Prayer

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 Prayer 

We went to church again this morning, Uncle Albert and I. The sermon was from the passage where Andrew and another disciple of John the Baptist ask Jesus where he is staying and he says, “Come and see.” They do come, so I suppose they see. But we do not. It is an irritating aspect of the gospels that they contain no descriptions of people or places. So, we don’t know if Jesus has a room in someone’s house or he has his own house all to himself. Or he might live with his mother, or in a yurt.

On the way home, Uncle Albert said apropos of nothing that had gone before: “No one that doesn’t pray has any real depth.”

     I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. Several minutes later as we were climbing the steps to the front door, he said, “None at all - depth- but he can fool anyone else that doesn’t pray.” Then, he stopped, so I stopped, too, as I was holding his elbow. “No!” he said. “Not anyone else. He can fool anyone that doesn’t pray, including himself.”

There was a note on the door: Her friend Charlie had picked Roz up, and they had gone out for coffee.

     “I used to pray,” I told Uncle Albert as I took down the note, “but I don’t anymore.”

     “Maybe you will again,” he said.

     I said, “Maybe.”

01.15.17