THE USE AND MISUSE OF PRAYER

Summary: on a government sanctioned day of prayer, we should remember not only how prayer, (especially of the imprecatory “I pray that God will kill you, unpleasantly and right away” variety) can be abused, but also how sometimes prayer can be powerfully prophylactic.  But at a time when all of our discourse has been debased and politicized, those who use prayer as a weapon should remember that they are giving prayer itself a bad name.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Today is the National Day of Prayer.

While, as an Episcopalian, I’m not necessarily a member of a tightly organized religion, I may know a thing or two about prayer.

I know, for example, that I have been prayed for, which can actually be a very sweet, even reassuring, thing, that I have been prayed about, and certainly that I have been prayed against.

When I was in public office, I used to receive charming e-mails from various sources informing me that my death was being earnestly prayed for, either because I was a baby killer, an agent of Satan, an unrepentant and wicked homosexual (and here I had thought I was merely fabulous) , a traitor, a liberal, or maybe I had just voted against someone’s code enforcement appeal.  Such prayers are often known as imprecatory prayers, by which the one doing the praying seeks --- often with a singular lack of success --- to call down the ill will of whatever deity is being prayed to upon the target.

Now prayer, the theologians tell us, can be answered in one of three ways: "yes," "no," and "wait."  And the one thing I can predict with absolute certainty is that at some point the prayers of those who pray for my death will indeed be answered in the affirmative; Benjamin Franklin was right when he pointed out that the only two certain things in life are death and taxes.  Of course, those who use prayer as a weapon of imprecation would be just as happy if I -- and presumably my family and everyone close to me -- were to die, right now, in some particularly horrifying way that could be presented to the credulous as evidence of a wrathful God working out His divine anger on me and those close to me.

Now the better part of a decade of having one’s death prayed for, and being on the receiving end of all manner of imprecation can have a salutary effect of thickening one’s skin.  Some of the best advice I ever got when I entered the vortex of public life was on the importance of developing that thick skin, and of never letting insults or imprecations throw me off my game, especially in a political climate where the cynical manufacture of phony outrage has become a routine staple of our debased discourse.   If I had blown a gasket every time I got an e-mail telling me that my death was being prayed for, or calling down the ill will of God on me, my family, and those close to me, I would never have been able to get any work done, either as a public official or in my private sector occupation.

Perhaps ironically, my own remedy for being prayed against is prayer itself, quiet, private, centering prayer which, pace my atheist and agnostic friends, can be a marvelously effective, powerfully prophylactic way of clearing the emotional cache and repairing the spiritual registry, so to speak.  Thus, I cannot associate myself with those who believe in a “prayer warrior” ethos that prefers imprecation to intercession or petitions for prosperity to the meditative emptying of self and ego that ought to characterize walking humbly before God (Micah 6:8).  Such an ethic of humble emptying, sadly, seems absent from those who believe that prayer is just another kind of M-16.

So, perhaps, I bristle when I hear the phrase “prayer warriors.”  Not only does the phrase call to mind an approach to the divine which seems rather out of character with the broad tenets of the faith a majority of Americans continue to profess, but also suggests a certain predisposition toward militancy that causes one to entertain a certain concern that beyond vocal militancy lies direct action.  The person who believes that he were she is God’s chosen instrument is but a step or two removed from being willing to go from prayer to provocation, being willing to take the phrase “Church militant” all too literally.

For in the end, a militant “prayer warrior” ethic that seeks to enlist God and prayer as activists for a particular temporal cause only winds up giving prayer --- and people of faith --- a bad name.  Those who call themselves “prayer warriors” would remember that we Christians confess a Savior Whom we proclaim to be Prince of Peace, not of war.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  The views expressed herein are his own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or entity with which he is associated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as either religious instruction or legal advice, although he would note as gratuitous counsel that when you kneel to pray, use a prie dieu, it’s a lot easier on the knees, particularly in middle age.

A PREFERENTIAL OPTION FOR BAKERS OVER BANKERS

Summary: On May Day (or Beltane, if you prefer) we need to remember Lincoln’s reminder that Labor is prior and superior to capital.  The bankers at Bain Capital don’t bake bread to feed hungry people.  Bakers do that, and today, we need to revive a preferential option for bakers and others who make real things over bankers and speculators who do not.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Happy Beltane.

