray to God that He will heal us, enrich us, and ease the myriad suffering in our world of woe. And many of us issue fervent prayers at meals and bedtime asking for the same things. 

That’s not all. Startled students mutter silent prayers for divine recollection during pop quizzes, patients pray the golf-mad doctor’s not too distracted by his afternoon tee time to perform lifesaving surgery, and drunks in bars pray He will help steer the car to safety and surreptitiously past the DUI road blocks.

And, yes, like beauty contestants, we all pray for world peace. This holiday season weekend will again be one of God’s busiest and I can imagine Him with the sullen scowl of the poor overworked souls down at the post office the week before Christmas.

Where has it gotten us? It seems, once again, to the brink of destruction. People all over the world are being slaughtered, usually in God’s name. In nearly every major conflict, God is the mutual justification for a holy hell that’s erupting around the world.

Clearly, God has turned a deaf ear to our massive and constant prayers for world peace. In fact, it seems God’s gaming interests take priority over matters of hateful life and violent death. Many lottery winners thank God, believing He was behind the lucky jackpot sequence and that powers from above divinely selected them to -- hallelujah -- win the Powerball. Same goes for championship athletes who assure us God answered their prayers for righteous victory on the gridiron or ball field.

“Go Angels!”

I go to worship God at a small church in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The late Fred Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, grew up near my Latrobe, Pennsylvania, home. My church is the same one attended by the young Arnold Palmer. As one could surmise by the nature of these two beloved icons, it is a humble and unpretentious place.

Our pastor doesn’t have a powerful television pulpit. He’s never led us in hateful prayers or asked God to tinker with the tickers of any ailing U.S. Supreme Court Justices whose constitutional philosophies differ from his. And I adore him. His every deed exudes a joyful foundation of love that makes me happy knowing my pastor’s life is dedicated to saving my soul.

-

I asked Pastor if he thought maybe God could use a break.

“No, I don’t think God needs any kind of break,” he said. “His strength is infinite and He truly wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. Rest assured, we’re not bothering Him.”

One friend told me that prayer is actually holding the world together, that if we suddenly stopped praying, everything would get worse.

Could it?

If we stopped praying and the earth began to rupture and the oceans commenced to boiling, then believers would certainly burst into simultaneous, heartfelt prayer along the lines of: “Father, forgive us; for we know not what we’re doing.”

That, at least, ought to sound familiar to Him. It was among the last words Jesus Christ uttered before ascending to glory.

Given that result, it’s certainly worth a try.

For God’s sake, it’s high time we try something new. I’m proposing a “National No-Pray Week” where we close the churches and cease any and all prayers to God Almighty. And, no, that doesn’t mean you can substitute any pagan idols. Don’t stop believing in God. Just quit bugging Him.

Who knows? He might enjoy the leisure. He might reward us by eliminating world hunger or at least giving us a carefree week without extreme weather conditions. We just don’t know. But we have to try. No one can argue that 2,000 years of steadfast prayers have made the world a better, more peaceful place.

On the contrary, even with all that prayer, it still seems now more than ever that the whole wicked world is -- God help us -- going straight to hell.

If we don’t try something new, I fear none of us has a prayer.

Related . . .

Proper prayer posture

When idiots pray

America needs snitch prayers

Proper prayer posture (from '12)

I was in the fetal position in bed praying that God doesn’t discount the prayers of guys too lazy to get down on their knees to worship.

I mostly pray in bed with my fingers crossed like they taught in Sunday school. But unlike Sunday school, I’m naked and usually cuddled up against my wife, not at all what they teach in Sunday school, at least in the boring ones I attended.

My most traditional Christian prayer posture is at the bedside of my daughters. I try and pray with them every night when I’m not out in the bar getting all gooned up with my buddies.

I cherish those moments -- and I mean the ones with my daughters (and, yeah, the ones with the guys, too).

With the daughters, I think if God grades prayers he’d give mine an A.

Knees on the floor, head bowed, hands folded, prayers concise -- I’m talking as much to the daughters as I am the Lord. I ask God to help the sick, the lonely and the sad. Really, I don’t expect God is going to do any of that stuff so I want the girls to know it would be nice if they pitched in and sort of did what we all wish He would.

I never really thought much about prayer posture until about five years ago when I remember seeing a pictorial study of President George W. Bush absorbed in prayer. Watching him in prayer was like watching a magician try to bend spoons with his mind.

He looked deadly sincere, like if he furrowed his brow deep enough God was going to stop watching Tim Tebow play football and say, “Holy cow! George Bush has something really important to say!”

The Bush presidency really challenged my faith. I always wondered what he was praying for.

I can’t imagine he prayed he’d preside over a failed presidency and global condemnation over his unholy Iraq war and a wrecked economy.

The only prayer of his I can imagine God possibly answered in the affirmative was maybe, “Dear Lord, please let one of my daughters grow up to be a Today Show correspondent.”

At least that’s working out.

The Muslims are fierce prayers. Five times a day they tilt toward Mecca and assume postures fitness crazed Americans do only in yoga class when they want to achieve a tight fanny.

Hearing children pray is a delight. My all-time favorite was when our youngest was 4. It was the evening before Easter and I said a very moving prayer about about the resurrection. 

After my amen, the little one chimed in, “And God bless the Easter Bunny and God bless yourself,” a perfect mingling of the sacred and the secular.

