Praey to God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith

By Annette Cloutier

Pry To God is a Tasteful Trip not only through the Faith of the author, but through Faith itself. It
begins in Volume I as a memoir and ends in Volume VI where the memoir is placed on an altar. In between
the pages of the six volumes, the memoir Trips through theologies of worshipnot only underscoring
the beauty of the memoir, but propelling the development of Faith to a new and exalted level. In Miss
Cloutirs six successive volumes of Pry To God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith, she examines in detail
her own Roman Catholic Faith by tracing its origins from ancient Judaism and Gnosticism, the flavors
of which appear not only in the development of Christianity, but also in the development of Islam.
Pry To God recounts how the authors Trip through Faith stumbled along the way in ventures with
Scientology and Astrology until a balanced was achieved by her association with the Monsignor and her
studies in Theology at Boston College and Harvard, culminating in a love story comparable with the Sound
Of Music, My Fair Lady, and The Thornbirds.
Pry To God incorporates a timely French Connection, the authors love of Boston Sports, and her keen
interest in matters Theological.
Pry To God includes the recent 20022010 reappraisal of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, with
the authors further investigation of its medieval French connection, and its association with the current
reevaluation of the genuineness of the 20052007 rediscovery of the Jesus Family Tomb. The Shroud of
Turin, coupled with the Jesus Family Tomb, and the 2007 discovery of the Tomb of Herod the Great
make for a fascinating historical interpretation of the New Testament Gospels by the author; revealing a
more genuine-magnificent Jesus-Mary Story.
Pry To God also incorporates an apt and a personal understanding of the 2008 Economic Catastrophe,
including American presidential politics, with a look towards a Global Realization of all people
recognized as equal in life, even to the extent of Economically Equality. Wage by Age, as suggested
by the author, is 21st centurys new mantra given to relax the social injustice experienced throughout the
ages. With a culture of Con-U-Nism evolving mankind into Money-Monkeys, Pry To God offers an
ordained resolution.
Pry To God is a rare but relevant penetration into Religion. It bridges the academic theological scholarship
of Harvard into an everyday world perspective.
Pry To God holds fascinating insights and historical interpretations that could very well signal an ending
of, tripping through Faith, sending shock-waves throughout the religious world and established society.
The authors theological insights into the topic of Religion in our current social climate are sure to linger
long after reading Pry To God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith is a fait accompli.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450069946

Annette Cloutier

Annette Cloutier holds degrees from Emmanuel College, Boston College, and Harvard Divinity School. She lived for eighteen years at a rectory in Boston, Massachusetts with two Jesuits and a Monsignor. She now lives with her family on Cape Cod. Photo description: Annette and K.O.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Annette Cloutiér.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010900888

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4500-4238-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4363-1555-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4500-6994-6

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Præy To God

A Tasteful Trip Through Faith

Annette Cloutiér

Edited in part by

Yvonne Cloutiér

Angela Laurent Cloutiér

Hannah June Cloutiér

Susan Hinz Cloutiér

Mary Ann Bouchér

Mary-Lou Bouchér

Janelle Ryman Gagniér

Jack Cronin

and

Douglas Anthony Maguire

I was once a succulent morsel for the appetite of

God, while sucking on lemons and sour grapes.

—Annette Cloutiér, 2010

Look out the saints are comin’ through! And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.

—Bob Dylan, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, 1965

It has, in fact, never been established by observation that a superior Being troubles himself for a moral or immoral purpose, with the things of nature or the affairs of Mankind.

—Ernest Renan, History of the People of Israel, 1888

There are no words that can solve life’s mystery, or explain God’s Eternal

Plan. We only know enough to ask the questions, not enough to understand.

—Neil Diamond, No Words, 2008

And tears fall from my heart like rain, like liquid love pouring from the slain.

—Kirtana, This Embrace, 1999

Some people see things the way they are and say why.

I dream things that never were; and say why not.

—Edward M. Kennedy, Eulogy for Brother Robert Kennedy, 1968; paraphrasing

—Robert F. Kennedy, Presidential Campaign, 1968; paraphrasing

—John F. Kennedy, Dublin Speech in Ireland, 1963 paraphrasing

—George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, 1921

I'm speaking here of something much simpler and more readily available. Something so simple that nothing has to change

(or not change) for it to be seen.

—Gangaji, Eternally

Præy To God

A Tasteful Trip Through Faith

A Perspective From Which Angels Feared

to Tread and Devils Sought to Thwart

Entering the Womb Before the Tomb

Becoming

A Succulent Morsel for the Appetite of God

A Delectable Peace Balm

A Twentieth to Twenty-first Century American Reality Story and Social Commentary

Asking

Is Mankind Basically Good?

Suggesting to

Hold the Con-U-Nism

Muster and Relish Some Wage-By-Age

then

Eat

To the spirit of God in every human being

rising

as queens and kings who know how love can grow.

Who may be tempted from time to time to sing a chorus or two of Joyful Joyful, the lyrics of the American twentieth century charismatic Presbyterian minister Henry J. van Dyke set to the music of the great nineteenth century German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the fourth and final movement of Symphony no. 9.

Ode to Joy

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love

Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;

Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!

All thy works with joy surround Thee; earth and heaven reflect Thy rays,

Stars and angels sing around Thee, center of unbroken praise.

Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea,

Singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.

Thou art giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blessed,

Wellspring of the joy of living; ocean depth of happy rest!

Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, all who live in love are Thine;

Teach us how to Love each other, lift us to the joy divine.

Mortals, join the happy chorus, which the morning stars began;

Father love is reigning o’er us; brother love binds man to man.

Ever singing, march we onward, Victors in the midst of strife,

Joyful music leads us sunward in the triumph song of life.

Contents

Introduction

Prologue

Preface

Apologia

An Ad Hoc—Don’t Lose the Rock, or Create a Mock—Apology

Being a Good Sport

Stop the Presses

An Authorized Apology

An Informal Apology

Reasons and Motivations

A Tribute of Thanks to Supportive Friends and Family

An Acknowledgment to

My Publishers and

Inspirational Friends

We Interrupt This Broadcast

for a News-Making Thank-You

What’s Going On

Outside of the Hub?

