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