A Week of Religious People Again

After existing happily secularly for quite a while I had a rash of religious folks around me this past week. A group I was working with got to talking about going to church in their youth. One was apparently beaten if he was late for church or showed up smelly because he was working and rushed to church without a shower. Another was Pentecostal and went to church daily and participated in every Pentecostal revival that came through town. I gather they aren't as devoted as their parents, but they did get to talking about the power of prayer and their strong belief that it "works". I had the good sense not to join these conversations.

I fail to see any supernatural cause and effect between prayer and events, although I've previously compared prayer to affirmations and meditation as a mind discipline. But one man in my workgroup this week was positively convinced prayer of others saved him from a bad lifestyle that would have ended in his early death and expressed incredulity at the thought that anyone wouldn't believe in the power of prayer. Again, I stayed out of the conversation as a work environment it not the proper place for spiritual debate.

On my flight back home I once again had a cute girl next to me. I had spotted her in the gate waiting area and was mildly infatuated with her backside, and she was cute from the front, too. To my surprise she had the seat next to me on the plane, and she was wearing no ring, and she appeared to be an appropriate age for me. But I was completely turned off when she pulled out her bible and was taking notes about her reading. There's a conversation I didn't even want to start that day, so I started dozing while the plane was still boarding.

There were also two or three ladies on the plane that were either Amish or nuns...I couldn't decide which. They had rather plain dresses with white hats with the fabric hanging down the back. I had recently been in an Amish store (complete with computer-printed labels, cell phones, and they took AMEX unlike some of the other local businesses, but nevermind) and the hats were a little different, so I started thinking maybe they were nuns' habits. One of them was seated in the row behind me and sang semi-quietly the entire flight.