The French Connection

World Management Request Made in 2008: For the New Decade of 2010-2020

Præylude

Writing TimeLine: With the Jesus Family Tomb + Shroud + Bloodline Documentaries

A Deeper Meaning

Personal Photos

Chapter I

A Winter’s Introduction

Chapter II

Two Apartments

Chapter III

A Den of Iniquity

Chapter IV

A Miniature Unglued Wooden Chalice

Chapter V

KO’d

Chapter VI

A Lucky Dog Contest

Traded for a World Series

Chapter VII

Mission Encourage

Chapter VIII

The Stare, the Scare

Chapter IX

The Confession

Chapter X

Three Women of Paris

Chapter XI

A Couple of Love (Un Couple D’Amour)

Chapter XII

A Couple in Love

(Un Couple D’Amoureux)

Chapter XIII

Three Musketeers

Chapter XIV

Staying on a High of Fifteen Stations

Epilogue

Glossary

Bibliography

Appendix

Unified Index

for all Six Volumes

Partial List of Illustrations

for Volume I

Within the Section, Reasons & Motivations

missing image file Photo of the 1191 Hungarian Pray Manuscript copied from the Shroud of Turin.

missing image file Clovio’s portrait of the Shroud, 1540

missing image file Photo of the Positive-Negative and the Negative-Postive Shroud of Turin.

After the Præylude

missing image file Four Jesus Genealogies:

1. The Jesus Family Tree: The Map of Mary

2. The Jewish-Greek Hasmonean Dynasty

3. The Jewish-Arab Herodian Dynasty

4. The Jesus Roman Dynasty Connection

After the Final Section, A Deeper Meaning

missing image file Photo of Jesus Family Tomb, 1980

Before Chapter I

missing image file Eleven Groups of Photos and Their Titles

At the End of Chapter VI

missing image file Lucky Dog Contest Photos & Titles

Introduction

On September 3, 2010, just before the book was to undergo its final galley formation, I had a revelation for the new improved title. While having confessed in a live conversation to Gangaji two nights before, via the Shift Network on the internet, that I had written a six volume book titled, Prey To God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith, I thought she may have heard me say "Pray" to God.

Because there were many other callers wanting to speak with Gangaji, I didn’t take the time to clarify the title. The next day, I realized that perhaps I should have told her that "Prey" rather than "Pray" was the first word in the book’s title. But then I realized that I was glad for the possible misinterpretation. "Pray" to God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith seemed more polite, filled with less shock but retaining its shakti.

Just before Hurricane Earl came to the shores of Cape Cod, I decided to go for my morning swim. As the pre-hurricane rain began pinging onto my head and pummeled the ocean waters of Nantucket Sound, I thought: "Why not Præy to God?" The changed spelling of the word would assume the old fashion spelling of the English word sæcred, while incorporating the essence of the old ecclesiastical Latin of sæcula sæculorum (unto the age of ages). Yes, Præy would bring the new fashion collaborative energies of both words Pray and Prey together.

missing image file

Namaste, Gangaji!

Prologue

Originally, from December 2005 until December 2007, I wrote a one-volume book titled Prey To God with as much humor as I could muster for such a serious topic—Religion. The book became six volumes as world events came fast and furious.

On December 27, 2007, I awoke to the clamor on the news that the calm, assured, radiant first woman world leader of a Muslim country, Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister, the head of the People’s Party of Pakistan was assassinated in Pakistan, at 6:16 p.m., December 27, 2007. I turned gray and humorless.

The news media related that a cheering throng was pressing close to her through the streets of Rawalpindi while she sat in an SUV driven by a member of her campaign staff. Benazir Bhutto lifted herself through the SUV’s sunroof, smiled, and cheered back at the crowd, when an impeccably dressed twenty-one-year-old Pakistani suicide bomber, nearly on top of her SUV, fired three extremely close-range shots, striking Benazir Bhutto in the face, neck, and heart. Her security guards moved away from the gunman instead of pouncing on top of him. The assassin imploded himself, killing Benazir Bhutto and twenty other people around her.

missing image file

Benazir Bhutto, 2007, The Quintessential Prime Minister of Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto, young and energetic at fifty-four, Harvard class of 1973, Oxford University educated, with much to offer life, the world, and her family, died in a nearby hospital one hour later. The Pakistani government spokesman in "Baghdad Bob" style claimed her death was an unfortunate accident, declaring (fibbing) that she fractured her skull on an SUV lever.

Some reports accused either al-Qaeda terrorists or the current dictator Pervez Musharraf’s opposition party for not offering Benazir Bhutto enough security, or both. Some said it was the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) run by the military of Pakistan. Some from Al Jazeera news and pro-Pakistani military personnel, who were not supporters of Benazir Bhutto, accused a nebulous black-op group, a disgruntled Pashtun group linked with the Pakistani Taliban. Benazir’s assassin may have been perpetrated by a violent Pakistani terrorist group who had first attempted to blow up New York’s Twin Towers in 1993, paid for by anti-American Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who despite being captured in1996 and imprisoned at Gitmo still had influence in Pakistan. Some blamed a pro-Taliban general of Musharraf’s military, Gen. Hammad Gould, who may have contracted the Waziristan Taliban and al-Qaeda chieftain Baitullah Mehsud for the assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto in October and the dastardly deed on December 27, 2007; Mehsud was killed by a missile on August 6, 2009.

Osama bin Laden, twenty years ago, tried to have Benazir Bhutto assassinated when she was prime minister. In 1981, Al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s right-hand man, assassinated President Sadat of Egypt together with Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al-Qaeda’s financial chief and Afghanistan commander, hiding in Pakistan. Abu al-Yazid, better known as Saeed al-Masri, told a reporter in a phone call later in December 2007 regarding the assassination of Benzir Bhutto, We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahedeen.

Does it really matter anymore as to who’s to blame? In this situation it does, if the Taliban terrorist group fueled by radical al-Qaeda’s Islamic Jihadists’ money, aspires to abrogate Pakistan. No one nation should be designated as a terrorist state by any peace-abiding nations of the global community. The Taliban’s fanatical hate-filled purpose, to abolish the world’s Western culture of civilization by violence, is an abomination. Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear weapons arrogated by al-Qaeda’s maniacal purposes would lead the whole world to explode as one big suicide bomb of terrorism. The Pakistani Taliban is twenty-first century’s perverted version of the mouse that roared.

Haven’t we’ve seen too much violence everywhere already? Do we still need to have bêtes noires to give ourselves a sense of primitive power? Look now, what is to become of the power struggle in Iran or in Afghanistan? Will We the People find freedom there? Will We the People find freedom in North Korea? Will We the People be able to unite together soul-to-soul in order to form a Planet of Peace? Or shall we continue to look at impediments in our trade routes never to fully realize the vast land, seas, and skies that were made to unite us as one world, one We the People, in order to form a more perfect union as Mankind being basically good. Does voting really matter in power struggles? Couldn’t we develop Patterns of Peace instead, together, as a Won-One We the People? Could We then allow those Peace Patterns to proliferate themselves?

