At Least They're Committed

Sunshine! (If ‘on my shoulders’ just ran through your head, I will find and hurt you.) After a gloomy few days, it’s 56 degrees, the snow is slinking away and I warmly welcome the reprieve. How exciting: I now have zero excuses for ignoring the dog poop that has accumulated since Saturday.

Gross.

Do you suppose God minds if you pray while picking up dog poop? Or if you’re vacuuming or showering or trimming your toenails? These sorts of questions consume me from time to time, but hey, at least I’m not pondering the state of the world or the meaning(lessness) of life. The aforementioned activities — plus gardening and hiking, which have to do with the Earth so I’m not concerned about — are when my mind is free-est.

I pray a LOT. I haven’t always been consistent. I’ve been known to get caught up in the here and now and forget to recognize that I’m not the only one controlling what happens in my life and the lives of others; and that I don’t need to fret about the future alone.

“Hand it off to God,” my mom always says. (If you’re looking at the image, I feel compelled to clarify that she was talking about our burdens, not what’s in the image.) And that’s not always easy.

As of late, I’ve been better about praying daily — at least once, usually twice, occasionally three times — and it not only brings me peace, but it honestly improves my existence. I don’t know if it’s the faith that radiates outward from my prayers or the hope and faith that is returned to me. Probably both.

Thank heavens I don’t have to pick up the chicken poop. That is scooped into the compost bin to be spread next spring across the yard for a lush, green lawn in 2024. The hens certainly make a fuss, though, as I traverse the yard finding feces — as if the crap I’m squatting and grabbing with multiple compostable, nature-friendly green bags was something they otherwise would have enjoyed eating. They wouldn’t. I know that but, hey, they’re chickens.

It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? If our lives are predetermined despite having free will — as in God knows exactly what is going to happen in the calculated rotation of the space-time continuum — why do we pray at all? What difference will it make?

In the end, I imagine it’s because although God knows you’re going to muddle things up horribly it’s still entirely your choice. It’s like when you drop a piece of chocolate near your dog and frantically tell him to “Leave it! Leave iiiiiit! Leave it alone!” and you know full well he’s going to gobble it down so quickly you won’t have a chance of snatching it out of the way. And you’re grateful it was only a single semisweet morsel.

. . . and you’ll just have to clean up his runs later that day or, in this case, three days later when the snow melts. (It wasn’t chocolate, that was literary license. It was the leftover brown gravy from Early Thanksgiving.)

I mean really, do you suppose when I talk to Gabriel he nudges God to say, “Hey, I know You had planned on making her live to be 97, but she’s pretty much thinking 79 will be enough. What do ya say?” Or when I’m honoring Mary and mention how we’d really love to have those babies back she nods and says to The Father and Son, “Maybe we should rethink that?” Ha! Doubtful! Still, if that’s part of The Plan, I want them to know I’m giving them a hallelujah, thumbs-up and great-big-ass “YES, PLEASE!”

Prayer, I suppose, reinforces The Plan. Perhaps prayer puts out to the universe “This is what I believe would be a super-groovy thing to happen and I have faith and, yet, sure, thy will be done.” Reinforcing rather than rebelling against or denying God’s Will.

I guess I’ll not know any of this until The End of The Plan. Then I’ll be like, “Oh, wow! I used to know that! But being human made me totally forget!” And hopefully not, “Oh, I’m so sorry! I should have saved my prayers for non-poop-scooping, nor shower-streaming, nor toe-nail-clipping moments of the day!”