"Hear Our Prayer" or Hymn #325

            I intoned the phrase like everyone else, letting the hive mind take hold of me, like I was part of the clan.  Wait a minute…I’m a stranger.  I don’t want to be indoctrinated.  I don’t want to join their club and I don’t need their company.  Hear our prayer?  Who?  This is silly.  The mob and I sit down in unison.  The robed man stands at the pedestal and begins to speak in a high tone, believing with all of his heart that the text he reads is the be all and the end all: the verbal equivalent of Nirvana.  I see two of the older folks nodding off in the back of the room, drowning in their torpor of years.  Gregory, to my left, donates all of his rapt attention to the pulpit, and I felt that if his eyes grow any larger I will be overwhelmed by an urge to pick them like large pieces of ripe fruit. 

            Gregory invited me here today, and seeing as my parents were tied down until eleven thirty, I figured I’d tag along to this gathering.  It was just like any other Sunday, the sun was up and the clouds were pinned to the sky ignoring the negligible breeze.  I enjoyed the view of the countryside on the way to the church, scrunched uncomfortably in the back seat. 

            We parked and went inside and an old, well-dressed man stood by the door and shook my hand as I passed him.  He smiled very courteously, his glasses nearly sliding from his nose and his hand wavering slightly from the myriad handshakes he’d doled out in his lifetime.  Spots were present underneath each of his eyes and his teeth gleamed a sickly yellow.  As I took his hand I felt the pulse of his protruding purple veins.  The old man asked me if I was a member here, to which I quickly replied “No.”  In retrospect I suppose I walked away too quickly. 

            Gregory’s family and I found our places in a pew near the front of the stage, if you call it that, and the pulpit stood like a monolith at the center of the elevated floor.  The elderly filed in as an organist strained to some ancient tune.  The song never seemed to break; it was one long, continuous note that rose and fell like the chest of a dying man, faint, wavering, and wheezy.  Whoever composed the melody seemed to have written the notes at random, for the pitch became high and low at arbitrary points and although the notes as a whole were not unpleasing, the performance seemed to lack authenticity or creativity.  I had never heard another song like it, but I would not have been surprised were I told that it was manufactured via cookie-cutter.  The song stopped after eight minutes of throbbing effort from the organist. 

            Two young boys came down the aisle and each lit a row of candles, one on each side arranged in descending order by height.  The candles ignited; the pastor came forth and greeted: “Lord be with you.” 

            “And also with you,” came the reply.  I was not aware of the correct response.  If prompted, I would have muttered, “Uh, hello.” 

            Gregory stood up, and it seemed as if he cued the rest of the congregation because as they followed his action, the venerable organist struck up another ditty.  After playing the entire melody once through, everyone in the building, young and old, clutching old books with thin, wispy pages in their hands began to groan out the lyrics like they were being forced to.  It was as if they were singing not out of love or joy or some internal motivation, but out of habit.  Each man and woman sang the song with a sort of passive recalcitrance, as if their subconscious resisted the will of the crowd.  Of course there were those who crowed in their expired opera-voices the holy words that came from Hymn #325, believing with full hearts that their performances depended on their salvation, but they were few.  Few of these rabble actually believed in what they were doing. 

            I simply stood, looking around, observing the fathers, grandfathers, sons, grandsons, mothers, daughters, aunts, and uncles murmuring the words like a practiced, ritual incantation.  The men in their dark grey, black, beige, and slate suits, shoes oiled to perfection, children hopping on the pews scarcely aware of the embarrassment they were causing their parents coalesced in the waves of the dirge-like song.  Gregory’s eyes were shining.  Some of the true relics could not stand for the pains in their arthritic joints.  The women in their flowered hats from the thirties, long socks and satin dresses, curly white hair disguised in veils by their eternal vanity, and mothers holding their children’s hands and teaching them how to lie stared dutifully at the holy cross which dominated the room, front and center. 

            I did not open my mouth.  Nonplussed, I looked at my feet.  What are we singing to?  What is this song about?  Who wrote it? When?  Why?  I suppressed a snort of ironic mirth.  If there is a God, then why the hell would he care about this pitiful little display of robotic compliance from his subjects?  The choir reached the third verse.  The tune creaked on:

                        “Let us praise God together on our knees;

                        Let us praise God together on our knees;

                        When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun,

                        O Lord have mercy on me.”

