The curse of prayer

I don't know you people, but I'd still like to ask you a favor: If you hear somehow that I'm sick, in the hospital or recovering from some tricky surgical procedure, please, for the love of God, whatever you do, don't pray for me, OK? Really, I'll handle it from my end. You've got enough to worry about. Besides which, as it turns out, your well-meaning supplications are likely to make things worse.

I refer here to an article set to appear next week in the American Heart Journal. The article refers to a study in which those heart patients who knew they were being prayed for by strangers actually had more complications than those who weren't prayed for.

The skeptics among us might assume this study proves that what theologians call "intercessory prayer'' is less than useless. But nobody is questioning whether the devout in the study just did a lousy job. On the other hand, if God answers that sort of proof, surely he doesn't take off points for presentation.

The question of answered prayer always raises the specter of reducing God to what some have called "a cosmic bellboy.'' We don't want to do that. God remains ineffable and we're stuck with that.

Two points:
1. There's a line in the movie "Shadowlands'' about C.S. Lewis and the death of his wife. A chaplain comes to him and says, "I'm sorry God didn't answer your prayers,'' and Lewis responds, "I don't pray to change God; I pray to change me.''

2. Theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner has written that every prayer, at its heart , is the same prayer, "God, please be with me.'' Or him. Or her. Or them. Or us.

There are some things science cannot measure and that faith cannot do without.

A blue streak

According to a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll, Americans are cussing more than ever.
I think that's a crying shame. Actually, I think it's a different kind of shame entirely, but I don't want to resort to that sort of language.

Really, you don't want to swear too much. It devalues the currency. You need to be judicious in your use of profanity if it is to have its proper effects. I think it was Mark Twain who said something like, "Swearing can offer a kind of peace that not even prayer affords.'' Anyone who has ever stubbed his or her toe in the dark must surely agree.

Some folks know how to swear. The late Richard Pryor for one, and the writers of HBO's "Deadwood" for another. We ought to leave prodigious cussing to the professionals, I say.

There's nothing more crude than somebody dropping what we euphemistically refer to as "The F-Bomb'' every few seconds. As Winston Churchill remarked in another context entirely, "After a certain point, more bombs only make the rubble bounce.''

So the next time you're about to unload an amateurish array of potty talk why don't you do this instead: Shut the heck up!

My freedom's fine; yours, not so much

We have to believe that written into human hearts, hardwired into human heads, is the desire to be free. Nobody wants to live with a boot to the neck.

Other people's necks, though, are another story.

Consider the case of Abdul Rahman, a Christian who faced the death penalty in the newly liberated Afghanistan for saying, "No thanks'' to Mohammed and "Yes, please'' to Jesus.

Our brave soldiers, our sons and daughters, who have bled and died to liberate that place, are now in a position of having to defend a country which, in a heady burst of freedom, has elected to turn itself into "Taliban Lite,'' more than willing to execute someone who converts from one religion to another.

On the plus side, it looks like Rahman will not be executed, but rather get the bum's rush out of the country by the skin of his teeth. But before we go condemning a billion Moslems, let us try to remember that Christians have, in their time, whacked people who would not see the light. Does the Spanish Inquisition ring a bell?

Still, it is disappointing to see the fruits of our military labor so quickly ripen and rot in a hard and faraway place.

Inquiry into the nature of good and evil in kids

There are people in this world who believe that children, unsullied by the dirty tricks and ethical malfeasence at work in the world, are paragons of innocence and virtue. These people, not to put too fine a point on it, have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

I have four kids. I have watched two of them grow into fine young men and am crossing my fingers with the younger two. So I have some degree of expertise in this area. Children are, by and large, a class of very short grifters.

I'm talking here about kids who know the difference between right and wrong, and because they do, can parse ethical questions with Clintonesque aplomb. When push comes to shove, as it sometimes does on the playground, they will claim that the best intelligence available indicated that Jimmy had weapons of mass destruction in his back pocket, so there.

Children also have a keen sense of justice, as shown by the sheer number of times they can cry, "IT'S NOT FAIR!" in the course of a single day.

