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NOTE: I had meant to post this five years ago, it was written in draft in 2021, when the world was in another place; but then misplaced it. A fortuitous rediscovery revealing an odd connection to the world in which we live in today
One ought always to make even the smallest space for bathos, that moment in which one savors the juxtaposition of the exalted and the commonplace. Such savoring is not merely a guilty pleasure; it helps put things in perspective, and at the same time opens the possibilities to greater insight inadvertently revealed.
Thus it is that I was brought to President Biden's 2021 otherwise routine proclamation issued, as ordered by Congress, on "National Prayer Day" now in its 70th year. A press account reported that Mr. Biden's efforts, A Proclamation on National Prayer Day (5 May 2021) (and below) was criticized this year for failing to include a reference to the word " ('There's no one else to pray to': Franklin Graham slams Biden after he fails to thank God during his proclamation for the National Day of Prayer). The result was the opening of a door to a room in which is offered us a semiotic feast. The opportunity to ingest, if only in moderation, some of the absurdity that passes for discourse in the United States, proved irresistible.
And thus this post. Its title sets the tone, an endless play on prayer and its discursive instrumentalization, which like a hammer, is available to those with the ambition to use it to build, destroy, or wound. Or which, like an offering, can be used to pay those with the power to grant or deny a thing, condition, result or effect. This post, too, then, is also a prayer--but in its more ancient form as prithee ("pray thee") a form of polite request to another who may be inclined to reject the request ("Politeness in the History of English,"English Historical Linguistics 2006 II:3-31 at 20). The etymology of the word reinforces this sort of act buried beneath its object: "early 13c., preien, "ask earnestly, beg (someone)," also (c. 1300) in a religious sense, "pray to a god or saint," from Old French preier "to pray" (c. 900, Modern French prier), from Vulgar Latin *precare (also source of Italian pregare), from Latin precari "ask earnestly, beg, entreat." (see also ōrare "to speak, pray, plead").
The word, the embodiment of that pleading, the Logos (λόγος) broadens the notion further to an act of signification, or as the embodiment of the signification itself. One may plead with oneself; or to outside forces--whether physical, physically manifesting something else (the ikon), or the "something else" itself. The rest are orthodoxies that manage the pleading into cognitive cages of cosmology, but that reflect more on the Shepherd than on the pleading itself. And pleading is a multi-vector effort. One may plead up or one may plead down, sideways or around. Pleading is grounded into the fabric of social relations. And sometimes its assumes stylized and ritual forms--in religious communities, and among lawyers. It seems that people pray all the time, and that in this world of prayer are a host of those with the power to grant or deny our prayers--and to exact a price in either case.The thing that is foregrounded, however, is the pleading itself.
And so one understands the nature if society--a society bound up in the iterative performance of pleading, of begging, of bargaining--a transactional society frm its most humble foundations to the loftiest heights of its collective relations with those superior forces that may have an interest in managing and intervening in the affairs of humans in accordance with the theologies developed to understand that relationship and script out the forms of transactional behaviors that best suit each.
And so, in celebration of the power of bargaining, of the rituals of of transactional performances as the fundamental structuring if our social collective, President Biden reminds us that this fundamental building block of American culture(s) is worth taking a moment to contemplate in all of its glory.
A Proclamation on National Day Of Prayer
Throughout our history, Americans of many religions and belief systems have turned to prayer for strength, hope, and guidance. Prayer has nourished countless souls and powered moral movements — including essential fights against racial injustice, child labor, and infringement on the rights of disabled Americans. Prayer is also a daily practice for many, whether it is to ask for help or strength, or to give thanks over blessings bestowed.
The First Amendment to our Constitution protects the rights of free speech and religious liberty, including the right of all Americans to pray. These freedoms have helped us to create and sustain a Nation of remarkable religious vitality and diversity across the generations.
Today, we remember and celebrate the role that the healing balm of prayer can play in our lives and in the life of our Nation. As we continue to confront the crises and challenges of our time — from a deadly pandemic, to the loss of lives and livelihoods in its wake, to a reckoning on racial justice, to the existential threat of climate change — Americans of faith can call upon the power of prayer to provide hope and uplift us for the work ahead. As the late Congressman John Lewis once said, “Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society. Why? Because human beings are the most dynamic link to the divine on this planet.”
On this National Day of Prayer, we unite with purpose and resolve, and recommit ourselves to the core freedoms that helped define and guide our Nation from its earliest days. We celebrate our incredible good fortune that, as Americans, we can exercise our convictions freely — no matter our faith or beliefs. Let us find in our prayers, however they are delivered, the determination to overcome adversity, rise above our differences, and come together as one Nation to meet this moment in history.
The Congress, by Public Law 100-307, as amended, has called on the President to issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a “National Day of Prayer.”
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 6, 2021, as a National Day of Prayer. I invite the citizens of our Nation to give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I join all people of faith in prayers for spiritual guidance, mercy, and protection.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
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