Once again, I wrote most of this entry this morning, although I'm posting in the afternoon. But now I do have a day's worth of news, and I'm pleased to report that this amazing little woman who came into the world so far before her time on Wednesday is already off the respirator and took a few drops of breast milk today.
In my comments yesterday, needisaymore asked
"I just wondered why if you don't believe in a Higher Power, you would look to those who do for prayer? Truly, just intrigued."
Well, really, it's an excellent question.
I am myself intrigued by prayer, and by the faith that people have who believe in it. As I've mentioned before (or was that something I put in your comments, cosmic?) I don't come by faith easily, and not at all in the area of religion. That's organized religion. I respect it, I'm curious about it; I just don't have it. And unless something comes to me in a flash and I become born again in whatever religion, I don't see myself getting it, ever. My own so-called religion, the one I was first born into, is not a religion to me but a culture, a set of traditions. I identify very strongly as a Jewish person, but not with Jewish religious beliefs. Again, I respect and admire those who do. I just wasn't raised that way, nor have I ever come to it on my own.
But she said something about a Higher Powser, and that's another story. I do believe in a Higher Power, and that for some people this Power is known as Jesus, or Yahweh, or Buddha, or ... you get it. For me there is no name, no clear sense of boundary. It may be the force of the universe, the momentum of the Big Bang. I don't know. This is the essence of agnosticism: you don't know. My father always claimed to be an agnostic, but he was an agnostic who denied the existence of a Higher Power or an afterlife. By me, that's an atheist. I do believe, I just can't sum it up in words very well. I have a strong sense of things that are "meant to be" and such. I don't know what it is.
Prayer. Prayer means a lot to many people. I know it means a lot to my dear friend, the grandmother of this new life, and to the baby's parents. And so, prayers are good because they are good for them. I don't dispute the power of prayer; it's just that a questioner like me has no concrete evidence (!), which is what someone like me needs. It may work. If so, keep it coming.
And finally, do I pray? What do I do when I'm in a foxhole, huh? The answer is that I do have a very strong sense of afterlife, although not a clearcut heaven sort of place; I feel that my grandparents, and now parents, are with me always, wherever they are, and if I need strength, I talk to them. (I do try not to talk to them out loud unless I'm alone. Other people are funny about things like that.) Sometimes I ask them for help. I begged my mother's parents -- and her brother -- to come for her right away when she was dying in pain. I even had an image in my mind of the three of them, Uncle Sol a little boy, standing on a Bronx street corner waiting for little Shirl to catch up. Later that day, when she was gone, I was comforted when I thought of her, holding her Pa's hand and happily skipping off with them all to Yankee Stadium, or the Bronx Zoo, or the opera, as they would all do on a Sunday afternoon. (Shirl died on Sunday afternoon.)
I've been calling on Shirl, and on my grandmothers, to look in on this little baby girl, and to ask around wherever they are to call in for reinforcements. It's not exactly prayer, in the generally understood sense. It's what I've got. Whatever you've got, that's good too.
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I'm watching Dr. Phil
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
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