Prayer Poker

Prayer Poker ©

By

Michael Casey

Lent is upon us, it’s a time of penitence and prayer, and we give things up for Lent. Or so is the tradition, while all the Easter eggs are being made to be hatched on Easter Sunday. The egg symbolises the stone at the Tomb. So that’s what we learn in RE at school. What we don’t learn in school or at church or any place else is Prayer Poker.

What is Prayer Poker? Well as a child your mum teaches you pray, you learn all the prayers ready for when you go to school. But your mum has taught you them in Polish and you are in Birmingham at your local catholic school. So you have to relearn them in English, but at least this amuses the local priest.

When you are young your Faith is strong and bright, it has not been tested by real life. You enjoy the ceremony of Faith, any Faith not just Christian, whatever Faith you happen to be born into. Now a faith is like an inoculation, it protects you from bad things, by giving you a set of values, all you have to do is attend and say the prayers.

Your mother will teach and encourage you in your prayer life, while your dad is out working or down the pub, whatever kind of dad you have. It’s the women who pass on faith and language, the men don’t bother, or have an excuse not to. Yet the women are not allowed to be the priests. Yes a sweeping statement but look around you and think how accurate it is.

As for praying you learn the Rosary, and your mum tells you it is Mary’s nuclear weapon, in fact it it much much bigger than that. So you learn how to say the Rosary and going through the beads is very soothing. You feel so happy when you have learnt the 3 different kinds of Rosary, yes JPII did start a 4^th kind but how many people still know about that? Now as a child you have your Prayer martial arts skills learnt, the Rosary is like bolas to trip and bring down all evil, you are a cowboy with a Rosary as a lasso to bring down Evil.

So you pray regularly because your mum insists. She even gives you new pink plastic rosary beads at Christmas and Birthdays as presents. They are luminescent and glow in the dark. But its good your faith is strong. However like the ebbing tide Faith can fail or just almost disappear. You grow up, get a job, get your own place. So your plastic Rosary beads get forgotten or left behind in your old family home. But your mum or gran sends you a new pair for your new place, black and strong and made of wood, not childlike at all. You wake up in the middle of the night and scream, your mum has spray painted them so they glow in the night.

As you get older you try to negotiate with God, let me off from praying tonight I’ll do twice as many prayers tomorrow. You are sincere, so God won’t mind will he? Beside your girlfriend is coming over to christen that new King size bed you bought when you got your own place. And sex is more important than prayer. In the morning you regret what happened, if you prayed first things might not have turned out the way they did.

So on life goes, if I say some prayers will you help me with my exams, or please let her not be pregnant yet. Whatever you are praying for, such as a driving test exam, or another job so you don’t have to work with your now ex-girlfriend, but thank you God she wasn’t pregnant. And on it goes, you try to short change God, a Rosary becomes a quick nod to the Rosary beads. A Rosary only takes 5 minutes, or 15 if you do the set of 3, but God is not worth your time, you have to watch the boxing on tv and drink 7 pints of Stella Artois, then fall asleep in the chair.

If I say a quick Hail Mary, will you help me get through the traffic today, I have to be at CPNEC Birmingham I’m giving a Lecture on Serendipity, subtitle from Front of House to Full House on stage. And on it goes. You are playing Poker with God, as if he is fool, you speak to him less and less and Alexa and Cortana more and more. As if Alexa or Cortana really care about you.

Then you don’t even nod at the Rosary, in fact it falls on onto the floor and ends up under your bed. Life and girlfriends come and go, a silent witness under your bed. Then one day your mum rings, your dad had had a stroke. You jump in a taxi and give him double to get to the hospital fast. Why is your dad at the far end of the longest hospital corridor in Europe. You walk fast, then you start to run, you bump into a undertaker taking a body away. Her blonde hair comes falling down. Now God has raised the stakes. You say sorry and go dashing off.

Your dad will be ok, but the Rosary is running through your head, you say 10 Rosaries in 5 minutes, you are screaming in your head, save my dad. I promise to pray every day. A pretty nurse smiles and says everything will be ok, she recognises the hum of the Rosary under your breath. She is a Muslim girl and whispers Allah be merciful, as she walks away. You stay 2 hours and only then do you leave.

As you leave the blonde haired undertaker slips out of the shadows, she hands you your wallet, you had dropped in when you bumped into her. Now God is playing poker, he has upped the stakes. You thank her and she offers you a lift in the hearse, the undertakers is just around the corner from where you live.

Turns out she is very spiritual, so she drops you off saying she will pray for you and your dad. An undertaker praying for the living. You go home and look everywhere to find your Rosary beads, then and only then do you feel relieved. So the tide has turned, well for today anyway. You return to prayer and you keep on seeing the undertaker everywhere.

Gill is her name and you cash in your chips, it turns out she cannot have kids so she’ll just be an undertaker instead. A boy had dumped her and said she was just as dead as the dead because she could not have kids. So it broke her heart. But she found praying had healed her broken heart. Now she was content, so she wouldn’t let any boy ever hurt her again.

So you become friends, and you even pray that some day the right boy would come her way and accept not being able to have kids. Once back in the groove prayer is good. But sometimes Fate screams out, dominoes fall. It wasn’t planned it never was, you and the undertaker are in that King size bed, she wasn’t laying out the dead, she was making love instead. You think in your head I wish she could have a family. And she gently cries, she can read your mind.

As every mother knows a prayer will always be answered,you get what you need, not what you actually ask for. So Gill had twins. Prayer is a strange and wonderful thing. Life may be a game of Roulette but God does answer prayers if you bother to ask him. He Holds all the cards and he loads all the dice, he calls out the numbers too and then BINGO. So there you go an Easter Prayer for you all.