Ethics is hard work. So hard, in fact, that many adults just give up on it: Ken Lay, for example.
But we parents try to impart the time-tested virtues to our children. Virtuous living is not always rewarded in this world, so self-interest is not always the most persuasive of arguments.
If children can come to see that there are more important things in this life than base self-interest, that love and justice have deeper and broader roots than self, then we have made a great leap in our goal to raise those who will become good men and women one day.

High-tech Infants

An editor brought his baby boy to the office yesterday so we could take a look at his beautiful son. And he really is a beautiful baby. I really mean that. Some babies are pretty homely looking, but we always say that they are beautiful, because what else are you going to say.

But this was one good-looking child. What we could see of him. He was wearing some sort of blanket/pancho that obscured everything but his face, which was framed in a perfect circle.
And the stroller the kid was being pushed around in looked like something the boys at NASA cooked up on their lunch hour, using spare parts left over from the Mars rover. The whole package brought to mind what Ma and Pa Kent found in the Kansas wheatfield when Kal-El's voyage from the doomed planet Krypton ended.

I've bought my share of strollers in my day, but I don't remember space-age design like this. One stroller in particular had solid rubber wheels and a brake that would randomly lock, leaving me to push mightily until one of the wheels turned into a triangle.

God bless the inventors of new strollers. And while we've got him on the line here, I'd like to thank him for the fact that my stroller pushing days are behind me. At least until the next generation of Rileys start popping up.

Not to brag, but I'm a real humble guy

When the New York Times refers to you as ''the bravest person in New Jersey,'' all you can really do is bow your head and say, "Aw, shucks. Tweren't nothin'. "
Well, OK. It wasn't the NewYork Times, exactly, just one columnist. And Peter Applebome was writing, shall we say, tongue-in-cheek when he gave me the apellation.
But, still....
He called to have me amplify some comments I made in a previous blog concerning whether certain pregnant women should be allowed to obtain temporary handicapped stickers that would allow them to park in those coveted spots.
"Let me go on record as saying that I'm generally in favor of anything that makes pregnant women less cranky,'' is the way I began that blog.
I honest to goodness didn't think that was a particularly courageous thing to say.
We would all agree, wouldn't we, that less cranky pregnant women is a positive good, wouldn't we?
Anyway, Mr. Applebome and I chatted for a few minutes about that group of pregnant women I call "the waddlers'' and their resemblance to certain flightless birds native to Antarctica.
And, even for somebody whose name and picture appear in print on a regular basis, it was a thrill to see my name there in the New York Times.
Not only that, but now I get to tell my kids, "You know, boys, when the New York Times gets in a bit of a jam, they know who to call for a pithy quote.''
That's just who I am, and in my own humble way, I just like to help out.

Gift idea for a spouse: a polygraph test

The place mats at a local diner I frequent have advertisements printed on them: from the sort of motel that advertises mirrored ceilings and in-room neon lighting to criminal defense attorneys.

On a recent visit, I saw a new ad on my place mat, the gist of which was that any average Joe or Janie can now have the power of lie detectors at their disposal.

The ad asks several rhetorical questions, the answers to which might indicate that you could use a good polygraph operator. ''Do you suspect that your spouse or significant other is cheating on you?'' is the gist of one of those questions. There's a conversation I'd like to hear. How do you even bring up the subject of polygraph testing with your spouse?

Let's assume you've had suspicions, asked the loved one about infidelity and heard his or her denial. A dozen roses and a gift certificate for polygraph testing? "C'mon , honey. It'll be a real hoot. We'll laugh about this.'' I don't know. Seems to me that by the time you bring the subject up, the whole trust thing is out the window anyway.

Suppose your significant other wanted to strap you up to the old third-degree machine. Under what circumstances would you say yes?

Metaphors and driver's ed

Let me say that I don't hate ''American Idol.'' It's a fine show if you like that sort of thing. Personally, I don't think it has the variety of, say, Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. You never see many jugglers on prime time these days.