If you didn’t know that today is Beltane, don’t feel bad; it’s a Celtic holiday that, until recently, had largely gone unnoticed in Christian and “post-Christian” Europe.

If you did not know that May 1 is Law Day and Loyalty Day in the U.S. you shouldn’t feel bad, either; you are not alone.  They are obscure observances at best, and only exist because during the Eisenhower administration, the Federal government, skittish at the “socialist” overtones of the May Day celebrations of work and workers that happen throughout Europe and the rest of the world, metaphorically called out the forces of law and order to prevent a “socialist” holiday from gaining a beachhead on the shores of the New World.

Of course, the historic irony here is that May Day, as an international day of labor, actually got its start here in the United States, to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago, where dozens of labor protesters were gunned down by police.  Nonetheless, our almost obsessional fear of “socialism” has put the United States in the company of a number of right-wing governments that, over the years, have sought to repress or eliminate May 1 as a day dedicated to workers.

Now socialism -a concept of which almost no American has even a working understanding- has been, and remains, a bugaboo to most Americans.  It is what the late semanticist (and sometime Republican U.S. Senator) S.I. Hayakawa would have called a “snarl word,” raising primitive, inarticulate, and angry passions.  Yet, in reality, most Americans would not know a socialist if bit by one. 

Names from the socialist pantheon -August Bebel, Jean Jaurès, Keir Hardie, and Eugene V. Debs, to name just a few- are unknown to the vast majority of Americans, who are taught little and care less about the social changes of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries that established the social paradigms most of society now regards as normal.

Even today, to call something “socialist” is in many quarters to define it as wrong, perverse, and saturated with nameless evil.  Ideologues of the  American Right, those Beltway Bourbons who , as Talleyrand once observed of their namesakes, have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing --- “ils n'ont rien appris ni rien oublié” --- have been remarkably persistent and effective in tarring with the brush of socialism any person or school of thought who differs from their often remarkably retrograde -thoroughly Bourbon- ancien régime views of How Things Ought to Be.

One of the fundamental truths our Beltway Bourbons seem not merely to have forgotten, but to have actively rejected, is that  “[l]abor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”  These were not the words of a bomb throwing agitator; they were the carefully considered phrases of President Abraham Lincoln’s first Message to Congress.

At a time when the Beltway Bourbons and their Tea Party fellow travelers seem intent upon denigrating the dignity of work and workers by any means necessary, Lincoln’s words become all the more important.  The American right has busily disseminated a narrative that the Ninety-nine percent of us who do not enjoy the spectacular success of the One Percent are, at best, mere slaves to class envy, and at worst, traitors to what should be the established order.

In fact, what angers the Ninety-nine Percent is not that some in our society have enjoyed spectacular success.  Those whose skills or genius have changed the way we do things have earned their success.  What the Ninety-nine Percent correctly resent are the sanctimonious and self-congratulatory posturings of those who -- as the late Texas governor Ann Richards once put it -- were born on third base yet believe they hit a triple, and who now seek to pull up the ladder of their vicarious success behind them.

What angers the Ninety-nine Percent is not necessarily that the system, if honest, may nonetheless produce disparate outcomes, but that increasingly, the system appears to be, and is, rigged.  When it becomes clear that the deal has been crooked, and some of the players in the game have been unfairly disadvantaged by that crooked deal, those who have been cheated are justified in their anger and outrage.

On this May Day, which some in the party opposite would tar with the brush of “socialism,” or worse, we should ask the Beltway Bourbons and their useful idiots in the Tea Party what outcomes they think they should expect from their ongoing and systematic contempt for the workers who teach our children, walk our beats, fight our fires, harvest our crops, repair our cars, build our houses and offices, defend us at home and abroad, or otherwise do the work with which they themselves would not sully their lily white hands.

Eugene V. Debs used to point out that “a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end.”  America is what she is today because of the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of millions of workers.  On May Day, we should remember that all of the financial speculation on the floors of all the securities exchanges of all the world will never produce one single tangible, useful object.  Not any of the bankers at Bain Capital can perform the simple task of baking bread to feed hungry people. 

Today, let us remember why we should always have a preferential option for the baker over the banker.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of any entity or organization with which he may be associated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice, though common sense would suggest that if one were marooned on a desert island, one might prefer to be marooned with the baker rather than the banker.