Kirkepiscatoid

That it may please thee so to rule the hearts of thy servants,
the President of the United States (or of this nation), and all
others in authority, that they may do justice, and love mercy,
and walk in the ways of truth,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

Oh, sigh, and sigh and sigh. Praying for politicians. Grunt.

Okay, I have to admit that for the last eight years, my praying for the President was more like that scene from Fiddler on the Roof:

“Rabbi, is there a proper blessing for the czar?”

“There is a blessing for EVERYTHING. A blessing for the czar? Of course...may God bless and keep the czar… far away from us.”

So to start doing it now feels kind of disingenuous. I can’t get into not praying for authority figures I don’t like, so it doesn’t feel kosher to only pray for the ones I voted for. If you want to get right down to it, I don’t like praying for authority much in general.

Oh, hell. I don’t LIKE authority. I don’t even like BEING authority. I’m just uncomfortable with all of it. Probably b/c I have lived through more misused authority than I care to admit. Partially because I have been so used to being a “lone wolf” for so much of my life, to be in control of my own things and not get in the way of others, and just do my thing. Hierarchies are just uneasy for me, especially when I am not really sure of what “my role” is.

Yet I crave “a framework of structure.” It is a hard paradox.

Praying for the parts of hierarchies seems so...well...artificial in some ways. It’s not about the person, it’s really about the slot they occupy.

Maybe that is the way to hook me to it, since I do crave a framework.

I am blessed to live in this country, faults and all. I am blessed to live in Missouri, who, God bless us, is 48th in darn near everything (thank God for Arkansas and Mississippi, we joke around here), faults and all, it is the geography I call “home.”

Home is not always everything we want, but it is certainly part of who we are. Government is a structure that is in place, that we don’t always agree with, don’t always like, but mostly, it’s just there, and part of what we enjoy in this country is because it is there. We love it enough to defend it, and to argue about “what defending it” means. Really, most of the time we don’t notice it. It’s just THERE.

So...in that vein, praying for our nation and the people who lead it and govern it (no matter how we personally feel about them) was a better idea than my initial gut reaction. How often do I pray for what I don’t usually notice? Perhaps that is the take home message.