The Last Testament: A Memoir (37 page)

⁶
Also, the chess club will be meeting in Mrs. Binder’s classroom during sixth period.

⁷
Siiiiiixth peeeeeriod!
”; followed by thunder and lightning effects, and hundreds of plastic spiders falling from the ceiling.

⁸
Ah . . . one of these days I shall go to an elementary school and do that; it will surely be one of that week’s mirthfullest home videos.

⁹
I can afford to take the banning of school prayer lightly; it is not as if I need another venue wherein to hear thy supplications.

¹⁰
For thine is the Golden Age of Prayer; never before have I received so many pleas, from so many people, for so many reasons, accompanied by so many helpful suggestions.

¹¹
Do I answer them? I shall get to that.

¹²
But first, let me provide an overview of prayer, for its very definition is a matter of debate; it is a vague concept whose domain overlaps with those of ritual, and meditation, and panhandling.

¹³
My own definition, is that prayer is any consciously thought-out statement—spoken or silent—that is addressed to me, and underpinned by the fundamental belief that I take requests.

¹⁴
I know the many functions prayer fulfills for thee: catharsis, comfort, enlightenment; not to mention that praying has always been, and will always be, the perfect thing to do when there is nothing else to be done.

¹⁵
But to be frank, for me prayer provideth neither catharsis, nor comfort, nor enlightenment.

¹⁶
For me, prayer is like unto a suggestion box that receives 200,000 suggestions a second.

¹⁷
Or an emergency services switchboard manned by one operator who gets 12 million calls a minute.

¹⁸
Or a sheaf of “Did you enjoy your dining experience today?” tear cards filled out hourly by 700 million Wendy’s customers.

¹⁹
Or a large chariot bearing a rearward-facing sign that reads, “How is my driving? Dial 1-800-JEHOVAH”; only the chariot has broken down, and cannot be moved until the next day, and blocketh the path of 16 billion other chariots; each of whose drivers have a cell phone, and nothing better to do.

²⁰
As for what these prayers sound like en masse, from where I am sitting I would describe the noise as not unlike that of the cosmic background radiation astrophysicists have detected emanating from every corner of the universe.

²¹
Alas, sound is the only perception needed to apprehend a prayer these days; a change from Old Testament days, when group prayer was also accompanied by the sight of slaughter, and the smell of burning fat, and the taste of sizzling calves, and every desperate plea was a feast for the senses.

²²
I do not mean to sound arch; I do not regard the human phenomenon of prayer cynically; I am merely trying to describe what it feels like to be incessantly nagged, pestered, and reminded of things I already knew.

²³
(That is a puzzling and mirthful quirk of mankind’s prayers: the way they are used to notify me of recent developments in the lives of thou and thine.

²⁴
It is one thing to ask, “Please take care of Bobby in his time of need”; that is an expression of a well-meaning wish.

²⁵
But it is another entirely to say, “Please take care of Bobby in his time of need; he just broke his leg skiing, and the karate meet is in three weeks and he’s been training so hard ...”

²⁶
Heed me: I am the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe: I
know
Bobby broke his leg skiing, and I
know
about the damned karate meet.)

CHAPTER 2

¹
S
o: do I answer thy prayers?

²
I shall address that soon enough; but first let me mention a few that I hear frequently.

³
The most popular prayer by far is the Hail Mary, which I have now heard over 3.2 trillion times.

⁴
Not surprisingly, 482.5 billion of these were offered as penitence for masturbation.

⁵
More surprisingly, 4.5 million of these devolved halfway through into new acts of masturbation centered on the Virgin Mary.

⁶
The Hail Mary is a good prayer; a solid prayer; a safe prayer; and asking Mary to ask me for help rather than asking directly is a smart move.

⁷
But I am less fond of the L
ORD
’s Prayer, which is a flat-out cut-and-paste of Matthew 6:9–13.

⁸
It works very well coming from Jesus’s lips during the Sermon on the Mount, but from mortals it comes off pushy.

