Hail Mary

I was raised as a Catholic in the early 60s and dutifully did my confessions every week because if I didn’t then I was bound for a fiery hell (according to my Catechism teachers). After every confession, I sat in silence and said my Hail Mary’s as my penance so that I could be forgiven. Those prayers seemed to have worked because I survived adolescence and, apparently, an early trip to Hades. As a football player in high school, Hail Mary’s took on a different meaning. It usually meant that a team was behind in the waning seconds of a game and had to effectively pray for a miracle touch down — usually a long bomb thrown into a crowd of players jostling for position in the end zone. Sometimes it worked, most times it didn’t, but it all depended on what side you were on.

I gave up believing in organized religion a long time ago. Likewise, I have also given up believing in our political parties. Organized religions and political parties have a lot of things in common. Mostly, they are good at creating an enemy or demon of which people should fear. Another thing they have in common is that they are really good at keeping themselves relevant and powerful. They do that by exploiting the fear they put in people.

Surrealistically, I am now witnessing Hades (in the form of our rising global temperatures) coming at me, at us. I am also witnessing an authoritarian and his greedy enablers helping to hasten the destruction of our biosphere (amongst other transgressions against humanity).

Having not given up hope altogether in our dire situation (read the newly published UN report), I now ask myself, should we give a Hail Mary (or two, or three, or …) a try? I can confidently say the liturgical kind is highly unlikely to produce any tangible relief (but meditation can certainly put your mind at peace). But what about the pigskin kind? What have we got to lose? Unlike in football, however, in this game we’re all on the same side.