Benazir Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto—former president and prime minister of Pakistan on 1971–1979, founder of the People’s Party of Pakistan, largely responsible for peace with India—was publically hung by a militant coup takeover. And Benazir’s two brothers were martyred in Pakistan.

Global fear arose in the possibility of Pakistan’s takeover from a radical Jihadist group with access to develop nuclear weapons. We the People of the world would not allow this. Hopefully, Benazir Bhutto’s son, Bilawal Bhutto, (nineteen years old at the time of his mother’s assassination), will learn what it means to follow in his mother’s footsteps as an international person, and will become a prince of peace.

On February 21, 2008, the voters of Pakistan voted in Benazir Bhutto’s People of Pakistan Party who agreed to coalesce with the next most-voted-in party—the Pakistan Muslim League Party. Pervez Musharraf, even though voted out, was at first willing to work with the other two parties in bringing forth the dream of peace cherished by Benazir Bhutto. But instead, Musharraf resigned on August 18, 2008.

On September 6, 2008, the husband of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zadari, became Pakistan’s eleventh president, co-chairing on special committees with his and Benazir’s Oxford-educated son, Bilawal, of the People of Pakistan Party. Twice, Zadari had been prime minister and gained a detrimental reputation as Mr. Ten Percent, for all the tithing he had done while his wife, Benazir, was in office.

Nine months after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, reports stated that her husband, now President Asif Ali Zadari, suffers from depression and memory loss. Zadari claims he spent eleven of his twenty years with Benazir tortured in prisons for false charges of corruption. President Zadari has made it clear that he does not want to work with the United States in the elimination of the Taliban terrorism in his country. Can anyone blame him when we once supplied the Taliban with weapons to save their territory from Russian invasions, in the 1980s, and those very same American weapons were used over and over again to strike terror into the hearts of Pakistanis?

On September 22, 2008, I saw President Asif Ali Zadari shaking hands with Sarah Palin at the Bush White House. My observation of him was reinforced by his interview with Greta Van Susteren, Fox News, On the Record. I found President Asif Zadari brilliant in wanting to carry forth his wife’s desire for Pakistani unity. He was extremely smart spoken, fair and balanced to every question asked by Greta Van Susteren, even to the point of explaining the terrorist operations in Pakistan and why Benazir was assassinated. Prime Minister Zadari gave a similar interview with 60 Minutes on February 15, 2009. For sure Zadari feels a sense of duty to rectify the assassination of his wife, without the help of the United States, who may have stumbled in protecting her.

Haven’t we learned any history lessons from the assassination of freedom leaders such as Abraham Lincoln on February 12, 1809, and from Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948? Or, in our modern era—fortified by the fast communication of TV, radio, and Internet—haven’t we learned anything from the dark losses of peacemakers: President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963; his brother Robert F. Kennedy on June 6, 1968; Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968; Anwar Sadat on October 6, 1981; and now Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007?

A PRÆYERFUL SILENCE

We know Peace. Do we seriously need to educate young people everywhere for Peace? Should Peace be the first subject taught in every school system throughout the world: from elementary through college, graduate school, and postgraduate schools? Shouldn’t Peace be properly taught in every madrasah as well?

A PRÆYERFUL SILENCE

We know Peace. Peace is Equality, especially Economic Equality. Isn’t it time we work together and focus on Peace for all on our Planet so that future generations will know that we, in honor of all life-giving leaders for Peace nicknamed our planet as "Planet Peace?"

A PRÆYERFUL SILENCE

For every person, past, present, and future, who has become, or is, or will become Præy To God for Peace, such as the staying power of the United States Armed for Peace Forces, together with the coalition forces of those who have helped in the peace effort—Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Tonga, the Ukraine, and the staying power of the United Kingdom—I humbly and gratefully salute for protecting my life, liberty, and an unbounded capacity for happiness.

To others who have heard the call to arms and stood on the battle line of peace with open arms, such as those in the entertainment industry, who have given heroically of themselves, as the world demanded more while the monster money-monkeys of this world stomped all over their hearts—loving, creative people such as Michael Joseph Jackson, who suddenly died of a supposed heart attack induced by Propofol (trade name Diprivan), on June 25, 2009, at the age fifty—I tip my hat and don a white sequenced glove to salute you.

Michael Jackson reportedly died owing more than $400 million. Superfluous spending is in all of us, to one degree or another. Collectively in states, collectively in most countries, overspending is a sign of the times in everyone’s time of a Con-U-Nism mentality with a hapless quest for "greatness," via an ostentatious effort to show importance. Greatness is in each and every one of us, equally and obviously, without the money or glamour involved, for the simple reason that we all possess the gifts of life, light, and love. Take away the contaminating money-masks, and the beauty of equality becomes clear. But we have become addicted to our money-masks in giving us a false sense of importance.

Isn’t it time we get together to quell the need to be superhuman promoted by Con-U-Nism’s Capitalism?

Michael Jackson’s debt to high-interest raking predator-creditors, coupled with shallow money grabbers who frequently surrounded him, contributed heavily to his stress and induced in him a sense of the extreme, beyond the realms of what is realistically human, luring him into a death backed by the insurance industry. His life was saved by his own sense of immortality. The songs of his fans and copy groups, such as Coroner, reflect the stress of living in an uncaring money-based culture. One of Michael Jackson’s last-performed songs on June 24, 2009, They Don’t Really Care About Us, thumped-out the frustration.

Something in our society should evolve for providing each person an active life to be followed by a comfortable retirement without having to first lose all the good invested. Like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Elvis Presley, Heath Ledger, and many other glamorous people all of whom also died too young, stressed out by Con-U-Nism and the glut of monster manipulating money-monkeys, Michael Jackson died drained by the demand for his pound of flesh in the dark forces of this attack or be attacked society. I think Michael outmaneuvered his creditors by selling more than 2.3 million downloads within one week of rowing his boat ashore.

Michael found his supernatural, and it was not of this world, but it should have been, with such a beautiful family here on earth, and could have been if equality among people were the norm. His funeral, on July 7, 2009, at the Staple Center in Los Angelos, California, was one of the most dignified, captivating, and poignant funerals I have ever witnessed in my lifetime, orchestrated by loving friends and family, and seen around the world. We are the People played out as the theme, resonating and portending a future of shared royalty in equal measure.

