I think I might be channeling my father.

[constance]

Aside from the fiendishly capitalist and corporate Barnes and Noble, every company I've worked for in the twenty-first century has featured obligatory moments of prayer in the workplace. Before meetings, before communal meals, before "extracurricular" functions, we all bow our heads for a prayer, silent or spoken. It's the price you pay for living in the Deep South; and man, it's a high price, at times, for someone who's agnostic at a stretch and only really not an atheist because she can't be unequivocal about what fucking salsa to buy*, much less about things as intangible as deities and human souls.

I try to be polite and respectful during these moments of prayer. I bow my head and keep quiet. I don't fidget or giggle or snort in derision. But sometimes it all gets to be too much, the way it did this morning, when our most fervent Monday-morning prayer leader begged God to "impose" his "will" upon "us all." I admit that a little snort did escape me. And suddenly I'd just had enough.

I mean. When I feel invisible spirits trying to impose their wills upon me, I'll reach for my powerful antipsychotics, thanks. I spent the rest of the prayer chafing at the idea that I should be cowed into pretending that I had any desire to be imposed upon. I held my head upright. My eyes were wide open. I felt enormously relieved.

If you're a Christian, more power to you. I still respect your right to believe in whatever God your faith leads you to. But I don't want a part in your worship any more, okay? Thanks for your attention in this matter.

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* (recommendations and/or recipes are welcome!)

Comments

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Back when I was still forced to attend the local bar association's pre-Thanksgiving banquet thingy every year, they would always have a supposedly nondenominational, actually overtly Christian invocation right before the food (usually, apparently, directed at praying that everyone who'd already been shit-faced for an hour and a half didn't kill someone on the drive home), and for those of us who refused to bow our heads to that at all it was highly amusing to see how many people did this little half-bow, looked furtively around and, when they saw scattered raised heads, lifted their own chins again with obvious relief. Says a lot about actual devotion versus the overpowering social pressure to say those loyalty oaths to an organized Christian faith of one sort or another. (Or, as Christopher Hitchens noted when he did the God Is Not Great book tour through the south and lower Midwest, everyone who showed up for every talk had mistakenly thought they were the lone atheist/agnostic/freethinker in all of Little Rock/Baton Rouge/Tallahassee.)

"I still respect your right to believe in whatever God your faith leads you to. But I don't want a part in your worship any more, okay?"

And any practicing Christian who can explain to me why "showing respect" to someone's faith requires one to publicly lie and profess belief in it oneself...ahhhh, never mind. The point is, a lot of people feel the same way, they're just being verrrrrrry quiet about it.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

why "showing respect" to someone's faith requires one to publicly lie and profess belief in it oneself

Because if you are not with them then YOU ARE THE INFERNAL, ENTERNAL ENEMY DIE DIE DIE, of course. Fundamentalists rock that way! And I'm planning to keep my eyes peeled for this phenomenon next time I'm forced to sit through someone else's prayers. It will be on Monday. I won't have long to wait. :/