Unbeliever's Prayer

 I just finished a fascinating, yet sad book.

 I feel so luck that I joined Reading Team last year and continued doing it this year. It seems like all the things I did for reading team are ways for me to find this life guiding book, Death Be Not Proud.


  When reading the book, I had a dream about my brother. In the dream, he died of cancer young. How can I describe my feelings in the dream. Those were despairing, destructive, and deadly emotions that almost chocked me alive in my dream. I used to think that I could live just fine without my brother. But now I find myself stupid. I can never live and be complete without my brother. We shared our blood, our heritage, our parents, our home, everything. Now I just discovered that we share our lives too. Thank whomever out there for this realization.

  All the time I hated wasting time. But meanwhile I am also the biggest procrastinator I've ever seen in my life. My minds and thoughts were always contradicting, always confusing, rarely being free. My english teacher once told me that if I could only gather my thoughts, I would do great on at least my essays.

  Now a feeling of guilt and shame is running back and forth in my heart. I have most of my time, more importantly, most of my life wasted away by procrastinating while millions of people desiring for a tomorrow. Stupid me. Too prodigal on wasting my precious time.

  I love the book. My face was always in meditating mood reading the book and kept the deepness and solemnness afterwards. I love Johnny. He fascinated me with his intelligence and his strength. But the ultimate reason is that he slapped on my face effectively, for all the time I had wasted, wasted, and wasted.

  As an unbeliever of God, I am extremely fond of his own prayer. And I will end this paragraph by placing the prayer below:

Almighty God

forgive me for my agnosticism,

For I shall try to keep it gentle, not cynical,

not a bad influence.

And O!

if Thou art truly in the heavens,

accept my gratitude

for all Thy gifts

and I shall try to fight the good fight. Amen.

---by John Gunther. JR.

May, 1946