nonsense

we've had what you might call a wee bit of rain around here lately, and some folks are somewhat disconvenienced by it. like, their houses now contain a couple feet of water. or, mud. or, in some cases their houses and cars and shizzle are no longer there. whoosh! warshed away.

i saw this story on the news and then had it confirmed by a co-worker who witnessed it personally. there was this one family that saw the water rising, so they packed their belongings in the SUV and tootled on out down the road towards safety, but then got caught by the rising water and had to abandon their SUV and all the contents. in trying to save their stuff, they lost it. somewhat ironic and also a wee bit biblical.

this morning on the news, the lady reporter was interviewing this other guy and his story was that the waters were rising and he was sore afraid, but then the waters receeded and he was joyful. he said, «we prayed and prayed and our prayers were answered!»

okay, now. this peeves me a bit, when people do this «answer to prayer» thing. follow that out to its logical conclusion and what do you have? if mr drypants got his prayer answered, where does that leave mr wetpants? [wetpants... heh...] FOCUS! so mr drypants prayed and was answered and mr wetpants either (1) did not pray or (2) prayed to be all wet and his prayer was answered or (3) prayed to be dry and his prayer was not answered.

i think right off the bat, here, we can say that there's a very slim chance he was praying to get wet. maybe, if he had flood insurance and was already figuratively under water on the mortgage, maybe he'd like to be literally under water. but, c'mon that is just not realistic.

it makes some sense to say he didn't pray at all. lots of folks don't pray. lots of folks do, but lots don't. some don't believe in prayer. some are too distracted by the practicality of the water rising that even if they believe in prayer, they forget to pray.

it makes the most sense, at least to folks in these parts, to say he was praying and his prayer wasn't answered. which begs the querschun - why the hell not? did he pray incorrectly? did he not live in a deserving way? maybe his prayer WAS answered and the answer was no.

if you see where i am going here, nothing's looking good for mr wetpants. mr drypants prayed and got his miracle. mr wetpants prayed and did not get his. why? why why why? WHY?

and, more to the point, why is mr drypants so all-fired happy about his miracle when the only logical conclusion to his stream of thought is that mr wetpants asked and didn't receive. does mr drypants wish bad things for mr wetpants? in the competition for the miracle, mr drypants is the winner. he got his!

that's what really gets to me. inside the implied finite number of miracles and the implied handout process - with all the people praying for their own personal miracles, it just figures some will not get answered - hiding in these implications is that if i get mine it will be at the expense of you not getting yours. on some level i need to want you to not get yours because if you get yours, i won't get mine.

i think the bottom line here is that we don't really understand - and very likely have less than zero influence over - whatever is in the pot o' miracles and whatever system is employed in distributing them.

getting answers, solutions, gifts, miracles, or anything else -- getting anything at all from outside ourselves is not the purpose of prayer.