Old Phoner

Last weekend I went to a favorite breakfast place for some 3XHAR Time. I sat, I ate, I read and I watched and listened to… people. There was this little old lady (Old Phoner) who, despite plenty of non-inhabited dining space, sat down directly behind me (a sign?). She got on her cell phone and began calling people, one after the other. During each call Old Phoner asked the person on the other end of the call to pray for an acquaintance of hers. The acquaintance had a wide range of bad behavior and bad judgments from what I could hear, and I heard a lot: addicted to sleeping pills, pregnant, addicted to sleeping pills while pregnant, yells at people, expects people to help her out with little or no thanks, is lazy, and doesn’t go to church.

Now, I’ve never received a call from anyone requesting that I pray for anyone. This is sensible because the call would almost invariably turn into one of those calls that the Mormons used to have to suffer through when they used to call me. HARHARHAR.

Prayer. Explain this to me. In Old Phoner’s case, she was asking people to beseech the Almighty Dog, Creator of the Universe, Omniscient and Omnipotent, to do what? To have Dog intervene and change Bad Decision Girl’s luck? Or to interfere with Bad Decision Girl’s free will? Either way, I thought Dog had a plan. I’m always told that things happen for a metaphysical (as opposed to a physical) reason. Well, if Dog has a plan, then all the prayer you could muster won’t change it, right? I mean, things are going according to plan, so why waste your time?

The other kind of prayer I hear about is more like a thank you note than an index card in Dog’s suggestion box. ‘Hey, Dog, thanks for having my chute open when I jumped out of that plane.’ If the common conception of Dog is that Dog is omniscient (all knowing) then Dog already knows you’re thankful, so, again, why waste your time?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking any religion to make sense, I’m just saying I’ll start believing in one when I find one that does.