Elf (Part 8): The inability to pray

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The oddest thing about Ainsley was her inability to pray for George Bush. This woman of faith was not a rebellious Christian, that is, she didn't think so. She did not pride herself on independence, au contraire. She felt strapped to God. She loved the very places where she couldn't move. Close to God, who would want to be elsewhere? All right, it wasn't that. Her problem was something else. She was not a Democrat, not even close. Furthermore, she never refused to pray for an enemy, say a warrior, a zealot, a sociopath, or for any person who happened to wish her ill (and few did). She did not refuse prayer for any human on earth, whether known to her or unknown. This was, as far as she knew, simply the truth. She did not refuse prayer for anyone, not for no one, definitely, including the President. So. No refusal was involved, rather inability. She could not pray for this one. Her throat closed like a pipe when the indicated moment came. This one thing she was unable to do.

I believe the end of civilization has come and this strange man has somehow brought it, she said. Now here is the eerie part.

I know very well (she said) that the inhabitants of the future will make fun of all the people like me for our intensity. They will quote what they will call my overreaction and they will laugh. And laugh and laugh, I can hear the sound. But what will be the nature of that laugh? How to assess that laugh? That is, the quality of the feeling's future, so to speak.

Babies will be born. Schools will exist. The old will survive, a few of them. And despite attempts to eradicate the poor (as opposed to eradicating poverty), there is no question but that the poor will still be with us, that is, with *them*, the laughers. Yes but who exactly will be laughing when the future laughs? Will there be a person inside the sound of the laughing? When they make fun, who will it be that is making fun? Will those people still exist, in a civilized sense, *as* a civilized sense?

If the person laughing is *not* a person, then won't I be in fact the one laughing? If a culture of measure exists now (and I think it does), what guarantee that it still exists then? And if it doesn't, if measure is gone away, what then will there be to laugh about?

In other words, will my inability to pray for him be vindicated even if it's not? Will the person who laughs at me no longer be a person?

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