Prayer...

I have met believers whose prayer is, at the moment, “God grant me understanding of this tragedy, and the ability to accept Your works.”

I do not join the prayer. It isn’t that I doubt its wisdom. My motivation is that I am, alas, too human. I do not want to understand. I do not want to accept these works of the ineffable and the unfathomable.

I want instead to stare in horror and mute incomprehension. I am not ready for serenity. Sainthood elutes me. But, at least, a small thing: mere humanity is fallible, but it possesses the power of empathy. Some saints, it seems to me, do not.