I’d like to honour my mother’s gift for language and her free spirit by offering what she called her “Freethinker’s Prayer,” which I first heard her recite in the mid-60s when I was a child.
She married into a large Catholic family. At holiday gatherings, someone at the table usually said a Christian grace, which didn’t reflect my mother’s own beliefs. So she made up her own prayer, which she began to recite at clan feasts at our home. I remember some of the relatives being politely dumbfounded. I thought it was pretty creative and gutsy of her.
Freethinker’s Prayer
by Melba Martin
Let us be grateful that forces in the universe have situated our planet, whether by chance or by design, in the unique place it occupies in the vastness of space and allowed it to be conducive to the creation and propagation of life.
And let us be ever mindful that if cosmic conditions were even slightly different, neither we, nor the food that we are about to eat, nor anything else for that matter, would be here.
Camille Martin
She married into a large Catholic family. At holiday gatherings, someone at the table usually said a Christian grace, which didn’t reflect my mother’s own beliefs. So she made up her own prayer, which she began to recite at clan feasts at our home. I remember some of the relatives being politely dumbfounded. I thought it was pretty creative and gutsy of her.
Freethinker’s Prayer
by Melba Martin
Let us be grateful that forces in the universe have situated our planet, whether by chance or by design, in the unique place it occupies in the vastness of space and allowed it to be conducive to the creation and propagation of life.
And let us be ever mindful that if cosmic conditions were even slightly different, neither we, nor the food that we are about to eat, nor anything else for that matter, would be here.
Melba Martin in Regina, Saskatchewan
Camille Martin
Rogue Embryo 