02.28.07
I used to do exactly the same thing.
When I was a kid back in the Seventies, my friend had a Bill Cosby record where he talked about saying the standard prayer before bed and how the key line—IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE—used to keep him awake at night. I used to worry a lot about dying as a child myself. I wonder to this day how normal that was, particularly I had little concept of what it meant to die, except that if you were good you would “go to Heaven.”
I don’t remember worrying that I would end up in what we had to call “the bad place” (we were never allowed to say “Hell”); I was just afraid, end of story. I think I used to end the rote part of the prayer with a very intense prayer that I not die, followed by an equally intense bit where I listed all the other people I didn’t think should die that night. It was a pretty long list, as there were a few people who I was desperately afraid of losing, and a lot of people I felt I should be desperately afraid of losing.
It got to be a sort of overwhelming compulsion for me. I couldn’t get to sleep till I’d said it. Furthermore, while I’d been taught that I didn’t need to say it aloud, I was convinced that it didn’t count unless I squinched my eyes shut tight and clenched my jaw till it hurt. It’s as if I thought I had to forcibly ram myself into God’s personal prayer socket.
Looking back, I can’t discover whether I felt any sort of response. I don’t think I would have recognized it if I had. It’s funny: people get all sorts of religious training/indoctrination, but very little help in learning how to pray or in learning what to expect from prayer.
Click here to read more from Franny and Zooey as a Manual on Prayer.
I recently discovered The Marginal Christian’s Handbook, part of a larger blog called The Flatland Almanack. Being a tiny bit of a marginal Christian myself, I was drawn in immediately by Damozel’s funny and engaging essay on prayer. Highly recommended.