<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;">Some sort of a prayer</font><div style="font-size: 16px;"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><br></font></div><div style="font-size: 16px;"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I gave a rambling talk recently and a long line of teenagers came</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Up to speak to me afterward and it was instantly clear that every</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Single one of them wanted to ask me something while ostensibly</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Asking me something else, or say one thing while seeming to say</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Something else. I was so instantly moved I could hardly stammer</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Any sort of answer. I tried hard to hear what they were not saying</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Aloud but were saying with remarkable courage. It takes startling</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Courage to be a teenager, you know. There are so many theatrical</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Personas to try, but masks and disguises can get stuck. Or you get</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trapped behind walls that begin as protective but become prisons.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One kid in particular stays with me. He’s tall and shy and nervous.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He says </span><em>How do you deal with rejection?</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and somehow I instantly</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Get it that he does not mean essays and stories and poems and how</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">You handle people saying steadily bluntly no to your insistent yes!</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He’s asking me about hope and despair and lovers and heartbreaks.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He’s asking about the girl or boy he adores who does not love him.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He’s staring at me. The other kids wait politely. I want to reach up</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And cup his face in my hands as if he was my son, but you have to</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Be honest with kids, you cannot merely bloviate and issue arrogant</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pomposity, so I tell him you have to learn to be neighborly with no.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">You are going to see it every day and you might as well be friendly</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">With the concept. Someone else’s no doesn’t actually kill your yes;</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It only means that someone else’s yes is still out there waiting. You</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">See where I am going here? There’s more yes than no, is what I am</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trying to say. I suppose that’s what we mean by faith. Faith’s a big</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Word, bigger than any religion. It means yes where everything sure</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Looks like no as far as you can see. Am I making the slightest sense</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here, son? I actually call him son. The other kids must have thought</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I was being avuncular but for a brief moment he was indeed my son,</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And yours too. We shook hands and he held only my hands just a bit</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Longer than the usual thing, which I took to be some sort of a prayer.</span></font></div><div style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><br></font></span></div><div style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>- Brian Doyle</font></span></div></div></body></html>