For the person of equality, the person of peace, a person like all of us, and the Universe itself, showing 4 percent visible light with 96 percent invisible darkness, but a person dedicated to projecting the light and immortality, I offer my undying hope in . . .

A PRÆYERFUL SILENCE

On August 11, 2009, and August 25, 2009, two of my neighbors of Hyannis Port and two of the people I most admired in my life—I never knew life without them—transitioned peacefully from Cape Cod to Cape God. I wanted to cry and breathe a sigh that both Eunice Kennedy Shriver (at age eighty-eight) and Ted Kennedy (at age seventy-seven), with whom I had shared so many dreams and prayers for a better world, had cleared the way for a stronger message of Peace governed by an absolute sense of Equality.

To Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver and to her younger brother Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, the prayers are now one of gratitude and intercession from a True Compass aimed at all becoming Queens and Kings who know how Love can grow.

To the former and forever prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, who not only became Præy To God, but will also remain in the spotlight of my admiration, silhouetted in the center of many hearts, as the veiled Queen of Peace from Pakistan, I pledge my commitment to World Peace.

A PRÆYERFUL SILENCE with a PLEA:

Please let us together free our precious planet from the stress factors of rampant Con-U-Nism and radical Jihadism—sinister forces whose ideas spawn hatred for one another and antipathy for living life together as one. These anti-human ideas and thought patterns crush the very nature of peace upon our planet. We have allowed to speciously develop laws and antilaws with a mean spirited ferocity. Such laws and anti-laws, blinded by testosteronic terrorism for itself and others, have promulgated mind-boggling global misery as pinpointed in Pakistan and pockets of political perturbation here, there, and everywhere; profound pockets of misery piercing each individual soul on our planet. The fear of life, coupled with a lust for money, positions its pernicious propaganda worldwide that human beings are basically unbalanced, unloving, and unequal. Such an insidious lie can be dispelled in the name of Peace as in a recognition of Equality in the light of day, today. Does it take an earthshaking catastrophe to make us realize that we are all brothers and sisters needing to care for one another?

The 9.3 seismographic earthquake and its ensuing tsunami of Thailand and Sumatra, December 26, 2004, that killed more than 300,000 people was very tough to take. The year 2010 proved likewise to be a year of devastating earthquakes. There was first the terrifying 7.02 earthquake of Port-au-Prince Haiti, January 11, 2010 whose death toll left nearly 222,000 dead, 333,000 wounded and 1,111,000 homeless. In the very next month, on February 27, 2010, another monster quake registering 6.34 on the Richter scale from Santiago through Concepción, Chile, where nearly 1,000 people perished. Less than two months later, on April 13th, there was the monster 6.9 quake in Southern Qinghai China which killed over 400 people and maimed more than 10,000. Such earthshaking natural disasters should make us all quake over the fragility of being human. These natural disasters were followed by the worst environmental catastrophe ever perpetrated by Mankind, the Gulf Oil Spoil of April 20, 2010. Before coming into a clearer vision for the year 2020, one can already see at this juncture that, obviously, the Saviour needs a Saviour.

A PRÆYERFUL SILENCE

To the many coal miners, and oil rig workers throughout the world who have perished in mine and rig explosions because the corporate money monkeys, who lavish in the lie of the superiority of capitalism, and didn’t show enough care for genuine life; to, those who have gone into the darkest corners of the earth to keep us here on earth living in the light, we owe it to them to see more clearly in the nature of the truest Light that all men are created equal and all must equally be cared for. No individual should have to sacrifice their life under the threat of constant peril while the capitalistic corporate world extracts huge benefits from their labor. Such an enslavement practice had been perpetrated since man first realized he was royal and needed to take away the sense of royalty from others, thereby destroying the balance, the beauty, and the function of life as a whole.

The Self can take care of Self. This is how God’s work must truly be our own. There are heros on the home front of such battles and the each and everyday battles we all must face on a smaller scale involving no less an effort of caring. These heros remind us that there is no greater nobility in life than to care for one another. Together, united as One heroic People of nobility, We can devour any battle line as we become Præy to God, a tasteful trip through faith.

Preface

In mid-January 2010, I added the subtitles: Hold the Con-U-Nism; Muster & Relish Some Wage-By-Age. My sister Mary Ann liked the expression: "Wage-By-Age." She thought it was catchy and a primary theme in each of the six volumes of Præy To God. At the first of the year in 2010, Mary Ann asked me if it were too late to change the title of my book to: "Wage-By-Age." I told her it was. That I had already edited my galley for Xlibris and the book was nearly ready to go to print. Mary Ann then asked me if there were a chance that I could trademark the words: Con-U-Nism and Wage-By-Age, because she felt they were unique to the book. I thought, for my sister’s benefit, I would look into the possibility. In early September 2010, Mary Ann was thrilled that I could transpose the title from Prey To God to Praey To God. She said it took the grotesque feeling away from the idea of being victimized by God. I agreed with her that God should never be presented in an attack mode.

Searching for a possible trade marking of the neologisms: Con-U-Nism and Wage-By-Age, I was told by TradeMark Express, that the only way I could receive a TM was to have the words appear on the front and back cover of the book. I had already a subtitle page on the book’s interior, incorporating those expressions. Amy Goddess, my submissions representative from TradeMark Express, said the inside subtitle page was not good enough. The words needed to appear on the front cover as an essential part of the book. I decided to retain for a few more months the then title: Prey To God, because of the cover’s design; and use the expressions, "Con-U-Nism," and "Wage-By-Age" as the book's caption, with a sense of equal worth to the book's title, a subtitle, and other alternative subtitles. For, truly, if we could manage to keep the Con-U-Nism out of one another’s lives, and relish equally the economic worth of every person with a Wage-by Age concept, we could experience a very "Tasteful, tactful, and tantalizing, Trip Through Faith" together.

The reason I chose not to trademark the old title: Prey To God, in the early months of 2010, was because in 2008 someone had misused my invented title for their horror movie. I wanted to distance myself from such a false use of the title of the book and promote it through the expressions: Hold the "Con-U-Nism," Muster and Relish Some "Wage-By-Age." I had not come into acquaintance with the slightly transformed title, Præy to God, as yet.

During this period of re-invention, in January 2010, I was reminded of the comment my niece Angela made, in 2008 when she viewed, for the first time, the unveiling of my then selected Xlibris cover of Prey To God. Angela, in a state of shock, with her quirky sense of humor, privately gasped: Auntie Annette, why did you put a periscope up Her pp? I tried to explain to Angela that I had done no such thing, that the Silhouetted Lady was rising out of the Eucharist, almost in similar fashion as a person might burst forth from a Birthday Cake. Consequently, to mollify my nieces impression, I added another subtitle: Entering the Womb Before the Tomb. And, finally changing the title in September 2010 to Præy to God, connoting a consuming of Self in an intense love before the Big Bang of Creation.