            Insects do not worship us, I mused.  Monera do not worship insects.  We are the only things that worship.  We consider ourselves to be intelligent beings, the only ones capable of perceiving thoughts, feelings, emotions, and the only ones with a proven, cohesive method of communication, and we allow ourselves to believe in an invisible, all-powerful entity that watches everything that everyone in the world does at all times.  We are convinced of this superstition so that our feeble brains can be comfortable with the knowledge that someone bigger than us is looking out for us. 

            Everyone sat down again.  The ritual continued with a reading from the immortal archaic text composed entirely of words written by God.  And a few dozen scholars from early A.D.  I waited patiently for the bolt of lightning to smite me while thinking these thoughts.  Nothing came.  What a shock.  Looking cautiously around the room, I noticed that no one else’s eyes roamed the chamber like my own.  All but the children stared blankly ahead, soaking in the holy Word.  I briefly considered standing up then, in the middle of the reading, and yell profanity to see what would happen.  Shattering their tradition with some unexpected, bizarre behavior that may have jarred them from their self-imposed ritual reality here in this chapel, every Sunday at nine o’clock.  I remained seated.  No one but me has asked themselves the question, why am I here? 

            I thought back to their singing.  Old ladies wailing, old men bellowing, young men mumbling, young women chirping, children bawling or babbling: a cacophony of noise and a garbled mass of unintelligible words that merged into a dull roar, rising and falling like the laboring chest of the organist.  I noticed that he hasn’t had his hearing aids in the entire service.  Perhaps he no longer cared how the music sounded, as long as he played in God’s house, he was holy.  Like the cacophony, the roar.  Is the sound of one hundred people gasping out their last words music?  If it is, then Hymn #325 is a song.  Hymn #325 is a song if one wants it to be.  Here they call it music, but outside of the cocoon I call it hollow, forced, and empty.  I call it the apology of a toddler, the lightning-fast muttering of “I’m sorry” that once uttered means nothing because there was no emotional investment to the words.  Sometimes, words do not mean anything.  When they are not infused with purpose or potency, they fall to the ground like dead leaves.  If hymn #325 is a song in here, then silence is a symphony. 

            We stood again.  Again the singing, the dirge crashed on me thickly like an asphyxiating wave of oil.  I did not belong here.  I wanted to leave.  I wanted to burn something.  My fidgeting finally elicited a glance from one of the old women in the choir.  She gave me a stare as pointed as a syringe.  Then she shook her head once.  What a shame.  Shame shame shame shame shame, it said.  I was bare.  I had nothing to cover my sin from her.  Her gaze spoke of pity.  Sanctimonious sympathy for this poor, wretched infidel.  He does not know the gravity of his error.  He will burn for his sins.  He does not love the Lord. 

            I grew angry.  Hate roiled in me.  I didn’t ask for this.  You are not God, you have no right to put me on trial.  Judge not lest ye be judged, doesn’t it say that in your favorite fiction novel?  It’s also been said that the devil can quote scripture, and I couldn’t prove what I saw in her brief look anyway.  Maybe it was all in my mind. 

            Why don’t you believe?  Why don’t you fit in?  “This is not about conformity,” I whispered.  This is about self-deception and the leeching feeling I get when I enter this temple, this block for human sacrifice.  This activity is the motivation for war, hate, intolerance, judgment, and death.  These people feel better when they leave simply because they spent time with their Lord.  He forgives our sins, they say.  I understand, to a point.  This gathering is a mechanism for self-forgiveness of one’s own shortcomings.  Some of these people need to be here in order to live with themselves.  Some people need to come here so that they have a reason to rise in the morning.  Some people need to come here to affirm that they really, truly do matter in the world.  Some people need assurance that they will never end.  They need lies. 

            So the priest finally got to the part I was dreading most.  The prayer.  He invoked the old ‘Heavenly Father’ and I closed my eyes tightly.  I did my best not to squirm.  At regular intervals, the priest would stop on cue and the congregation would helpfully chime in “Here our prayer.”  I intoned the phrase like everyone else, letting the hive mind take hold of me, like I was part of the clan.  Wait a minute…I’m a stranger.  I don’t want to be indoctrinated.  Hear our prayer?  Who?

            I opened my eyes.  The pews were all empty, the cross was on fire, and I felt a tall presence in my psyche, urging me to partake of the initiation.  The blood of Christ waited in a crystal goblet within arm’s reach, his flesh a piece of green bread beside the chalice.  Thirst gouged my tongue.  I reached my hand out to touch the engraved cup.  Salvation was at hand. 

            Wait. 

            They almost convinced me.  Of all the horrors I had faced today, that was the one that would haunt me the longest.