Everyone has their favorite Christmas or holiday episode of some old TV series. Almost every domestic situation comedy in the last sixty years has churned out one or more. Like All In The Family.
Probably one of their best, most thought provoking episodes involved the violent
crime death of Edith’s transvestite friend Beverly LaSalle. Beverly was
introduced as a social force against the compromising Archie, and was such a
hit with the audience, the character would recur occasionally. When ratings wars got dire by 1977, Norman
Lear and the AITF team did what they had to do.
Rationalize it any way you’d like, as in Movement Toward Social
Awareness, but prime-time commercial television series episodes involving direct
encounters with rapists, lesbians, and street murders of professional
cross-dressers can only stem from one network programming office mandate: Get
Ratings or Get Cancelled.
Even then, like no other, All In The Family handled these fragile matters
with the utmost exquisitry in writing. If it’s intelligent, it’s acceptable, as
it was in this 1977 holiday episode. After a delightful return visit, on a walk
to the subway, Beverly is killed in a street mugging. The two-parter concerns
Edith’s inability to regain her faith in God upon the merciless and pointless
death of a friend for whom she’d developed a wonderful affection. No one knew how to restore the faith of this
once-devout woman who now openly denounced prayer. It was only her notably agnostic son-in-law
Michael, who could command her attention long enough to explain that her faith
was responsible for the faith and belief held by the entire family. Well in character, he did not advocate for
the Power of God as healer, protector and Almighty. Actor Barnard Hughes was not dispatched as
the recurring, consulting Father Majesky for this one.
The takeaway message was of course about the mortal value and purpose of
prayer. Few will bother to decompose the whole thing enough intellectually at
any time, though you certainly can. If
that became a trend though, it might threaten the Global Religious Industrial
Complex, and let’s just say that no one’s been too down on the health deficits of
Coca Cola over the years to put it out of business
I myself was raised in a semi-agnostic home. Jewish intellectual graduates of the
Depression Era. My uncle was the devout
templegoer. My mother was some years
younger, a youth of the early 1950s who doubted and questioned everything from
Nixon to cake ingredients. Read every political
science book on the shelf and saw things for what they were.
Her faith veered toward the sort I laid out in an essay awhile back called “We Only Pray In The Car”. Much like a friend or relative that’s proven by their presence when really needed, so is God. Beyond that, her take on religion was professedly Marxian.
It all kind of fit in with our shortage of personal funds in my childhood. My mother’s bank account wasn’t big enough to
subscribe us to a local synagogue. So
the whole formalized high-holy-day thing kind of left us somewhat disqualified.
We could still make and eat latkes.
There was no membership charge for that.
My own relationship with prayer and religion was not really a conscious one
until middle age rolled around. Certainly,
a semi-agnostic upbringing in a Zionist-supportive household can leave a growing
child confused. But much like a praying
motorist desperate for a parking space ten minutes to an appointment, I knew the
critical aspects of theology.
That said, I haven’t prayed for anything in years. I’ve been mindful never to do so. My frequent
daily prayers are strictly ones of thanks and gratitude, for the peace, comfort
and safety with which I’ve been blessed on even my most stressed-out day. A late, great older friend of mine used to thank
the Lord “for my aches and pains”, stating her gratitude for being able to know
she was still whole. Now there was a valuable friend.
Since my arrival at the fifty-yard line, my purpose in prayer has been
almost exclusively the same. I don’t pray
for miracles. I can’t say that reflexive
flight-or-fight reaction won’t force me into a state of sudden desperate plea
to God when my mobile phone lapses into momentary shutdown, or I’m running late
and can’t be sure if the Metrocard vendor is working. But those are temporary emotionally reflexive
actions. Miracles are not attainable
upon request.
If they are, they’d better be pretty monumental Hallmark Movie-worthy ones.
I have never believed in changing a force
of nature by divine request. The fierce
sinus headache I endured four weeks ago was tempered by a good strong pain
reliever, meditation, and yes, prayer. Prayers of gratitude for the strength with
which I’ve been endowed.
The platform here is that any prayer of request had better be important. One
of the reasons behind this again comes from a semi-agnostic intellectual argument
background. Even Edith Bunker had to
come to terms with the fact that prayer is just the exercise of sitting in a
pew in an age-old structure, wishing in blindered futility. The kind that makes
you feel good when you’re powerless and it’s all out of control.
It was that very awareness that ushered me home just the other night, as I
struggled to “say a prayer” for a stranger.
On a dark, late-night walk home down the boulevard, a tall, older-looking
(but admittedly nowadays probably well younger than I) man approached me on a
barren sidewalk and asked me if I spoke English. Thinking this guy might be delusional or
dangerous, I stepped more than a few feet away from him and faced him, saying
yes. He began to explain that he was a
veteran, and how he was destitute and politely, eloquently made what sounded
almost like a corporate pitch for some money. Having more than once in my lifetime been a
target of street crime, I was too concentrated on my surroundings, scoping for
any other attack figures in zone, and politely declined to help, as the fellow sadly
marched away.
Walking home, naturally, I chided myself for my bourgeois response, which
in fact only appeared as such for reasons of personal safety. Which may have qualified as the same thing.
Trapped in such a moment, it’s too complex to question. So I figured I’d
bandage my injured conscience with a prayer for the fellow. Such noble charity of soul did not help either
one of us.
It forced me into that difficult question that only happens not when I’m peering
down to the busy expressway from the overpass, saying a prayer for some random,
unknown kid in a yellow cab heading home with his mom, as I might have been
four decades ago, fearful of my exams tomorrow, my permanent record, my mom’s
emotional state, and the like, but rather when I decide to repair my decline from
a poor one’s direct plea with a prayer for their rehabilitation.
Perhaps a venture into greater theological reading and study will see me through
this brief labyrinth, or better yet, the next immediate domestic matter, crisis
at work, the next missed train or malfunctioning Metrocard. Maybe my phone will pop back to life after an
unexplained few-minute outage, proving that indeed God forgives me.
That’s a much easier and more convenient approach in this age of instant,
electronic gratification and artificial intelligence. There is ultimately no explaining the greater
mysteries of our existence, like why some are doomed to writh, some mercifully relieved
of earthly burden and some taken out suddenly with no rational explanation
whatsoever. But those of faith will
always be on firm ground with the weights and measures of sacred theology.
Or to quote the immortal Redd Foxx, “…you’d be a damn fool to die of nothin…”
-Noah F.
