Pray

May. 18, Post Time: 10:45AM Entries and comments provided by the Maryland Jockey Club First - Purse $55,000, AOC $25,000-$20,000, 3 yo's & up, One And One Sixteenth Miles Post, Horse, Jockey, Trainer, Odds 1 Aussi Austin, Rosario, R.Rodriguez, 3-1 2 Bob's Gone Wild, Vargas, J.Lopez, 20-1 3 Jarrod's Commando, Karamanos, C.Garcia, 10-1 4 Warrensburg, Boyce, D.Barr, 20-1 5 Benny Or Local, Cruise, D.Kobiskie,...

One of my favorite views of Charm City right now is entering into the downtown area from the 395 off-ramp. Our city is painted with Ravens spirit - purple lights dancing on skyscrapers, "Go Ravens!" posters taped to city windows, and my favorite: the billboard that simply said "WOW" after the Ravens' win Sunday over the Patriots. In fact, as I sit down to write this at the Towson Public Library, a woman just pointed out that the bookshelf next to me contains an entire collection of books with purple covers, complete with a border of purple stars cut out of construction paper.

WHEN I sat down to write this morning, the first thing I did was think of Salman Rushdie.I have done this every morning for more than four years and by now it is an essential part of my daily routine. I pick up my pen and before I begin to write, I think of my fellow novelist across the ocean.I pray that his English protectors will keep him hidden from the people who are out to murder him. They have already killed one of his translators and wounded another since his novel "The Satanic Verses" brought the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death sentence down on his head.

Gather around, little ones, we're going to talk today about Church and State. Church is where you learn about God, and State, in its schools, is where you learn about reading and writing and mathematics and science. But some people get the two confused. One of them, a man named Mr. Huckabee, is seriously confused, because he said that all those children in Connecticut got killed because the State does not make us pray at school. What's that? Why would the school make you pray?

I will be assiduously praying for my Orioles to turn their recent fate around while they are off on their current road trip. There are many reasons why: They are our hometown team, we know they have talent, and they have their leader back in Miguel Tejada. Most importantly, though, is that I do not want to see the anonymous "bags" over fans' heads as optional clothing accoutrements when they return to Camden Yards. Patrick R. Lynch, Baltimore

Note: The music video above contains explicit language. Although it dropped in September, this loose track from Baltimore rapper Al Great recently got the video treatment, and it excels without much flash. "Pray I Make It" finds Al rapping in a stairwell without bodacious vixens, blinding jewelry (he brags about his Nixon watch) or any other accents. It's a fitting look for a no-nonsense rapper who spends the song decrying phonies, lamenting locked-up friends, showing respect to Baltimore rappers (Mullyman for getting on MTV and frequent collaborator Greenspan)

Private services will take place tomorrow for Marilyn M. Pray, retired director of program planning and economic development for Prince George's County.Mrs. Pray, of Carney, died yesterday morning at Good Samaritan Hospital after an apparent heart attack. She was 65.A native of Iowa, the former Marilyn Madden moved to Burbank, Calif., as a child. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Berkeley in 1956 and obtained a master's degree in city and regional planning in 1958 from the same institution.

I AM SITTING in church looking at the minister, but I am not listening. My mind has temporarily surrendered its spiritual responsibilities; I muse on the subject of verbal violence in our land.Liberal or conservative, small town or big city, powerless or powerful, we are after one another in a rhetorical war that is unprecedented in American history. Kindness and gentleness are absent. Tolerance is unknown.I ponder the role of the evangelical church in all of this. We meet weekly for worship as members of a local body of believers.

On the morning after the ground war began, the Rev. Edwin Ankeny stood before an altar adorned in purple, the symbol of Lent, and yellow, the symbol of support for American troops, and asked his congregation to pray "for our people and our troops as well as those on the other side."Then he asked, "If I pray for God to be on our side, what about all those others? If I pray for God to be on their side, what about us? If I pray for God to be on all our sides then such confusion ensues."Those questions were echoed yesterday in churches throughout the city as church leaders called upon members of their congregations not only to pray for peace and for guidance in a complex and emotional time, but also to consider the ramifications and paradoxes of war."

The members of the Rev. John Layton's country parish near Shelltown are mostly retirees who, unlike the area's watermen, fish merchants and chicken farmers, have been little affected by the problem of Pfiesteria piscicida.It is a hard-to-miss problem, nevertheless.Just down the road is the Fred Maddox family seafood business, which sounded the first alarms that something in the Pocomoke River seemed to be harming people and fish. Television news trucks and a stream of scientists and public health officers pass tiny Rehoboth Baptist Church on their way to the site where thousands of fish have died.

