According to Mitt Romney, God lives and always will rm.

Seems to me this would be a difficult place to en I heard this, I was in the car with my husband. sponse, and that was to pray aloud. Dear God, how ap? Your friend, Estelle.

inside the Republican platfo confine a Supreme Being. Wh I could only think of one re do you put up with all this cr

Although I consider myself a true believer, I will admit to having had philosoph ical angst about His or Her existence. I cannot and will not accept the God abo ut whom everyone says I remember you in my prayers. I cannot imagine either Mitt or Barack going to church or kneeling next to bed with a list clutched in their fist that says something like the folks who lost their houses in the storm. Neith er can I imagine them letting God do His or Her will, which might include lettin g the opponent win. I think that they, and most of the folks I know, use magic p rayer. This means that when you say it you have already done it. I have questio ned a few Christians about this, and that is what it sounds like to me. The rea son I have not questioned more Christians about this is that it tends to get the m very angry. My husband does not like me to do things that might get me beat u p because he is lots bigger than me and would definitely end up defending me. I can certainly see why someone would want to pray out loud in a life threatening situation. Like military active duty type war. Everybody wants victory, althou gh at that precise moment, they are probably praying for their buddy to survive. Yes, there is actually a literature in military psychiatry about the importance of buddies. They are a lot easier to think about than abstract ideas like patri otism and freedom. Of course, I would not want to be the one who told that sold ier that the enemy was praying for victory and his or her buddy, too. Nobody se ems to pay much attention to what is in or on a political platform certainly not the candidates. It is pretty hard to think of a job worse than being the guy o r girl who has to run up to a Republican nominee and say something like Mr. Mitt, sir, you are 3.5 mentions of God behind and the Republican National Committee i s awfully angry. I have been trying to watch convention news coverage since I have been a tiny ty ke Kennedy and even a little Eisenhower and I still have no idea why life is any better with a platform committee for either party. Erwin R. Goodenough, the distinguished Yale historian of Hellenistic Judaism, id it all. He said every religion has both horizontal and vertical religion. he horizontal is rituals, like showing up at church for Christians. Jews, we e big on home ceremonies and observances something the Dalai Lama once said a really good thing. sa T ar was

Give me those verticals. They are the wonderful and transcendent philosophers w ho contemplate the universe and ask questions. Sometimes, they even get some ki nd of answer. An answer they can translate to action. Folks like Gandhi. Neit her Mitt nor Barack is in the Gandhi class. But it is not just them. Nobody ca n debate religion. Not only is everyone allergic to logic, nobody seems to read . Anyone who says this country was founded by religious Christians to be run on Christian principles as do the Christian right is just plain wrong. Benjamin Franklin never joined a church in his life. Jefferson rewrote the bibl e, editing out miracles and signs or declarations of Jesus' divinity, as a book of ethics. Even the bible itself differentiates between the horizontal worship in the taber nacle and the vertical or transcendent. Take someone who had great trials, like King David. He found peace and beauty with solitary prayer in bed at night. T hat is how Jews can do it the alone, not the photo opportunity. I believe this opportunity is open to Christians, too, but I hear little of it. Me, I pray for the patience of God Him or Herself. It goes something like this. Dear God, how

do you put up with all this crap? Your friend, Estelle.