Towards a Resurrection

I’m not much for prayer any more, but maybe not for the typical post-graduate-school-liberal-arts-agnostic sorts of reasons. It’s just that, a long time ago, I realized all my prayers were wholly selfish and, well, not much worth a damn. I’m too small a player and my own whims and sins less than small potatoes. At least I can make fries with those.

Tonight, however, was one of those rare exceptions—a prayer worth making. I read the lead article in the New York Times—about the potential for the most catastrophic and unprecedented oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to have become significantly unrealized—and muttered to myself, “Please, God, let that be true.”

photo by David Martin/Associated Press

Why did I say that? Was it some kind of ingrained habit from my upbringing? Was it a kind of generic form of speech that usually goes unnoted? Was it because, despite all the liberal whining, that I remain a fan of President Obama and hope that his tenure meets some real success for our nation? Was it, please-God-no, just one more selfish, egocentric prayer?

I don’t think so. I think I really did pray that the worst was over, that the oil—through tides and bacteria and sunlight and the hand of God—had somehow magically dissipated so that the people of the Gulf—from Louisiana to Florida to Galveston to Mexico—had somehow miraculously avoided what had been looking like an environmental catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl. I pray to God that it is so.

And I pray that both for the Gulf and for my prayers. If I’m ever to be a believer—and the odds are slight—I want it to be a faith bigger than myself. And if I’m ever to pray, I want it to be for something more meaningful than me.

So I hope it’s true, and I’ll pray again that this doesn’t become another disgustingly premature “Mission Accomplished.” We all know America has had one too many of those. I wanna go back to New Orleans, eat oysters and listen to jazz; walk the beach in Florida and wonder at the bounty of the sea; drive through the marshlands of Alabama and Mississippi and know that life is teeming there—human and otherwise—in ways that I can only dream.

But as I write that, I realize that maybe it's all selfish, maybe it's just about my own wants and needs. I don't know how to move beyond that. I want to cultivate a kind of non-attachment from my Self, but even my most basic efforts end up circling back to me. Maybe I should pray, "May I never return to the Gulf, but let it be healed and may its citizens have jobs and peace and security. May I never see the ocean, put let it be pure and clean and full of life. May I never see a swamp, but let the pelicans and gators and small mouth bass never know the taste of oil." Clearly, I'm still learning how to pray.

So, I don’t know about a faith in any God, but I do pray about the fate of humans and our planet. I’m hoping that one might be answered, and not, in the end, for me.