But I wrote a column in today's paper about some problems I had with a hit song by last year's Idol, Carrie Underwood. Titled "Jesus Take The Wheel,'' the song seems silly and wrongheaded. A young woman hits a patch of ice, sending her car spinning out of control. She let's go of the wheel and asks Jesus to drive the car. My point was that there are times when if "you let go and let God,'' you're going to wind up in a ditch somewhere. Well, apparently you can't have a little fun with something like that.

I got a few nasty e-mails taking me to task for my criticism. Normally, I don't answer e-mails that refer to me as a moron. But I thought I might respond generally in this forum. I was taken to task for supposedly not understanding what a metaphor is. Of course I know what a metaphor is. The trouble is the lyrics of the song don't. There's nothing metaphorical in the first verse of the song, the one where the woman lets go of the steering wheel.

I'm sure Ms. Underwood is a nice person, and heartfelt in her faith. But we all don't have to like everything she does, do we. For those interested in how the trouble started, see my column at:
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060317/JERSEYLIFE/603170329/1054/LIFE

Divine intervention in the real estate market?

I have a friend who is getting ready to sell her home, so I asked her recently if she has buried a statue of Saint Joseph in her yard. She said she's been thinking about it.

"Oh, really?'' I said. "Is that the way the universe works? God, with all that he's got on his plate, uses some sort of X-ray vision on the property of Catholic home sellers, and if he spies a hidden statue of Joseph in the sod, awards them a quick and profitable sale. But if there is no statue of the patron saint of carpenters, God says, "The heck with them. I don't care if those heathens never sell.'' That's the way the Lord of the Universe operates? A kind of a shakedown artist, offering protection for a price?''

My friend laughed. "Well, it can't hurt,'' she said. Is there anybody who can offer a sound theological explanation for this practice?

Maybe denial is a river in Egypt

Man, I've heard about denial before, but Saddam Hussein is the real Freudian king of the hill when it comes to not facing facts. While testifying at his trial, he is still claiming to be the duly elected leader of Iraq!

Whatever you think about the war, this spectacle would be frightening if it wasn't so funny. At what point do you decide that maybe you're not running the country anymore, that the jail cell in which you spend most of your time is not a presidential palace, that one way or another what you had is gone?

Maybe he thinks this is just a minor setback, all a big misunderstanding. Perhaps he's trying to hang on to some dignity, the very quality he denied to the citizenry of Iraq.

Most likely, he's stupid. And crazy.

No time to lose

According to the journal American Demographics, the average American spends four minutes a day looking for lost things. I wonder if that includes my children, who, in their halcyon days, would have screwed up the average.

How many times do you have to misplace a pair of shoes or a homework assignment 20 minutes before you have to leave for school? And it was never just the kid who lost the time. His mother and I would be rooting around for the stray sneaker and pulling our hair out as well.
By the time we all stumbled out the door, I had a lost a few other things: my temper and my marbles, to name two.

These days, I'm most likely to misplace my company ID and my keys. My wife lectures me while I'm searching. "Head-hand,'' she'll tell me, by way of saying I should think before I set something down. Which usually makes me lose my patience.

Family Words

One of my favorite books is a dictionary of sorts compiled by Paul Dickson. Entitled "Family Words," it consists of words and phrases that families have invented and used, often down through generations.
Examples include: "Aaaahstick,'' (a tongue depressor), a "gonger'' (a gift that is too practical) or "frones'' (bits of food that stick to plates.)

Dickson claims that nearly every family has one or two of these neologisms to their credit. We Rileys have always called a hand towel held over the eyes of a child who is having shampoo rinsed from his hair in the bathtub a "goomer towel'' - because only a goomer needs one.

Also the movie line "Use enough dynamite there Butch?'' crops up in our house anytime someone spills a too-full glass, or loads coffee up with sugar or when the top of the salt shaker falls off.

I'd love to hear what family words you and your kin have come up with. For a peek into Dickson's seminal work, go to:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0934333378/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-6534386-2123223#reader-link

The Will to Survive - Sopranos' Style

ATTENTION: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THE ''SOPRANOS''' SEASON PREMIERE SUNDAY NIGHT! STAY AWAY IF YOU MISSED IT!

