Prophet's Proposal
A chance encounter with a heretical Christian couple yields an unexpected sense of unity with creation.
I thought this guy in the park was just arguing with his girlfriend when I overheard him say, “The arms of a praying mantis aren’t just positioned like that randomly. They’re really saying a prayer to the one true God.”
Having nowhere to be, I slowed to hear more, and the more I heard, the more I slowed:
“Even if their hands change position, they’re still completely consumed by their prayer. Even when they’re asleep and dreaming, they dream only of what they want from God.”
“Okay,” his companion said.
“That’s not impressive to you?”
“No, it’s impressive. I just don’t know if it’s very pious.”
“Ceaseless prayer? Impious? You’re serious?”
“You said they’re completely consumed by what they want. Doesn’t that seem self-indulgent?”
“It’s not selfish to ask God for what you want.”
“But is it pious to be consumed by it? What about praying for others? What about prayers of gratitude? What about praying prayers of praise?”
He seemed a little defensive. “I think there’s all kinds of piety to be mined in laying bare our desires. It’s painful to want things. And when you might not get it, it’s painful to ask for it. That pain can be an offering.” He looked pained himself, then glanced around the park as if to distill his point from the leaves of the trees. “While I grant that expecting God to give you everything can be a form of spiritual greed, expecting nothing at all from Him can be an equally damaging form of spiritual isolation.”
“For praying mantises,” she said.
“Correct," he said.
She smiled evenly. “I like what you just said. I do tend to constrain the content of my prayers to giving thanks for God's blessings, but I admit it sometimes feels lazy. Like I've got nothing particular to ask for because I’m not really sure what I want God to do in my life.”
He cut in: “I’m not criticizing you. I’m just saying how the praying mantis prays.”
“I know you're not,” she said. “I’m just reflecting.”
He looked relieved. “Of course. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on.”
She shrugged. “I’m done.”
Then she added, “Maybe never asking God for specific enhancements to my happiness is, as you say, somehow indicative of flawed faith. You’ve given me something to think about, for sure.”
He looked ashamed. “It wasn’t my intention to lecture you.”
She touched his arm. “I told you, I don't feel lectured. I feel like you've provoked a thought, and I'm sharing it.”
Basking again in her approval, he said, “No matter how well I think I know you, you always find a way to surprise me.”
“I surprise you by listening to you?” She offered a teasing smile. "And by responding?"
“That is surprising, sometimes, but no. It’s the quality of reflections I find surprising. You seem so invested in reforming your own beliefs. I think that’s fundamental to holiness and to wisdom. I’m lucky to play any small part in it.”
“Don’t build me up too much," she said tenderly. "No one’s as wise and holy as they seem.”
“See? Even in deflecting modestly, you exude authority. You’re so grounded. It’s like you were meant for me.”
“Well, I see how that benefits you,” she said with the same detached amusement.
He looked at her and then finally laughed at himself a little. “I am quite self-centered, aren’t I? How can you stand it?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, regarding him carefully. “It’s certainly not your wealth or standing, nor your manner, which can be quite off-putting. But here I am regardless.”
He seemed in awe of her. I was impressed with her, too, and him. She was unusually grounded, I thought, and his apparent sincerity made his ludicrous proposals more interesting than might have otherwise been. I had never considered the different types of prayer, how each might have different motives and moral valences. I wasn’t a believer. If I had ever prayed, it had been as a child, and even that had had felt weird — like I was trying to talk my way past the bouncer outside a VIP club whose dress code I hadn’t even bothered to meet.
My mind must have wandered back to childhood for a moment, because when I resumed eavesdropping, I had missed some key transition:
“If this were the Middle Ages," he was saying, "I'd be stoned to death for saying so, but I’d still say it. Do I wish there was a cathedral behind me, as tall as the sky, with a thousand candles burning in it, and an army at my back to authenticate my claims? Sure."
"But just because I don’t have that," he continued, "or any other official sanction to say what God has said to me, doesn’t mean I won’t say it just the same.”
I had reached the edge of earshot and had to pretend to tie my shoe to hear any further.
“So it’s not just the living praying mantises? Every praying mantis from the past has been repeating the same prayer?”
“That’s right. A single prayer. They only want God to give them one thing.”
“Is it coordinated, or just a coincidence that they’re all on the same page?"