I’ve said a lot of prayers with my fingers gripping a steering wheel, and I used to say a lot of prayers in lecture halls holding, not a Bible, but a No. 2 pencil. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve even said prayers while bent over 6-foot par putts.

God’s been about 50-50 on granting the latter.

To try and gain some insight on proper prayer posture, I engaged the source men and women of faith reach for whenever they seek spiritual guidance.

Yep, I Googled it.

The Biblical Research Institute cites chapters and verses where the Bible tells how holy folks prayed.

It cites examples of men and women communing with God while kneeling, standing, sitting, lying down on a bed (yes!), or prostrate on the ground with their noses in the dirt.

It says there is not one recommended prayer posture: “Any attempt to select one as superior and indispensable over the others lacks biblical support.”

I guess that means Tebowing is okay, too.

Faith in this world of woe is often elusive. I spoke with two people this week who are questioning their faith.

I encouraged them to struggle through their doubt and believe.

I’m perfectly happy deadening the logical part of my brain in favor of thinking there is a God who loves us and wants us to love one another.

All we can do is pray our prayers have even a prayer of being heard.

National No-Pray Week

Is it time to give God a break? I thought so in about 2004 when I was convinced the world was going to hell. I wrote this story about my proposed National No-Pray Week and submitted it with high hopes to various publications of prestige and infamy.

None bit.

So I dumped it for a while in my on-line orphanage for unloved and unwanted stories on www.chrisrodell.com. The Ophanage still exists because I’m still writing many stories that have yet to find a good home.

I’d submit this again and again over the years around Thanksgiving to no avail. Still, I think it’s a provocative point so I’m foisting it on what is for me the ultimate orphanage, this godforsaken blog.

Check it out:


One of the banes of returning from vacation is the e-valanche of electronic messages in our in-boxes. We are besieged with pleas, queries and so many pornographic advertisements that many truly worthwhile e-mails get deleted without even a cursory glance.

Think you have it bad? Imagine how God must feel. Heaven knows, we are a prayerful society. Americans of many faiths pack the places of worship at least once a week and pray to God that He will heal us, enrich us, and ease the myriad suffering in our world of woe. And many of us issue fervent prayers at meals and bedtime asking for the same things.

That’s not all. Startled students mutter silent prayers for divine recollection during pop quizzes, patients pray the golf-mad doctor’s not too distracted by his afternoon tee time to perform lifesaving surgery, and drunks in bars pray He will help steer the car to safety and surreptitiously past the DUI road blocks.

And, yes, like beauty contestants, we all pray for world peace. This holiday season weekend will again be one of God’s busiest and I can imagine Him with the sullen scowl of the poor overworked souls down at the post office the week before Christmas.
Where has it gotten us? It seems, once again, to the brink of destruction. People all over the world are being slaughtered, usually in God’s name. In nearly every major conflict, God is the mutual justification for a holy hell that’s erupting around the world.

Clearly, God has turned a deaf ear to our massive and constant prayers for world peace. In fact, it seems God’s gaming interests take priority over matters of hateful life and violent death. Many lottery winners thank God, believing He was behind the lucky jackpot sequence and that powers from above divinely selected them to -- hallelujah -- win the Powerball. Same goes for championship athletes who assure us God answered their prayers for righteous victory on the gridiron or ballfield.

“Go Angels!”

I go to worship God at a small church in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The late Fred Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, grew up near my Latrobe, Pennsylvania, home. My church is the same one attended by the young Arnold Palmer. As one could surmise by the nature of these two beloved icons, it is a humble and unpretentious place.

Our pastor doesn’t have a powerful television pulpit. He’s never led us in hateful prayers or asked God to tinker with the tickers of any ailing U.S. Supreme Court Justices whose constitutional philosophies differ from his. And I adore him. His every deed exudes a joyful foundation of love that makes me happy knowing Pastor Dave von Schlichten’s life is dedicated to saving my miserable soul.

I asked Pastor Dave if he thought maybe God could use a break.

“No, I don’t think God needs any kind of break,” he said. “His strength is infinite and He truly wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. Rest assured, we’re not bothering Him.”

One friend told me that prayer is actually holding the world together, that if we suddenly stopped praying, everything would get worse.

Could it?

If we stopped praying and the earth began to rupture and the oceans commenced to boiling, then believers would certainly burst into simultaneous, heartfelt prayer along the lines of: “Father, forgive us; for we know not what we’re doing.”

That, at least, ought to sound familiar to Him. It was among the last words Jesus Christ uttered before ascending to glory.

Given that result, it’s certainly worth a try.

For God’s sake, it’s high time we try something new. I’m proposing a “National No-Pray Week” where we close the churches and cease any and all prayers to God Almighty. And, no, that doesn’t mean you can substitute any pagan idols. Don’t stop believing in God. Just quit bugging Him.

Who knows? He might enjoy the leisure. He might reward us by eliminating world hunger or at least giving us a carefree week without extreme weather conditions. We just don’t know. But we have to try. No one can argue that 2,000 years of steadfast prayers have made the world a better, more peaceful place.

On the contrary, even with all that prayer, it still seems now more than ever that the whole wicked world is -- God help us -- going straight to hell.

If we don’t try something new, I fear none of us has a prayer.