Jon,

Did you at least, like the priest in Bergman's movie, find a deep understanding of the bit in the bible about, 'My God, why has thou forsaken me?'

You raised a lot of issues in your message - too many to deal with at one time. You seem to be postulating that praying to God is harmful. If you are leaning towards scientific proof, your personal anecdotal evidence doesn't count. God knows, your life might have been worse if you hadn't prayed.

To prove scientifically that prayer is ineffectual, you would have to set up blind tests. You could have one group of two hundred people praying for six months. Another group could take harmless kat worm capsules as a placebo. Still another group could sing only John Prine's Late John Garfield Blues for the whole six months. Then you could look at whose life was most improved or most devastated. I wonder which group would come out ahead.

Did you go away to a school for boys at 7 or 8? George Orwell did and he started wetting the bed. Perhaps it's a British boys' school tradition. You might be in good company on that one. Churchill wouldn't have boasted about it, of course, but Orwell was an honest enough writer to mention it. Even if it was just you and Orwell, you can be proud of being in good company.

And yes, sometimes we have to work ourselves up into a paranoid frenzy to talk to women. At other times they seem almost human. Could it be us and not them? Then they convince us that we have cardboard brains. Ah, just crank up the stereo and let Christie McVie sing the prettiest Songbird, let Christina Smith and Jean Hewson sing so lonesome that we all could cry.

david