Wee Sprout 05

Think it through.

Prayer in schools, do you want someone, a guy or gal you don't really know, praying with your kids, or even better, teaching them the "proper" way to pray? Would you be upset if your fourth-grader came home, delighted, with tales of praying to Grandpa Rick up in heaven? Or to Mother Mary? Mister Rogers?

Isn't prayer BETTER taught at home?

Oh yeah, but we mean a COMMON PRAYER, that's what we want, every day in our schools, a common prayer, from a -- you know, a BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER -- one we all agree upon, one that is regular, kind and true.

But prayers by rote, exactly how effective are they? Memorized prayer, a little ditty, kind of like the Pledge of Allegiance, to the flag . . . does God even appreciate such a nursery rhyme? Doesn't God desire prayers from the heart, on the fly, by the seat of the pants, extemporaneouse, impromptu.

Isn't prayer BETTER practiced at home?

To the best of my knowledge, there is no "prayer police" busily tracking kiddies down

at school, making careful certain, that your kiddycat ain't praying -- and if a kid IS caught with their hands folded in prayer? Slap some plastic cuffs on 'em and haul'em away to the Prayer Jail!

Nonsense, right? Of course, and yet a certain group is brainwashing the masses to bring this perception across, that "prayer is not allowed in public schools, and what a travesty, oh what a public holocaust this really, really is." But again, it is nonsense.

What is not allowed is for some stranger to FORCE your child to pray. Don't you applaud that fact, that reality? Do you want someone leading your child in prayer, teaching your kid to pray to Lucifer, or Allah, or Buddah, or Krishna, or Brahma, or Elvis?

You can pray all day. No one has to know.

Of course, the reason this is such a controversy, is because parents DO NOT pray with their children at home. Let them take care of that at school, we just don't have time for prayer at home, all that kneeling and scraping.

Just let'em memorize a ditty. That'll do.

- Oz Moses

“Truth that has merely been learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thought of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer

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