Soul Food -- Michele Marr

o7 “Faith will not make our path easy, but it will give us strength

for the journey.” George W. Bush

f7

Today is the 51st National Day of Prayer.

The general attitude in our nation toward God and prayer has changed a

lot during my lifetime. In my early years in public school, before our

lunch and snacks, we all bowed our heads and said, “God is great. God is

good. Let us thank him for our food. Amen.”

As Brownies and Girl Scouts we sang, “Hark to the chimes. Come bow

your heads. We thank thee Lord for this good bread. Amen.”

These brief words of thanks taught me a wealth of gratitude at an

early age. I felt rich sitting down to a half pint of milk and a few

vanilla wafers or a lunch of white bread and peanut butter and fresh

fruit.

My family was small -- my parents, my sister and I. But it wasn’t easy

for my mother to feed us on my father’s salary, not even by shopping at

the Marine Corp commissary. There were never leftovers after dinner in

our house.

Those prayers before meals helped me never to feel shortchanged. When

I lay my head on my pillow at night and said my private prayers, I knew

there were children who went to bed hungry at night. I asked God to

please provide for them all as well as he provided for me.

Today those simple prayers -- which invoked no particular deity and

called to mind no specific religion -- could be fighting words. Public

prayers and calls to prayer can stir up wrath and even lawsuits. It

mystifies me.

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood I fell out with God for a

while. For a couple of decades I was a doubter, uncertain there was a God

who heard our prayers, much less one who sent provisions. I wasn’t

prayerful or religious.

But in all that time it never raised my ire to be asked to bow my head

while others prayed. I never got my hackles up when someone suggested I

go to worship or urged me to pray. I considered it my good fortune to

live in a nation where I could politely decline the invitations without a

twinge of fear.

Last September, a few days after the terrorist attacks on our nation,

our president called the nation to prayer. Like those prayers of my

childhood, his call did not invoke a particular god or single out a

specific religion. Go to your church, go to your synagogue, go to your

mosque, he urged, and pray for our nation.

Hours later I got an angry e-mail from a friend in New York. How dare

the president, how dare he, tell her to go and pray, she fumed.

I told her it was a plea, not a demand. I reminded her she would

suffer no penalty at all for ignoring his call, or for deploring it. I

asked what exactly made her so furious about his request. Her anger at

the president segued into fury toward me.

This is one of those occasions when time does not seem to hold power

to heal the wound. My friend remains livid. She rarely speaks to me and

when she does it is scarcely civil.

Today is our nation’s Day of Prayer. My friend is again offended.

There are others who, like her, are offended, too. I remain perplexed.

I miss the days when I could say, “God bless you” to someone who

sneezed and never have it returned with scorn. I am grieved when I hear

that Parent Teacher Assn. meetings and city council meetings can no

longer open with prayer. I am grateful that while I doubted, I lived in

this republic, “one nation under God.”

The theme of this year’s Day of Prayer is “America United Under God.”

Its organizers selected a verse from the Book of Psalms to focus the

day’s observance: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help

in trouble.”

Among the prayers I say today will be my thanks for the peace that

comes with knowing that.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]