I try not to pray. Sometimes when I am sitting in traffic, I catch myself thinking, "God, help this lane move faster; I want to get home." But mostly I think that prayer is a waste of time. God has way too many other concerns, like making sure all the electrons of all the atoms keep revolving around the nuclei, than to listen to my silly needs that have gone unfulfilled. And to be perfectly honest, he seems—to me at least—to think that humans can take care of themselves [we did get those big brains and opposable thumbs, didn't we?]. I'm also not big on prayer because there are so many people worse off than I am. Isn't it just totally ridiculous of me to be asking for advice on a problem when an orphaned Sri Lankan doesn't have clean water to drink or food to eat or a mother to comfort him because a tsunami washed his family away?
I can hear Christians thinking, "Well, she just hasn't had a hard enough life. There are no atheists in fox holes, you know. If things got really bad, she'd find herself praying with a fervor." But even that argument doesn't work for me as I spent some time in the cancer fox hole and, while bombed with chemo IVs, it still seemed just damn silly to be distracting God with requests to win my cellular war when the doctors, nurses, and I had a strategy, thanks to those big brains and opposable thumbs, for taking care of business.
That said, I am praying for the folks in Pensacola and the surrounding region who have had their televisions on nonstop as they watch that monster storm creep closer and closer, knowing that there will be those really frightening hours hoping that the roof will survive the winds, the next door neighbor's tree won't come crashing through the windows, the utility company will have amassed the necessary resources to get the electricity back on in days instead of weeks. Vaya con dios.
