Wednesday 28 March 2007

A prayer by Mark Twain

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle—be Thou near them! With them—in spirit—we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it—for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

2 comments:

Bodwyn Wook said...

MR Twain cooked up this satire whilst US Army General Funston was raising Hell in the Phillipines at end of the Spanish-American war. There is, likewise, an absurdly-funny 'prayer', ostensibly by a middle-class lady in London in May of 1940, cited by historian John Lukacs in /Five Days In London/, about the Churchill-struggle to keep Lord Halifax from getting into discussions with the italian jackass, Mussolini, over Hitler-terms between 24-8 May 1940. I shall try to dig this up -- as an example of the utterly self-absorbed ravings of the so-called religious personality, it is exactly on all-fours with the hysterical ranting by the secret bully, Dawkins, allegedly 'in defence of' science. And then there is the renegade arabian prince, Mr Benny Laden....

WHAT Is interesting, historically speaking, is that a century ago the american 'empire' was just getting going -- whereas the single most important event of the short 20th century (1914-1989, /eg/) very possibly was the japanese attack on Pearl harbour. In December of 1941, for the first time since the 13th century mongolian murder-rides, an asian power then walked the world stage.

AND So, what do we find to-day? A load of post-modern dope-addicts who can't bear religion (it makes them feel guilty, would you believe, for trying to have it off with the 14-year-old baby-sitter, which is simply too, too 'judgemental' for words. Plus, it just ain't [tsk] Liberal!) fighting irrelevantly with a load of mahometan fanatics, which last positively do /not/ want these diseased post-christian turds putting their infected pricks in the Berber girls....

ALL Of this comedy whilst the chinamen ponder under their coal-clouds unleashing the cleansing epidemic, whether to-day? Or, on the morrow?

OBJECTIVELY,

Wook 'abd al-Bab li'l-'Abru,
CC [/retd/] & Detached Observant Intelligence

Jose said...

One thing is certain: God will not do anything of the kind prayed for in the above prayer, humans will definitely will.

The mention of the Japanese and Pearl Harbour made me remember that those times the Japanese concentrated "the divine" and "the human" in the figure of their Emperor.