Man, was that something Sunday night or what? The "Sopranos'' season opener was just incredible. But two scenes stand out for me, each one of which seemed to stretch on for hours.

How long did we watch the despairing mob guy with no way out twitch and flail when he hung himself? The scene could have ended with the snap of his neck, but it didn't. The camera stayed on him for a long time from some middle distance, and we were transfixed, frozen, unable to cross the room and give him a hand.

And Tony, gut-shot, crawling, crawling to a phone, seemed to go on forever. Once again, the scene could have gone to black after the fateful shot. But no ...

Life is precious, those scenes seemed to say, even for those who value others' lives so little.
Even in despair, even in ending one's own life, we struggle to come back. Even as the blood leaves us, and things get black around the edges, we want to hang on and be safe.

But if there is one lesson the "Sopranos'' teach us all, it is this: Nobody ever learns from the past so we pay for our sins over and over again, with the possibility of true redemption requiring a miracle.

The Universe's two o'clock feeding

Nearly every time the sun goes down on a cloudless sky, we enter a time machine. To look up into the night sky is not only to see stuff astonishly far away, but to look into the past. It takes years for light from distant stars to reach our retinas. You're looking at where they were, not where they are. You are looking into the past.
Well, it's been reported in the journal Nature, scientists have gotten a glimpse at the universe when it was nothing but a colicky infant, catching a view of something called a gamma-ray burst from 12 billion light-years away, meaning 12 billion years from the past. This is very early in the universe's life span when a star fell into black hole like a dish of strained peas being flung to the kitchen floor.
The idea of scientists peering to the edge and the beginning of the universe gives me the heebie-jeebies. In a good way.
I wonder if others feel the same way.

Islam bashing?

For all those people who believe that Islam is, at its heart, a violent religion and that its holy book has some unkind things to say about unbelievers and infidels, I have one question: Have you people read the Bible?

You know, the book where God tells Joshua to enter a city and kill every man, woman and child in the place; the book where a poet rejoices about the coming day when he will be able to smash children's heads against rocks; the book where Jesus says he has come to bring not peace but a sword, and that to love him means you have to hate your own parents.

The Bible itself can be seen as a blood-soaked book. And the record of those who have, over the last couple of thousand years, professed a belief in its God is not so angelic either.

The point here isn't that there aren't some tough patches of road in Scripture, but that one cannot judge a faith by selective quoting from holy books, nor by painting every adherent of a religion with the same broad brush as those extremists who miss the soul of their own faith.

One also has to apply certain interpretative principles to the study of any passages of holy writ, and place them in context. You have to look at the big picture and take the long view of whatever book you call The Word of God.

Manolo what?

The whole thing might as well have been in Esperanto, for all I understood of it.
But that's the thing about being a journalist. We're often called to go to strange places and make sense of it for readers.

Which is how I came to be at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank Tuesday night.
Candace Bushnell, creator of "Sex and the City,'' gave something resembling a speech. I, apparently the brunt of some editor's idea of a joke, was sent to cover it.

My confusion began the minute she took the stage and asked the audience to admire her shoes which called...well, it sounded to me like "Manhole Blanks'' or "Mellow Bricks'' or something.
Turns out they are really expensive Italian footwear and the brand is called Manolo Blahnik. Which are really quite the thing for fans of "Sex and the City.''

I asked my wife about them later, and she hadn't heard of them either. "If you can't get them at Payless, I don't know about them,'' she said.

And that was only the first of the things I didn't understand while I sat in the estrogen-drenched audience. For more impressions of my evening with the "Sex and the City'' impresario, click here: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060308/NEWS/603080344

Hat's off to the Oscars

Well, all I've got to say is it's about time somebody revealed to the world how hard life is for those poor guys in the pandering business.
And, of course, it took those brave souls in Hollywood to do it, awarding an Oscar for best original song to a little ditty titled " It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp.''
Oh, sure, there are songs about heroes and the bravest and finest among us, but rarely do we hear a paean to those entrepreneurs who sell women.
Not many of the lyrics are capable of being repeated here.
Let these two lines be representative: "That's the way the game goes, gotta keep it strictly pimpin/Gotta have my hustle tight, makin change off these women, yeah.''
Now, I'm a liberal guy, First Amendment and all that, but this is really a bit much. Not the song, not even the words, but an Academy Award.
Am I missing something here, or am I right to be disgusted?