The Eucharist, having been consecrated, imparts an inverse type of eating when it affords contemplation of God. Ruminating over the Mystical Body of Christ, in a direct and immediate way, the person consuming the Eucharist becomes One with the Goodness of Life and has a greater sense of Wholeness, with a sense of Thanksgiving, Gratitude, and Rejoicing.

This worldwide sense of being out of one’s surface skin, Grateful to be at One with Life is what the word Eucharist means in its Greek roots: Eu (from) + Charizesthai (Gratitude, Rejoicing, and Grace). We all should be operating from a sense of immense and immeasurable Gratitude that we are at-One with each other.

In a sense, the person eating the Eucharist, becomes consumed by such Grace, Gratitude, and Rejoicing—consumed by God. I needed to show this sense of exultation in the spiritual/organic Oneness of Life by allowing the figure of the Silhouetted Lady, having been consumed by the Host of the world’s Oneness, arising from the Wafer of the World, to be consumed by the Light of Christ—becoming Præy To God.

I kept the word Eat as one of the eight subtitles in Præy To God, just to state the obvious: what is delicious in life we choose to eat—"eat it up, chew on it," and swallow it; sometimes even swallowing it whole—for, truly, life is an activity of consuming. Even in our personal-impersonal universe, we can observe "consuming" as a cropping of Self—we have dark holes gobbling up stars and galaxies in the ever expanding third-dimensional Space-Time Continuum. All the while, the genuine Self, the whole Self, remains present, unmoved, and unchanged as to whether or not a galaxy appears or disappears or whether the universe expands or collapses.

Our world, as a whole, can be seen to be our Eucharist. I wanted my book Præy To God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith to evoke that type of edification to become a Delectable Peace Balm, a Succulent Morsel, Ambrosia for the Soul, for each and every human being on the Planet. Not only should we be providing a sense of Comfortville to one another, against the often times disastrous forces of nature, but we should be promoting and rejoicing in one another’s ability to live exulted and exhilarating lives—equally—in that same sense of Eucharistic Oneness. We can and should be operating with a sense of Oneness with precision and industry as wild geese flying with the sun and moon on their wings into the Promise Land.

Barbara Walters only has one title for her biography published in May 2008—Audition. Originally, I only wanted just one title, no subtitle and another subtitle to explain the previous subtitle. I was told by my first publisher that I needed a subtitle. The woman publisher added a subtitle for me that gave no meaning to what the book was about: "My Journey to Faith." Absolutely not.

I was born into a faith-filled American French-Scottish-Polish family, very Catholic, a Faith, for which most of my life, I thoroughly enjoyed and practiced, until 1990 after my mentor, MonSignor, died—leaving me stranded with two master’s degrees—one from Boston College and the other from Harvard Divinity—degrees I knew not how to apply to the capitalistic world of which I had to face on my own, unprotected.

The Catholic Church, having abandoned me in many different ways, in the 1990s to the present, left me free to leave the Church behind. Still, I carried within a blueprint of memories of what it had once represented to me. As a consequence of my abandonment, I had come to see myself as a victim of society sucking on sour grapes—or as a sacrificial altar-offering of Præy To God. I chose to remain in the latter, and the latter chose to consume me. I decided to share the victory with others in my writing, and at the same time, I was compelled, by no other choice, to share the victory.

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Julia Child, America's French Chef, 1979, holding the tail of a large monk fish

Julia Child, (1912–1994), the great American French chef, in a delicious moment of time, impressed upon me the beauty and the art of eating. Lately, whenever I am dining alone, as I often do, instead of merely eating a meal of vegetables, starches, proteins, and sweets, I sometimes choose to dine with an exotic someone in mind. So for example, if I have an enticing meal such as a succulent lamb dinner, which is rare—meant both ways—I rarely eat meat, but on certain occasions when I would chose to eat a sliver of meat, it would be rather rare as recommended by Julia Child; and then I might eat it thinking of Rex Harrison, of My Fair Lady fame, just to to capture a sense of refined dignity. Sometimes I may think of Richard Burton in Camelot, for the same tasteful edification. But most usually, I defer to my dearest friend, MonSignor, who, while combining the excellencies of both classy actors, always satisfies me with the main meat of the meal in a never ending sense of eternal elegance.

Another way the word Eat evolved, for a subtitle of Præy To God, was on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2006. I was partaking of a festive Thanksgiving feast in Canterbury, Connecticut, over the house of my brother’s lovely mother-in-law, June Leiss. The subject of my book then titled: Prey To God, came up. I explained to everyone at the dinner table, while the dish of pearl onions and peas in cream sauce were being passed from hand to hand, how the publisher rejected the subtitle: A Succulent Morsel for the Appetite of God.

For some reason, at our graceful family Thanksgiving table, no one liked my choice of the adjective Succulent. My sister-in-law, Susan, Arthur’s wife, blurted out, "Because succulent sounds sexual. Au contraire, I countered, succulent means ‘juicy’ and ‘delicious’—‘tasty,’ as I’m hoping this Thanksgiving turkey will be!"

I reflected further aloud, "Perhaps the publisher likewise didn’t like the word ‘Succulent’ but complained, instead, that it was too long of a subtitle. My brother Arthur offered only one word to my dilemma, Eat . . . just subtitle the book Eat." Arthur reinforced the description and the menu of the moment, as well as a possible subtitle for Prey To God with some further chewing on his drumstick. For the love of my brother, the subtitle, Eat, stayed.

Many reasons indicated that the subtitle Eat was appropriate. Even Elizabeth Gilbert used Eat in the title of her best-selling memoir: Eat, Pray, Love. My Eat, throughout Præy To God, has a more immediate serving of spiritual and religious seasonings. The eating of Præy To God is meant to be as audacious as not just having placed a wafer on the tongue of a person receiving the Body of Christ, but also to place that person as consumed by the Wafer Host, right into the Body of Christ—representing the Oneness of Mankind as basically good.

It is my contention that if Mankind were, intrinsically good, basically good, Mankind would be great. Unlike Christopher Hitchens (whose atheistic intellect, nevertheless, I admire), one cannot truthfully write or say that God is not great, (the title of his 2009 memoir in defense of atheism), because Mankind still does not basically know what he/she is doing. We are still evolving. Hopefully, we are not evolving as money-monkeys. For truly, I would rather be an ape of God than a money-monkey.