“A coordinated coincidence,” he said. “Praying mantises are actually a single being. What looks to us like one insect is in fact only a node on networked consciousness all of them share."
Her eyes widened.
“If you were to kill one praying mantis,” he said, “no praying mantises would die, because there’s only one, and it’s all of them at once, and you’d have only eliminated a single node.”
“So… then they’re like bees? With a hive mind?”
He shook his head.
“A hive is hierarchical. Bees have a queen. With the praying mantis, there’s no hive. There's no center, no chokepoint. It’s a truly distributed consciousness.”
She looked uneasy.
“I won’t judge you,” he said, “if you don't believe me."
Then he added: "I doubt even I would believe it if someone told me the same thing. But since I’m me, and I know it to be true, because God told me, I have no choice but to believe it.”
Her expression softened. I wasn’t sure if this was her impressed by his conviction, or her pity at fathoming, finally, how truly insane he was. She brought her hand to her eyes and wiped something.
“What’s wrong? Did I say something so terrible?”
“I’m just — no — I’m just touched you trust me enough to share… your perspective… without fear of being judged by me.”
“It’s taken me a long time to find the courage," he said. "And it’ll take more courage yet to share what else I have to share.”
“There’s more?”
“You haven’t even asked what the praying mantises are praying for.”
“Right! You know, I thought that’s what you were fishing for. That’s why I didn’t ask, out of stubborness. Then I got sidetracked and I guess I forgot.”
His lips drew in. “I wasn’t fishing, exactly. Just hoping curiosity would guide you to the question.”
“It did. It has. I want to know why they're praying.” Then she corrected herself: "Why it is praying? Does it want to live forever? Does it want to die?”
He shook his head, then added redundantly, “No.” Then he stood abruptly and with a serious countenance looked down at her on the bench.
I’d stopped pretending to tie my shoe. I was just standing there, shamelessly listening, and indeed somewhat alarmed because I thought he was going to walk away and leave her there without ever revealing his point. Then he took a dramatic step to the side, until he was standing directly in front of her. He got down on one knee.
“For 400 million years, since its birth in the Devonian Age, Earth’s only praying mantis — enormous and immortal and camouflaged in a host of tiny avatars living and dying generation to generation — has been praying to God, to Yahweh, Jehovah, Jesus — to grant its only wish."
He cleared his throat nervously. She stared down at him. "This wish is that you would give me your hand in marriage.” The man then produced a small black box from his pocket and opened it. “Will you marry me?”
On the tiny felt platform was the largest diamond I had ever seen. It was actually two diamonds, both cartoonishly large. Edging closer, I saw the two diamonds were the enormous eyes of a tiny ring-shaped praying mantis of delicately wrought gold.
“Holy shit,” I muttered aloud.
The man and woman looked up. We locked eyes, the three of us. He looked angry. She was still too shocked, I think, by the proposal itself to be angry at me.
I lifted my hands in vague apology for interrupting them then continued walking in a way I hoped would suggest I’d only paused for a brief moment. Nevertheless, I thought I felt the man’s cold stare on my shoulders, and only when I was sure he couldn’t be paying me any attention did I look backward.
The woman's attention hadn't wavered from the ring. From a distance, I saw in her expression a mix of incredulity and longing, acceptance and confusion, faith and even fear — all marbled together into a single emotion I don't think I had ever seen before.
If it was joy, it was un-pre-packaged. It had no color-code, no convention, no guardrails. Whatever it was was ancient and uneven, raw and unvarnished, a vaguely pagan echo, perhaps, of a world unsteamrolled by churchy modernity.
Although the man's face was pointed away, I wagered his feelings couldn't have been dissimilar to hers as she threaded the diamond-eyed praying mantis with her finger, and clasped her arms behind his neck, and exchanged with him a torrent of affirmations.
I walked on, glancing back once or twice, catching them parting and embracing again, imagining her asking him if he was somehow part-praying mantis, somehow in on the eons-old spiritual request that had just culminated, and I imagined him replying no, he was just the inordinately lucky beneficiary at the edge of the ripple of that prayer.
The last time I glanced back, they were gone.
I don’t think the wind picked up at their departure; rather, with their departure, I became more aware of the breeze that had been gently shushing and whistling all along.
The sound drew my attention to the treetops where, to my romance-softened imagination, the foliage fluttered against the like a million emerald eyelids closing and opening at once.