Hoping there is a fate worse than death

I tend to be against the death penalty for all kinds of reasons, but basically because I just can't picture Jesus pulling the switch on Ol' Sparky and saying: "You're gonna ride the lightning now, son.''
But sometimes it's hard.
There are people who seem evil and cruel and without remorse. Take Charles Cullen, the nurse convicted and sentenced for 22 murders. If that isn't a case when the death penalty shines like a beacon of justice in dark world, then I don't know what is.
But then I think, the state kills him and, presumably, then his suffering is over -- unless, of course, you believe in a literal sulfur fire and brimstone hell, in which case his torment would just be beginning.
But you can't be sure of that.
So, the guy gets a kind of mathematically ludicrous sentence: 397 years in the slammer.
I don't think the guy's gonna serve the full term.
On the other hand, the rest of his life lived in a very small cell, surrounded by the noise and madness and regimen of hard time in the big house, seems a little like justice and a lot like hell.
He'll never, ever be free. And maybe the knowledge of that might provide some small measure of freedom for some of his victims' families.

Happy marriages and housework

A new study by two sociologists found that many women don't mind if they have to do most of the housework as long as their husbands pay attention to them and do at least something around the house besides complain about the lost remote.

A couple of things here: How many married guys out there haven't figured out yet that if they compliment their wives now and again, life at home gets a whole lot better? Are there really that many Neanderthal couch-potatoes out there? And how many guys use the old "pay attention'' gambit as a way to dodge housework and other marital woes?

I'll plead the Fifth on that last one and invite married couples to tell us what is a fair division of household labor in these times.

Shooting the bull

Let me say that I'm not in favor of strict gun control. The Second Amendment is right there in the Constitution, and I'm even willing to squint so that the whole "well-regulated militia'' clause gets ignored.
Americans like shooting the bejabbers out of stuff and who am I to argue? But I think if there were a case to be made for gun control, you'd have to look no further than the touchiness of some gun enthusiasts.
I wrote a column last week detailing my own hapless family's bad luck with guns. Nowhere did I say that guns ought to be confiscated by jack-booted flunkies of the federal government. I just wrote that guns weren't my thing, and the country might be better off if more of us exercised our First Amendment rather than our Second Amendment rights.
Man oh man. The e-mails came hot and heavy. There were a few nice responses, including one that suggested I give a shooting range a try so I could experience the unique joy that comes from spraying lead.
But mostly, my manhood, patriotism and faith were attacked. Jesus was apparently some namby-pamby sissy boy since the Gospels never relate any stories of him dove hunting, and all that "turn the other cheek'' nonsense is just useless when push comes to shove.
There seems to be a sense that the world I live in is just a step away from being overrun by armed intruders, and, unless I'm packing, my family and I can kiss our butts goodbye.
The freedom you have to own guns is the same freedom I have to keep them out of my house. What's wrong with that? To read the column that started the fuss, click here: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060224/LIFE/602240329/1054

What's up with the kid?

I know that adolescents are all about testing limits and rebellion. Two of my kids are adults, one is 17 and the fourth is going to be a teen in the not-so-distant future, so I know what I'm talking about.
But still, teens come up with new ways to confound us.
Imagine my dumbfoundedness when I walked into the room of my 17 year old and found the bed made. I stared hard at him.
"The bed's made,'' I said to him. "What's up with that?"
He shrugged.
"It's drugs, isn't it?'' I said. "You're on the smack, aren't you?''
He laughed.
"The bed looks better this way,'' he said. "Well, all I know is, you didn't learn this bed-making stuff from me,'' I told him.
I've got my eye on the kid, believe you me.