Sarx

Lord, we thank thee that thou didst see fit to bring us here to this fair land and smite the heathens, and to shove them in boxes and ship them away to small parcels of land where we mightest contain them. We thank thee, further, that thou has given us leave, permission, nay, even a command, to destroy the fair beauty thous didst place here, which these heathens, in their error, didst merely love and tend. We are unworthy of this chance to despoil a land, rape her natives, mill her woods for disposable Swedish furniture and plant Wal*Marts at every intersection.

We thank thee, that we see the glory of thy name written in neon in the skies and in piles of unrecyclable plastics and nuclear waste. We thank thee that we have been able to blot out the stars with halogens, the rolling hills with pavement, the hillsides with McMansions and the lakes with oil. We thank thee for this, our economy, based on thy commands of consumption and waste, help us to find new things to throw away, especially tomorrow, as we shop in thy temples, and later when we celebrate thy birth by bestowing in our love useless, expensive trinkets made by heathens at low cost in foreign lands.

We thank thee for the miracle of travel, whereby thou dist bring us here, and whereby these foods, here gathered, have been grown on the backs of heathens around the world and transported in wagons and carts, ships, trains and eighteen wheelers burning more oil (and pumping more carbon into the atmosphere) than one plow in one backyard garden might have. In an entire summer. And we thank thee that this tasteless, long-time frozen bounty hast been fed to us for so long that we know not what to do with a real pumpkin.

Grant us to continue in thy bold gesture, whereby heathens darker than us in the furthest regions of thy world mightest also be contained and shipped off in boxes whilst we dominate their lands as well. Help us to write mythologies that will make this all seem rather fated, idyllic and peacable. Grant us clergy and politicians that will not make us see our ego, greed and lust as to blame for what we do, but rather allow them to bestow upon us thy blessings. Give us the grace to confuse thy gospel with our national interests (left or right), and the benefits of consumption with thy grace. And help us pretend to make thanksgiving for our benefits without sharing any of our wealth with the poor (in their boxes) and ignoring the fact that our consumption is a cancer on the earth and for which people rightly hate us – even if they can not understand why. For even when we bring them the blessings of consumption, we only enslave them in the chains of our own sins.

Grant us salvation at the pages of a gospel purged of all responsibility for these sins: for we know you want nothing more than to love us as we are, where we are. Save us from those who would preach that there is something we have to do for thee or for others. Let us live as thy Gospel proclaims, “do nothing, feign thanks, and sit humbly on thy ass on Sundays whilst we entertain thee with a praise band.”

Please keep the heathens from bombing us or from rising up in revolt in our own countries and help us to have righteous indignation whenever they open casinos in our backyards, as we did to them, at thy command, centuries ago. And help us to see that when our wallets are empty it is the fault of the heathens in our midst, stealing from thy children, the shittiest of thy labours for which we’d pay white people top dollar.

Oh, and we’d like a vacation someplace warm this winter.

We ask this in the name of all that is holy.

Thanks a lot. Amen. America. Amen.