Nobody believed Liu Fang, born with half a heart and abandoned in a village west of Beijing, would survive long after being adopted by a Baltimore County family. Even the Bartlinskis, deeply religious Catholics, expected the girl's lungs would fail even if her heart could be repaired. Two years later, as the 5-year-old girl awaits a cardiac transplant, her parents, a Catonsville school and the family's parish are literally praying for a miracle. She is awaiting the procedure at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Returning to school a little shaken, some students walked in clusters behind their parents, while others went arm-in-arm. A few even took their parents' hands, as though they needed the same reassurance they had received in elementary school. At the front flagpole, the band kids, the football players and the chorus members melded together to pray for both the "sweet and kind" victim and the alleged assailant in the shooting at Perry Hall High School. Students came back Tuesday searching for ways to continue to heal a community they say has been drawn closer by the shooting inside their school.

Fortunately for us, we did not lose electricity during the freak storm. Yet I was saddened by the response of many of those who did lose electricity. Nobody and no company is prepared for all unexpected emergencies. The responses of those who lost electricity were understandable but off track. How many of them would have been willing to work from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. wearing protective gear in sweltering heat while handling live wires that could kill them in seconds? Had the customers called upon their spiritual resources and prayed and praised continually with grateful hearts, perhaps good things would have happened sooner.

Note: The music video above contains explicit language. Although it dropped in September, this loose track from Baltimore rapper Al Great recently got the video treatment, and it excels without much flash. "Pray I Make It" finds Al rapping in a stairwell without bodacious vixens, blinding jewelry (he brags about his Nixon watch) or any other accents. It's a fitting look for a no-nonsense rapper who spends the song decrying phonies, lamenting locked-up friends, showing respect to Baltimore rappers (Mullyman for getting on MTV and frequent collaborator Greenspan)

Last week after "sting" video surfaced of counselors at the Michele Bachmann's Minnesota clinic appearing to practice a discredited form of 'therapy" intended to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals, I predicted the film would haunt her on the campaign trail. That haunting has already begun -- and it is only one of several problems she is now having to contend with. Once the video made it onto ABC  News last week, Bachmann was under fire. The video, which was shotwith hidden cameras by a gay advocacy group,  appeared in reports by veteran investigative correspondent Brian Ross.

The Lord is no longer being invoked at Salisbury City Council meetings for now, though he just received a standing invitation to the gatherings of the Frederick County Commission. So goes the ever-fluctuating state of prayer at public meetings: Like the perennial disputes over displaying the Ten Commandments or a Nativity scene on public property, the practice of invoking the spiritual at meetings concerned with the more earthly issues of zoning or property taxes remains controversial in Maryland.

Baltimore Archbishop William H. Keeler asked a gathering of area Catholics yesterday to pray in preparation for the visit of Pope John Paul II.The archbishop celebrated Mass at the Baltimore Arena to wrap up a three-day conference designed to prepare area Catholics for the pontiff's scheduled visit to Baltimore next month."

Centenarian George Pray, a retired artist who lived alone until he was 99, drove until he was 95 and always voted the Republican ticket, died Dec. 31 of pneumonia at the Meridian Nursing Center-Severna Park.The longtime Catonsville resident, who moved to the center in 1992, was 103.Born in Binghamton, N.Y., Mr. Pray moved to Baltimore as a child and attended city schools. He graduated from City College in 1908 and from the Maryland Institute in 1913.A technical illustrator, he worked at about 20 jobs before he joined the Bendix Corp.

You quoted one of the participants in last week's National Day of Prayer event in Bel Air as saying that "this is like patriotism and spiritual work combined" ("Dozens gather in Bel Air to observe National Day of Prayer", May 6). The singing of the National Anthem and "America the Beautiful" at the Bel Air event highlighted the quasi-religious character of American patriotism. The "One-hundred Percent American" campaign of the World War I era unleashed a wave of enforced conformity that, ironically, shredded the Bill of Rights.

As a mayor tormented by the issues of office, William Donald Schaefer sought the silence and solace of the church in downtown Baltimore where his funeral will be held Wednesday. Alone, Schaefer turned to the traditional act of kneeling in prayer to confront vexing problems, such as how to keep the Baltimore Colts from leaving town. In the dim interior of Old St. Paul's, the oldest congregation in Baltimore — whose members included Revolutionary War figures John Eager Howard and Samuel Chase — Schaefer weighed how to deal with his personal thorns.