Certain individuals of Mankind can show measures of greatness: as in going 350 miles above Earth into Outer Space to repair the Hubble Telescope in 2009, or when landing on the Moon in 1969, or even when landing a jet liner with over one hundred passengers aboard safely into the Hudson River in 2009. There are, from time to time, signs that humanity can be seen to exhibit sporadic waves of greatness in surges of love and quantum leaps of intelligence on both the noticeably broader scale, and the day-to-day love and intelligence from all of us receiving little or no attention.

Still, it is difficult to come to the conclusion that Mankind is basically good, unless we can create a gargantuan quantum leap of energy and a great wave of peaking together in Truth—not falsifying life in an effort to make money. Such divergent energies of capitalistic class wars work against truth, dehumanize us, and frustrate our real purpose of life upon our shared planet. Human beings, even more than all Creation, were designed for Love. Diverting our attention into other energies is to confiscate the ultimate prize of Creation.

Con-U-Nism is a term I have created to express such mass deception. Con-U-Nism is the critical mass of our collective Dark Hole, that has taken away the beauty for which we were originally created—to be consumed by love, to be basically good—for the planet, for life itself.

Præy To God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith would like to offer a new way, perhaps even a new and universal ultra Religion guiding the course of human behaviour to a higher cause, with a different sense of the word Religion in approaching genuine Truth. Such a great Religion in all of us that can spot Con-U-Nism in Capitalism, Communism, Catholicism, and an infinity of other ism, really Negative isms—Nisms—found in any and all institutions. All manmade institutions have curtailed Mankind’s progress from being basically good because all have had to focus first on the almighty buck. Focused, instead, on our almighty good luck, of being human beings together on a breathtaking planet, we should be developing the sense that honest institutions guided by a collective sense of The Wholly could be reshaping each and every one of us, Equally, into a greater sense of Self.

It has been apparent to me that we have grown and are groaning in the defeat of conning one another, instead of honoring one another as equals. It seems it is increasingly difficult for the average person to comfortably care for another without incurring the danger of emotional and economic reprisals, because the average person, the backbone of humanity, has been reduced to being a slave to money just to keep a shelter.

Charity, a virtue which makes each and every person great, has been difficult for the majority of us, and those that are allowed to exhibit their charity, freely, eventually do so out of expectation. Where’s the greatness? Where’s the goodness?

The idea of greatness and goodness must come from somewhere. Perhaps greatness and goodness can be realized in a certain minor percentage of Mankind—perhaps as much as 4 percent from certain noble people whose sole planetary purpose is focused upon improving the condition of Mankind. Even in the larger picture of the Universe as a whole, scientists estimate is comprised of 4 percent light-radiating matter and 96 percent non-radiating light energy and matter—Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

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Butterfly Galaxy (corner left) with other forming galaxies as seen

by Hubble telescope 2009.

After analyzing the clear pictures from the Hubble Telescope, in November 2009, astrophysicists determined that the invisible energy of our Universe consists of 74 percent Dark Energy, plus 22 percent of an invisible energy known as Dark Matter. That leaves us with only 4 percent of what we can relate to as visible matter, matter radiating light. All those many planets, stars, of galaxies, and nebulae, life itself, comprise less than 5 percent of our Space-Time Universe. Yet 100 percent of their rare minerals and gases, their radiant light energy is what constitutes us. Yes, we were created from star dust, each and every one of us. We all were born from a Super Nova, the death of a Giant Star. (Remind you of SOMEONE?)

The cryptic forces of Dark Energy are not fully understood as yet. But from what I have read and understood, Dark Energy is the force which causes the Universe to expand while inhibiting particles from forming—similar to a vacuum. It is the largest force-field (74%) which allows ordinary matter to move freely through Space. Dark Energy was the result of the Big Bang which created the Universe 13.7 Billion years ago. The next largest entity of the Universe is Dark Matter (22%). Scientists are not sure what Dark Matter actually is other than it is invisible. Dark Matter should not be confused with Dark Holes, or Antimatter which emit gamma-rays when annihilating matter.

My point is that if the patterns of energy comprising humans beings can be compared with that of the Universe, my God, look at all the Dark Energy and Dark Matter we may be forced to confess to each other in the name of Transparency and Truth!

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Dark Energy 74%, Dark Matter 22%, Visible Matter 4%

Richard Bucky Buckminster Fuller (1885–1983)—a great American humanist, futurist, visionary, author, inventor, designer, architect—once described our moment together in Time and Space as astronauts on a "beautiful little spaceship called Earth. Bucky also described those who dedicated themselves to livingry (peacemaking) rather than to killingry" (weaponry) in the support of Earth life.

The remaining 96 percent of Mankind, whether wittingly or unwittingly by engaging in killingry have converted our beautiful little planet, a single solitary spaceship humming along, into a spinning-top of tears—with or without religion, with or without the notion of God in all aspects of life. And dare I say that 96 percent of our very being creates for each individual a twisted tale of woe. We have to reverse the trend within and without ourselves; even if the Universe itself cannot be seen as 96 percent light and 4 percent darkness, we can learn to operate our spaceship to live in our light. We can inverse our perceived reality to go warp speed ahead. Beam me up, Mr. Scott!

However, along with many others, I feel it is of paramount importance to recognize, as in Light from Light, that only God is good, only God is great; because, of Mankind, it still needs to be said, Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do, (Luke 23:34); for the Truth that we should hold as self-evident that all men are created equal (Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence) becomes less and less evident throughout the annals of human history. The trend of overwhelming Darkness should be reversed at Warp Speed, in the "Instantaneous Now," to save ourselves and our planet.

ABC aired a popular show in June 2, 2009, titled, Earth 2100: Is It the Final Century of Our Civilization? which gave a dire perspective of what could happen when we fail to care for one another and our planet. And, in October 2009, the movie 2012, staring John Cusack, Amada Peet, and Danny Glover, became a cinematic horror show of what could happen to our planet without enough care for one another.

In 2008, PBS aired a documentary on a genetic aspect of Planetary Stress, titled Stress: Portrait of a Killer, showing how planetary primates (most persistently human beings) are the culprits who generate the killing force of stress. Hierarchies of alpha male primates, who are hormonally driven, testosterone-ridden, dominant primate males—or even of those individuals including females, gays, and lesbians, who exhibit high-testosterone, alpha-male behavioral patterns nature—have conned others into submission for their personal-non-plus-pleasure, only to create a stressed planet since the beginning of their time on Earth.

