answered prayers

a short story

The campaign for peace started online, with no trace of irony. Peace within families, within communities, between classes and races and nations and religions, even between fandoms, if you can believe it, and all over the world. Or at least all over the parts of the world where there were reliable internet connections, which obviously are the parts of the world that matter. The campaign took many forms, from the simple sharing of an image of a white dove all over the timelines of social media platforms, to the creation of short form videos by girls with prominent cleavages, both organic and those generated by machines, promising to take their tops off if peace was achieved, to the writing of earnest think pieces with appeals to peace, and explanations of the importance and urgency of peace, and the conditions for peace, and the benefits of peace, the history of appeals to peace, the way peace had been treated in literature, especially in poetry, and finally the metaphysical foundations of peace, to the creation of charities for the promotion of peace and of the organizer’s bank accounts. But, unsurprisingly, the one form that really changed things was prayer. We couldn’t in good conscience say that all the religious people in the world, of all the various faiths, card carrying members and fellow travelers alike, and even the stubborn ones who insist on going at it alone and without permission from official institutions, did pray for peace every day that october. But no doubt more than enough of them did to reach the ears of the gods.

The prayers also reached the ears of the devils in hell, and they were delighted, or whatever their equivalent is, for everyone knows devils cannot really and truly delight in anything. The german word schaudenfraude is as good as any to describe it. Being, as we know, a compound of the nouns schaden, meaning damage, and freude, meaning joy, it is defined by most dictionary compilers as the joy one might feel at another person’s pain. An ugly thing, of course, what else can one expect of devils. And rejoice they did, although again we must point out this word is inappropriate when talking about hellish creatures, but one must try to imagine it anyway, approximate it, and the reason was simple, the devils knew that very few things annoyed the gods as much as empty prayers for vague and thus unachievable things.

And indeed, it was extremely annoying to all the members of the heavenly council, but especially those that had been known to mankind by different names at different times, which meant they were receiving prayers from many different corners, and yet all of them for the same exact thing, with the same words even, for that too was part of the campaign, only the addressee was different. If you would permit us an analogy, it would be much like having to check not one mailbox alone, but several, and yet finding in each one the same exact piece of mail, the same words, and stupid ones at that. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration nor unfair to call it spam. And the one who had it worst, as expected, was the head of the heavenly council, which had gone by so many different names across the ages, to the hebrews he was Yahweh, to the norsemen he was Wotan, to the hellenes he was Zeus, not to mention all the other ones, which we won’t mention because it would make our narration much too cumbersome, but we should at least say that this same god decided to incarnate on the earth, as one Yeshua, in part to tell all these people to start sending at least some prayers to his father instead of him, for he was quite tired of all of it. Quite the wishful thinker he was, since it didn’t happen at all, as we know, if anything it made it worse, now they sent the same prayer three times. His father wasn’t happy either, to say the least. On the other hand, and for a time, as the old religions lost their appeal and people stopped praying to these other names, at least there were less mailboxes to check, again, so to speak. But now what people often called paganism in complete ignorance of what the word meant, which was annoying in itself, was making a come back, and Zeus and Wotan, not to mention the other ones, were being called upon again, and thus these other inboxes were also getting full, so many unanswerable prayers to answer. The only saving grace was that now there was rerouting between different forms of the same name, like Yahweh and Jehovah, or Wotan and Odin, and so on, a much needed upgrade to the prayer answering system in the heavens, although it had come a bit too late to be useful when it was installed, it ended up being quite the time saver when this nonsense about peace started.

Despite being tiresome, which it always was, until the campaign for peace began and all those same exact prayers started to pour into every mailbox, answering the prayers was doable, and at least a bit of an interesting challenge, for the so called christians asked for things that the so called pagans did not, and vice versa and on and on for the other religions, and so there was some variety, the task was not repetitive, for the most part. But now that they had all decided to pray for the same thing, with the same words, and something so vague too, the heavenly beings were close to being overwhelmed and really ready to quit, and not even the addition of secretaries and assistants, snatched from their tasks in the resurrection so they could help deal with this veritable deluge, could they cope with the inflow.

By mid october peace was still only a mirage in the desert that is human nature, and if there was an oasis somewhere in it, it was very hard to find indeed. Parents still beat their children, children still disrespected their parents. Families still quarrelled about inheritances and who would take care of their elderly, or pay for them to be cared for by someone else, if we want to be euphemistic and use the word care in this instance. Communities of all sorts still fought for all sorts of reasons, including about the definitions and conditions and implementations of peace. And of course, wars were still being waged, people being killed, women being raped, and all the rest that everyone knows. The only difference really was that, in between or just before or right after arguing and fighting and raping and murdering, people prayed for peace. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so tragic. And given the ridiculous failure of their prayers, what were the prayerful to do but double and triple their efforts, so that instead of once every day, they were now praying three times a day for peace, one in the morning, one after lunch and one before going to bed.

Towards the end of the month, tired of hearing the people’s prayers and having already given up on the pretense of keeping up with all of them, even to delete them from the multiple inboxes, the heavenly council finally made a decision. They had tried with all their might to avoid giving the only real answer to the prayers that were being directed at them, but since the people wouldn’t stop, and perhaps because many of the gods were fans of H. L. Mencken, they accepted, although reluctantly, or otherwise jocularly, that the people both knew what they wanted and deserved to get it good and hard. It was Lucifer, now redeemed and a member in good standing of the heavenly council, though one that very few people prayed to, and rarely for peace, and thus one who was not as overworked as the rest, who pointed out the double benefit and led to the final decision, though that is not the word he used, he used another one after final, but we won’t say it, ending his speech with a sarcastic quip, This way we will achieve peace in two places, on earth as it is in heaven, so to speak. After this, no other god had any objection, even those that were still a little sour at the reinstatement of Lucifer and that always fought his proposals at every turn, that is the measure of their tiredness, and so with everyone in agreement the head of the council gave the final stamp of approval, again figuratively speaking, there are no stamps of any kind in heaven. And though it had been a long time since he’d done it, and although he had promised not to do it again, he thought that if there was any time to go back on his word it was this one, and so he made the heavens part, and the rain to fall, day and night for a total of forty each. Soon most mammals of the human species were dead underwater, and there was peace on the earth at last, at least for a little while. The only ones left were those who had the foresight to run to the hills before the water began to fall, they knew how dangerous this business of peace is, since it only really exists in the grave. Or perhaps they simply fled because they were just as annoyed as the gods.