The efficacy of prayer.

I seem to have become a praying man. It's not that I had an epiphanal conversion or that I have deep faith or strong religious convictions . . . though I have to admit that I often wish that I did. It's more that I needed to talk to a self that is greater than my self. So I started talking to Jesus. Before I go to sleep at night. When I wake up in the middle of the night (which is almost every night.) When I wake up again in the morning (if I've managed to go back to sleep after the middle of the night wake-up--about 50 / 50 on that one). 

Praying with Jacqueline and Joe paved the way, I suppose. (Though those long ago years from kindergarten through the sixth grade at Emmanuel Christian Day School probably had something to do with it.) With Jacqueline, we say separate God blesses and then The Hail Mary and The Lord's Prayer together. We sing the "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever a-men" part. With Joe, I just watch as he says a quiet-bordering-on-silent prayer. Both pray with candles--though Jacqueline needs six while Joe only has one. 

But that ended up not being enough. And I kept thinking about this little story in a book one of my friends had given me, about a kid who would duck into his church on his way home from school and say, "Hi, Jesus, it's Timmy." And not much else. Just checking in. I loved that story. So I started praying (or "praying") that way at night. "Hi, Jesus. It's Thomas." And I would think about what was on my mind. And I'd identify things that I was grateful for. It didn't really feel like praying, and I didn't really think of it as a serious thing. Maybe just a way of talking to someone before I go to sleep since I've given up on girlfriends.

But it became important and natural for me to do. In fact, I don't really even think about it anymore, I just slip right into it.

I've read some things about how when a group of people prayed for a person who was sick--even when that person didn't know that s/he was being prayed for--that the person sometimes got better. And I've read about the religious shrines that people go to, and how people who were crippled leave their wheelchairs behind, etcetera. And I can't help but think that it's not totally bullshit, you know? Probably mostly bullshit, but 100% bullshit? That seems like bullshit to me.

And the older I get, the more I am sure that I don't know so much about life, the universe, and everything, and the more inclined I am to say, "Maybe."

And with Jacqueline and Joe, when they ask me about people or even animals who have died, and they ask me if they are in heaven, I don't even hesitate before I tell them that they are, and that when I die I'll be in heaven, and that I'll be watching over them and will greet them when they die and go to heaven. I guess that's kind of like telling them that Santa Claus is real to some folks . . . maybe even to myself, I'm not sure . . . but I don't care about that. To me, it's a way to give my kids some comfort and an ability to deal with one of the great horrors of life.

And it does that for me, too. There are times when I think about dying, and it just scares the living shit out of me. I feel desperate, like I'm clawing my way up the living room wall, or falling off of a very high ladder, or drowning in viscous fluid. And if I allow myself to think, "But this isn't the end of my existence," I start to feel like I can breathe again.

It's kind of a slight variation on Pascal's Wager. But more of a win-win situation. If I believe that there is an eternal life for me and I die and there is an eternal life, then that's lovely. And if I believe that there is an eternal life for me and I die and there isn't an eternal life, then I don't know it because my consciousness has been obliterated.

Of course there's always the HELL box on the flow chart . . . but that is one thing that I have no problem in dispensing with, despite years of Christian conditioning and Dante and Milton. It's just so fucking stupid, you know? There'd be no point to it at all. (Now Purgatory I could go for. A chance to work off your shittiness.) But a God who would create eternal punishment for people who didn't measure up to His standards in life . . . especially taking into account what we now know about human behavior and genetics and societal conditioning and etcetera . . . well, that would be like punishing sharks for eating chum, wouldn't it? And if there is a God, I don't believe that S/He could be stupid or cruel (by definition), ergo no Hell.

So I pray. It might not help, but I don't see how it can possibly hurt.