The tune of tumult on the planet has played over and over: Mad, Mad World. Many of us can relate to the lyrics of Mad World, written in 1982 by Roland Orzabal and sung by Curt Smith of the British rock group Tears for Fears and popularized again in 2009 by American Idol star Adam Lambert. When the beautiful and talented Siobhan Magnus from Cape Cod was mistakenly eliminated April 28, 2010, American Idol temporarily lost my affection. All I could hear was Adam Lambert’s Mad, Mad World.

Shouldn’t there be a better way to discover talent rather than forcing beauty and grace into comparison and competition in the name of capitalistic con-u-nism and exploitation? Here’s my take on Season 9 of American Idol: no. 6, the most wronged number in the universe, and consequently my favorite number was Siobhan Magnus’s perfect contestant number 6 on American Idol, April 28, 2010. To those interested in why Siobhan had been voted off: her FaceBook page had received the wrong telephone number. (So much for the value of FaceBook.) Siobhan means God’s gift in Gaelic; hence her whole name means God’s great gift! Wow what a star!

On the David Letterman Show, May 3, 2010, a poised and articulate Siobhan heard Dave say: Well, Siobhan thank you for being with us here tonight, I don’t know why they voted you off. Frankly I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned you should be our American Idol. To which Siobhan gave a stirring rendition of the Rolling Stone’s: Paint It Black. Which left me haunted with her clear singing of the lyrics: "It’s not easy facing-up when your whole world is black."

American Idol surprised me by bringing Siobhan back, on the final show, May 31, 2010 featuring her singing with The Bee Gees—Robin Gibb and Barry Gibb—How Deep Is Your Love. For sure, the light shines even in the darkness. Nice way to go Siobhan!

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Siobhan Magnus, American Idol #6 on Season 9.,

with the Bee Gees Barry and Robin Gibb, May 26, 2010.

Still I don’t know if I’ll watch American Idol without Simon Cowell. Sometimes, it would appear, there’s a need for those who can temper the Mad Mad World by fighting fire with fire. Yet, judging one another seems to bring an abundance of stress into the world. Oh, but Steven Tyler replacing Simon Cowell in Idol’s Season 10 (2011), took the stress out of judging and gave the show, for me, an even more enjoyable outlook

Talk about stress, painting it black, and wanting to scream at the black . . . As I was saying, before I became distracted by the idea of judging one another and the idea of blackness—the PBS National Geographic presentation, Stress: Portrait of a Killer featured the neurobiologist and stress specialist Robert Sapolsky, together with his family. I first viewed the Stress documentary in September 2008. The Sapolsky family had done a thirty-year study on tribal baboons in East Africa/Kenya that proved the poisoning of primate peace when alpha males are in control. Those alpha male baboons created a mad, mad world of monster-monkeys.

In the absence of these alpha male primates, the tribe became peaceful, healthy: slender, free of excessive fat. These primates, when freed from alpha males, became diseased free—e.g., atherosclerosis free, diabetes free, ulcer free, free of heart disease—and their aging process was more graceful.

In a lucky accident, during the Sapolsky study of 1982, the nontestosterone-driven primates, who did not feast on tuberculosis meat from the nearby trash heap, had survived the alpha males who had eaten the toxic trash meat. Every one of the domineering alpha male baboons died by consuming the contaminated meat. In what seemed at first to be a tragic accident, the alpha male baboons were wiped out; the nonalpha males and females had then transferred the stress of hierarchy and hegemony into a state of horizontal cooperation and contentment. These peace-loving primates now spent their time intimately grooming and caring for one another, instead of controlling, dominating, and fearing one another.

In my immediate circle of friends and family, the presence of alpha male mentality had, for the most part, been kept at bay, with the notion that, in America, all are created equal, but not always. In a working environment with too many alpha male-type bureaucrats whose primary purpose was to place into a primitive primate submission, disempowered slavery-mentality workers, these types of jobs in American culture precluded a sense of equality.

Edward Bellamy, a nineteenth century American writer who authored: Looking Backward and Equality, had influenced my concept of the way my generation was supposed to have enhanced life for everyone everywhere "by replacing private capitalism with public capitalism and organizing the machinery of production and distribution," (Equality, Preface, p. v). I really believed growing up under the influence of the Bob Dylan and the Beatles together with other recording artists of the sixties and seventies that we were on the verge of a great shift in creating a society of socioeconomic equality. But something happened with global capitalism as the perpetuated syndrome of the rich becoming richer and the poor poorer came roaring back like a raging lion and escalated into a monster money monkey, a gargantuan gangster gorilla, in twenty-first century’s high tech computer age. However, whenever I listen to Sarah Brightman, (England); Charlotte Church (Wales); Hayley Westenra (New Zealand); and 10 year-old 2010 America’s Got Talent blonde beauty Jackie Evancho (Philadelphia, PA), sing Pie Jesu (Gracious Jesus), or Ave Maria, the mad, mad world of money monkeying immediately melts.

Thanksgiving 2007 found me consuming strands of irreligious thoughts wondering if what I was eating was merely making me fat or was this food for thought truly edifying. I read where the exploits of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers (mainly on college campuses) were sucking up ideas of Creation by Intelligent Design in claiming that the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a.k.a. the Designer God, noodled Creation throughout its Universe. It seemed that this theology of the Flying Spaghetti Monster twisted the noodling of God from an ancient first century Roman meal to an American twenty-first century mishmash. Had my serving of the Pauline notion of Stoicheia of the Universe in Præy To God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith already noodled its way onto their plates? Wait ’til these FSMers taste my recipe for the deep dark devil’s food cake of Gnosticism in Volume IV. Mmmm, boy, is that Succulent!

Critics are saying that the Flying Spaghetti Monster club-cult cuts to the heart of the one main question in religious studies: What is Religion? Does it require an accepted theological belief and faith perspective set in stone? For some, such as the FSMers, is Religion a Faith perspective set up as spaghetti-pie in the sky? Or is Religion simply a set of rituals with a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

FSM clubs-cults started as a May 2005 satirical protest by Bobby Henderson (a twenty-five-year old Oregon State physics grad student slot machine techie) against the Kansas School Board who voted to allow the theory of Intelligent Design to be taught in school as an alternative scientific theory to Evolution. The May 2005 Kansas School Board's Intelligent Design controversy vs. the teaching of Evolution; and the December 2005 Dover School district trial of the same controversy were replays of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In May 2005, Bobby Henderson designed God as a Flying Spaghetti Monster with two meatball-looking eyes and with spaghetti tentacles touching the outstretched finger of the first man, Adam.

