Word: prayerful
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...attempts to work out his thoughts on abortion and school prayer, which tend towards conservative conclusions, lack the generosity of his other efforts and even his other paragraphs in those same essays. When he remembers his own pleasure at praying in school, or the courage of those patients of his who have chosen to have children when an abortion would have been understandable, Coles is compelling and his wonderment, challenging...
...when he goes on to argue for a return to prayer and school, or to suggest that abortion should be made illegal, he loses his way. His usual sympathy for the underdog gives way to the kind of careless (one is tempted to say, heartless) cynicism so regrettably familiar to all of us. In his brief chapter on school prayer, he makes light of the "emotions" of the lone dissenting child who, because of his doubts about God deprives others of the right to pray for theirs...
Coles does not consider the possibility that the reason some may oppose school prayer springs not from doubt, but instead from faith in a different, less popular God than Jesus. And one wonders why in this instance the dissenter's very loneliness does not inspire compassion rather than contemn from Coles...
...itself in a conversation between two people searching to learn about each other. One would hate to see this spontaneous spiritualism traded in for a designated time of quiet. It is equally discouraging to see it so quickly forgotten or belittled by Coles in his eagerness to have school prayer legalized...
Leon Malard at his kitchen table smiled a good open smile when he talked about Sioux Indians being called to Ohio to do a rain dance, priests shaking holy water on farm fields and prayer gatherings in sale barns. Show business. The forces out there are so huge and incomprehensible, you don't waste energy trying to stop them in their tracks. You hunker down, you survive. Malard has for 60 years, and his dad before him, and before that his grandfather, who homesteaded on the Missouri River...