I am a raised-Catholic agnostic who prays, to who(m) or what I pray I can not say.

Writing on my screen porch just now, two women with bibles drove up and spoke to me through the screen. “May we recite a passage from scripture?” the taller one asked through the screen.

“If it’s short, I’m working,” I answered. “And, if I can read you the paragraph I just wrote first.”

They both nod.

I read the following unfinished paragraph about three women, two old lesbians and their aging niece, praying at the bedside of one of the women’s father who has just died.

“Selma (the niece) prays. Catholic prayers that both Regina and Jackie know and join in on: ‘Hail Mary full of grace. The Lord is with thee.’ ‘Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,’ striking their breasts on every ‘fault.’ Selma does a little chanting, pagan or Buddhist maybe. She sings ‘Halleluiah,’ a Leonard Cohen song, one of Jackie’s favorites. A song she and Regina have always associated with their struggles over the realities of erotic desire or as Regina would say ‘cheating’. The fact that Selma chose this song makes Jackie grin inappropriately and she lowers her head. Selma delivers her version of ‘Halleluiah’ in a solid sincere voice that has not lost a bit of its high emotion since she announced she was going to be a famous singer when she was six years old.”

The tall woman opened her bible and read me the following passage. “Turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord…”

I can’t remember the next few lines, but when she was finished, we all just hung there thinking our private thoughts for a moment. Then we all smiled. I have no idea, what, if anything this encounter means, a little prayer, each in our own way, in the middle of the working day maybe.