Sybil Bruncheon's "An Earnest Prayer at the Holiday"…

Sybil drawing by Michael Margulies.

Oh, Lamb of Love! Oh, Prince of Infinite Wisdom and Unending Kindness… please find forgiveness in your Immeasurable Heart for me, an inveterate and unworthy sinner! I humbly make these requests that you patiently heal and cure me of my imperfections…

 1)   Please help me to resist haranguing willfully stupid people about their forlorn condition… specifically yelling, often in public places like cafés, sweet, little town squares, and make-up counters, that they are both stupid AND willful. Perhaps you could help me to only yell at them about being willful OR stupid, but never both at the same time.

2)   Please help me to be more open to the morons around me who reject 21st century learning and science. Perhaps they are right after all!... that the Earth is indeed flat, and that if we drive far enough in our pick-up trucks (the ones with the Confederate flag decals and the “I Like Beer” license plate) we will indeed fall off the edge!! Mightn’t they be correct? After all, how could or would God possibly make our planet a ball (of all shapes!) and then, more importantly need to figure out how to stick our feet all over it so we couldn’t fall off it? I mean, does he use invisible God-glue of some sort? How do people in Australia, and Tierra del Fuego, and the South Pole for Heaven’s sake?... How do they stay stuck to a ball? No, the flat-worlders in some way must be right, and why do I continue to try to convince them otherwise? Help me to stop. And don’t get me started on the Earth going around the Sun…

3)   Please help me to be more trusting of people who don’t believe that modern medicine can cure our ills. Why SHOULD we allow so-called doctors to stick needles into us? After all, how can anything that hurts actually be good for us? Why, it’s like we’re being turned into voo-doo dolls. And how do we know WHY they’re sticking us? What the Hell is IN those needles? And what’s all this talk about measles, tetanus, dip-dip-dip-whatever! And POLIO! I’ve never even KNOWN someone with polio! Maybe it’s not real, right?

4)   And lastly, oh, Lord, please help me to be as patient with the woefully mendacious, the assertively vile, the careless and cruel, the prideful and hubris-filled… even as you are patient with me. I thank you… and am infernally… er… eternally grateful!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Our Thanksgiving Heritage"... A PRAYER FROM REVEREND SIMPLICITY CARFEATHERS (1620)…

Oh, Merciful Lamb, please let us, on this first Thanksgiving, be grateful for our yam and twig casserole...especially since Thou hath granted us a festive little garnish of pine needles which we will apportion to each and every one of Thine worshipful diners in a portion not greater than one and one half needle-ettes per soul. Also, remindeth us to be glad of heart at the sight of the turnip, radish, and skittle-beetle soufflé which our Indian brethren have prepared with loving and unwashéd hands and left at the back-flap of our tent sometime in the last three days.... And in a hollowed out birch-bark serving dish which we have been told we may keep as a "house-warming" present! We did indeed warm our home by burning it in a hole in the middle of the room. And thank You blesséd Soul of Peace for helping us to extinguish the flames which spreadeth to the canvas by smiting it with sticks as if it were the accurséd hind-quarters of Satan himself (which it very well may have been since Goody Dalrymple says that she smelled infernal farting and saw in the rising smoke the face of a goat with three horns that recited French limericks!). Anyway...we put out the fire, and now have a nice view of the stars at night!

Finally, oh Patient Saviour, we thank Thee for the sight at least of a plump turkey which we would have prepared for our holiday repast had it not pecked out the left eye of Reverend Punctuality Throckmorton during his interminable sermon on "Edibles And Their Free-Will To Embrace Low-Calorie Salvation...OR NOT!"...it was during the declamation and response section of his endless exhortation to "dessert sinlessly" that the turkey lunged at the blesséd Reverend and un-eyed him as it scaped our lean-to prayer-hut! The entire congregation tried to bolster the Pastor's challenged morale by gathering feathers, oak leaves, river mud, and hair-combings to fashion a graven image of a turkey for him to kick and dismember to purge his righteous anger!!

Oh, Serene Guide of our Spirits!... The Reverend in his humble radiance, forgave the facsimile for its transgression against his extremely modest face, and said that one eye still allowed him to see the wonders of our new home here in the new world and would keep him from stubbing his bunion on that damnable tree-stump near the entryway to our settlement as he has done thrice-times this very week when arising in the middle of the night to make his water away from prying eyes and pointing fingers. The mud-and-rubbish turkey now sits in pride-of-place on said tree-stump as a decoration for our feast!! ...and much thanks hath been yowled up to the Heavens along with songs and gourd rattling! We all plan to take our once-yearly bath after the cranberry-cricket flan.... Halleluiah!!!! Halleluiah!!!! OHHHH...HALLELUUUU-IAH!!!!

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