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The Flying Spaghetti Monster replacing God the Father in

Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam

Henderson asked, "What makes more sense, an impersonal intelligent Designer God or an impersonal Evolutionary Process that creates life?" A huge atheistic cult comprised of mainly college campus students followed up on Henderson’s argument and spun out the believers of Pastafarians (Pasta-far-ians), even proclaiming that Jesus, if he were real, had to be the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

What began as a joke became a bona fide, albeit atheistic, religious cult. FSMers now hold meetings everywhere—still primarily on college campuses—in order to add their input with agitation into certain ongoing social controversies holding traditional theological importations.

FSMers also support other nontraditional antireligious groups such as the pagan-agnostic-atheistic Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRFers). During the December 2008, these FFRFers were allowed to post a brazing, plain, and simple placard that was sparsely decorated in a nontraditional, nonholiday mode to advertise a nongovernmental-granted national holiday, in unfriendly competition with the Christian Nativity scene, at Olympia, the capital of Washington State, throughout the better part of the Christmas holiday, despite the Christians protesting in rallies around the Washington State House. Just the same, the governor, Christine Gregoire, had allowed the FFRFers, who claimed they, too, were a religion, albeit an atheistic one, to post their holiday symbol.

It turned into a controversial permission by the governor given to pagans being allowed to post a defamatory sign in the state’s capital discrediting the Christmas holiday. Bill O’Reilly, December 2, 2008, called Christine Gregoire a coward for not protecting a national holiday.

On July 16, 2010 the atheistic groups posted a billboard on the Billy Graham Highway in Charlotte, North Carolina advocating a change in the public schools’ Pledge Allegiance. They wanted to switch back the Pledge as it had been originally written by the Christian socialist Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy, and recited from 1892 to 1954: One nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all." I remember in 1954, as a little girl in first grade when I had to learn to pledge in school with my hand over my heart looking at the classroom flag: "One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The under God," brought a smile to my face back then, and I understood the word indivisible much better with God in mind.

The atheistic public barbs at the word of God traditionally presented by the major religions of our culture, only proved to me the lack of education and respect many free thinking people have for traditional Religion. I am not that type of free thinker, although I may be in sympathy with them from time to time. I still value the unearthly beauty and pristine truth that Religion conveys through its stories and ceremonies. Because Religion can’t be taught in public schools, there is a growing lack of respect for Religion, among free thinking people, not only in America, but also globally.

In America, for all its emphasis on science in education, you’d think that each and every high school student today would be informed of the now-eighty-five—year-old controversy of Evolution vs. Creationism! There was even a 1955 play Inherit the Wind, which became reenacted in the 1960 Hollywood motion picture, shown on TV in 1965, 1988, and 1999, explaining the scope of the Scopes controversy. Evolution begged to be taught in science classes then. (John Scopes was the 25-year old male Tennessee biology teacher who taught the principals of Darwin’s Origin of Species in his high school classes of 1925. Scopes was financed by the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, to defy Tennessee’s Butler Act which forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools.)

Now, instead, the notion of God with an Intelligent Design is looking for space in high school classrooms across America. How could any high school student not be familiar with the arguments from such notable statesmen as William Jennings Bryan (the Fundamentalist-Creationist) vs. the sharp-witted lawyer Clarence Darrow (the Charles Darwin-Evolutionist) of the 1925 Scopes-Monkey Trial?

What are they teaching American students in high school American history classes today, anyway? Is there a Religion phobia in public education? Of course, there is; because, in an effort to be socially and politically correct, no one knows how to teach Religion in history classes for fear of offending and alienating certain groups. The important subject, History of Religions, the very foundation of civilization, even more than the History of Art, or Music History, becomes abolished from the public school curriculum. And oftentimes our American high schools no longer offer the subjects of American History and Civics because of strained budget cuts. Consequently, History is forced to repeat itself, very ignorantly, while Religion is allowed to grow wild and unchecked.

In 2005, we were destined to repeat much of our early twentieth century history in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover School Board trial—this time with Creationism losing to the theory of Evolution. The controversy centered on whether to allow Creation by Intelligent Design to be offered as another possible scientific theory in the classrooms of Dover Public High School, Dover, Pennsylvania.

True, while Creationism is Bible fed, it should not be shut out of the classroom discussions. But neither should it be offered as pure scientific evidence. Whatever happened to the teaching agenda of Science and the Arts in our public schools? Has the meaning of teaching science been augmented while sacrificing understanding, and appreciation for the liberal arts? The liberal arts used to be taught in our public schools for the expressed purpose of defining a "proper education"? I am of the group that still feels that Religion is needed in our society. And, that all of Religion needs to come out of the closet fully clothed with an enhanced face lift.

My formal education in theology behind me, upon graduating from Harvard in 1982, I found myself with a renewed interest as a sports fan. Even though I might not agree with the decisions made by the umpires, at least I thought I knew what was going on—and a team should continue to strive to win the game.

Even theology would purport that good wins over evil every time in the ultimate game of life. In Sports, there should never surface the nature of evil. That’s what makes Sports so enjoyable. Both teams, whether they win or lose in competition, are basically good—they strive to play creatively by the rules of the game.

There were forty-two chapters, written and published before World Series 2007 and before Super Bowl XLII, in the first rendition of Prey To God, which I took off the book market in 2010 and replaced with the six-volume series: Præy To God. My first publication, consisting of one volume, up until December 2008, became two volumes in January 2009. In February 2009, it was determined that four volumes would work better with maps, pictures, and charts. In March 2009, it was reassessed that six volumes would work best for publication purposes.

With these six volumes it will remain, if only because friends and family would like to see more of me. (Not a note of vanity, just that life goes by all too quickly, and I consider my friends and family the essence of my personal life.)

I was looking forward to something more lifelike than spending nearly two years in editing my first edition; but the Economic Crisis in 2008 took over most of the sense of genuine enjoyment I used to have for life. Supportive jobs enabling home-ownership were nearly impossible to find, and the cost of publishing made it nearly prohibitive for me to produce Prey To God: A Tasteful Trip Through Faith.

I had been an ardent football fan, baseball fan, basketball, and hockey fan all my life. I still am: Go, Pats! Go, Sox! Go, Celts! Go, Bruins! With the Economic Crisis in 2008, my enthusiasm for Boston Sports took a backseat somewhere out in the bleachers, as I watched close-up and personal relatives, friends, neighbors, including myself, struggle to the brink