PRAYER 1.
O Holy Parent
O holy parent,
assuming you exist,
and that if you do,
you are listening,
and that if you are listening,
you are interested,
may we ask you,
yet again,
in full and stoic recognition
of the infinite unlikelihood
of ever receiving a satisfactory answer,
the Eternal Question,
"Why are we here?"
Ahuman.
Hymn 61
"God Said to Abraham"
God said to
Abraham,
"Kill me a son."
Abe said, "Man,
you must be putting me on."
God said, "No."
Abe said, "What?"
God said, "You can do anything but,
next time you see me coming,
you better run."
Abe said, "Where you want this killing done?"
God said, "Out on Highway
61."
Prayer 2.
20th Century Prayer
I am
a gift of consciousness.
From whom I don't know.
To whom I don't know.
But,
a gift nevertheless.
All the others
are like me,
gifts of consciousness.
Like me,
they haven't a clue
about what's going on.
But I admire them
as I admire me
for carrying on
in the face of the impossibility
of ever finding out.
It is my purpose
to assume responsibility
for my passage through this reality,
to learn what I can,
to act where I can on that learning,
and to deal with my death
when it comes.
Should it ever
transpire
that I meet the entity or entities
behind all this,
I shall demand
a very comprehensive
explanation...
Ahuman.
The Common
Understanding
is the fund of knowledge
into which we are born;
from which we spring
on our journeys through
human consciousness.....
The beauty of
the Common Understanding
is that
it is assembled over many centuries
by ultimately selfless people...
In their
journeys through human consciousness
many people forget the indefinable nature
of the task facing them....
They forget that they are here to learn
and to contribute...
In the course of this forgetting
many of us become petty and selfish...
But this only lasts a short time
because people die
and in this ultimately selfless act
they leave behind what they have discovered
in their journey...
The sum total
of all these discoveries
that those of us still journeying
can remember or record
is the Common Understanding....
The sum total
of these recorded or remembered discoveries
becomes the best answer
that we, through the generations,
can provide
to the question
"Why are we here....?"