Prayer of the Unbeliever

"What is man, that I should fear him, and the son of man, that I should worship him?"

And he said "Lord I believe. Cure thou my unbelief."

What is prayer?
It is a conversation with creation.
It is communion with the cosmos.
It is the dream of untold power, to change or influence the many things we know to be beyond us.
It is a speck, cryiny into the infinite and hoping somewhere something hears.

Oh Mighty God-Thing:

I gaze into the heavens
At the wondrousness of space
I am captured by the contrast
With our tiny human race

And I look at our fair planet
See the land, the sea, the sky
How its beauty always changes
A time to live, a time to die

And I think of how the earth looked
Before the continents divided
Land unbroken pole to pole
Pangaea - only one address provided

I can easily imagine
Forests, ferns but no grass grown
Dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes
A world more savage than our own

Then came ice and bitter cold
Later still the world of mammals
Sabre tooth and wooly mammoth
Giant rhino and humpless camels

And I read with avid interest
About our hominid forebears
Habilis, Neanderthalus, Erectus, Sapien
Evolutionary gears

The Clan of The Cave Bear
shows me Neanderthals unique
Bigger brains, the history of their race
Kept within their brain's mystique

The church tells us we are special
The crowning glory of creation
Just a step down from the angels
Born to high exalted station

If we are these higher creatures
Why do we destroy the earth?
Habitats, wildlife endangered
No new healing, no rebirth

Are we really noble rulers?
Self crowned kings or would be fakes?
I suspect the Earth still slumbers
What will happen if she wakes?

We ride into certain doom, lords of a dying planet. Over-population vies with rampant diseases, settlement encroaches on wildlife habitats, industry destroys our natural resources. We treat all other creatures with idle curiosity or open disdain and spend almost all our time making war on each other, yet we still prosper.

We have no fear.

Help us, we beg you oh mighty God-Thing, for we cannot seem to help ourselves.

Amen.