⁹
“Give us this day our daily bread”? “Forgive us our debts”? “Lead us not into temptation”? “Deliver us from evil”?

¹⁰
Dost thou know me as one who responds well to threats?

¹¹
(Still, at least it is not as presumptuous as the American custom of ending every swearing-in ceremony, from the president on down, with “So help me God.”

¹²
Not “Let me be worthy of thy help, God”; not “So
please
help me, God”; no, my immediate assistance is
demanded.

¹³
Every day billions of people humbly petition my aid, but I am supposed to put them all on the back burner because it is the Omaha city treasurer’s first day on the job and she needs me there on standby?)

¹⁴
Judaism’s most famous prayer is Sh’ma Yisrael: “Hear, O Israel; the L
ORD
our God, the L
ORD
is one.”

¹⁵
Not the most
specific
prayer I’ve ever heard.

¹⁶
It is the same with Muslims; their most common prayer is, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his messenger”; which is not even a request, but a tautology followed by a fact.

¹⁷
They may as well get on their knees and chant, “There is no country in Australia but Australia, and Canberra is its capital.”

¹⁸
By far my favorite of the templates is the Serenity Prayer.

¹⁹
The serenity to accept what cannot be changed; the courage to change what can; and the wisdom to know the difference—these are wise life principles that should be known and followed by
everyone,
not just those too gutless to handle their liquor.

²⁰
As for my least favorite, that would be the old childhood lullaby: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee, L
ORD
my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray thee, L
ORD
, my soul to take.”

²¹
Now, I am no softie; I am not one who “loves kids”; my record with young people will not win me many Godfather of the Year awards.

²²
But even I consider it bizarre, that the last words on children’s lips before they go to sleep would address the prospect of their own premature death.

²³
They are
children.

²⁴
They should be asking me for
ponies
.

²⁵
In fact, if there are any children reading this, I make unto them this deal: the next one of you who asks for a pony instead of for me to take his or her soul,

²⁶
Gets the pony.

CHAPTER 3

¹
S
o, I know what thou art thinking: Do I answer thy prayers?

²
I will get to that.

³
But first, some statistics; for I am a bit of a sabermetrician when it comes to praying;

⁴
And though statistics may seem a coldly numerical way to analyze the desires of the human soul, they can offer a broader, more “fan’s-eye” view of the activity than one gets when one is thyself “at the plate” of abject supplication.

⁵
For example: prior to 2001, the year with the highest daily prayer-per-believer (PPB) rate was 1349, which finished at 2.458: this great harvest being the sweet fruits of the Black Death.

⁶
Yet this figure has been exceeded in no fewer than six of the past ten years, reaching an all-time high in 2010 of 2.475 PPB; with that number rising still further to 2.488 on Sundays, and 2.501 on Sundays during football season.

⁷
Among monotheists, the highest PPB can be found among Muslims, with 5.000; that number has held steady for some time.

⁸
Among Christians, the highest PPB (2.871) can be found among Catholics, the lowest (0.921) among Methodists; unless one includes Unitarians (0.573), which I do not, and neither does Jesus.

⁹
The overall average among Jews is a very efficient 0.856; indeed, among reform Jews that number drops to an astounding −0.003;

¹⁰
Which means I am actually very slightly more likely to ask
them
for something.

¹¹
Daily PCE (prayer caloric expenditure) levels also vary widely, from 145.2 among Southern Baptists to 2.5 within the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.

¹²
(Tallying a respectable 87.4 PCE: Hasidic Jews.

¹³
Who knew? All that shuckling really pays dividends around the waist and thighs!)

¹⁴
The average VMG (value of material goods) for 2010 was $843.25; almost identical to the figure from a millennium ago, when adjusted for inflation.

¹⁵
Here is a number that may surprise thee: only 45.2 percent of the families that pray together actually stay together.

¹⁶
This compares to a 44.8 percent staying-together rate among non-praying families; a difference that though slight, is, on a scale as massive as this, statistically significant;

¹⁷
But still pretty slight.