It's been years since a stranger has offered to pray for me. The last time it happened, I was living in Lynchburg, Va., which is sort of like Jerry Falwell's base of operations, his right-wing HQ. I was sitting on a curb outside of the mall—there was just that one mall—frowning, smoking, eating jelly beans, picking at the rubber sole of my shoe, drawing on my hand, some combination of those things. A young woman in a yellow twin set moved into view. She touched my wrist. "I'll pray for you," she said.
   I don't know why she wanted to pray for me. Maybe she was getting out of her car and thinking about socks or potatoes or her husband and—suddenly, inexplicably, naturally—another thought occurred to her: I will pray for the next person I see. Guileless.
   Maybe. I've always assumed that she chose me because I looked existentially angry. My disaffected teenager stage was a little slow on the uptake; I didn't really hit sixteen until a few months before my twentieth birthday. When sixteen finally did explode, it did so with the full force of something that had been bottlenecked for half a decade.
   At nineteen, I was acned and full of absurd ideas about the power and possibility of atheistic fury. Like a lot of teenagers, I wanted everything I did to be connected, organically, to my anger, because my anger made me different and, when I was nineteen, there was nothing I wanted more than to be different. What really captured my imagination was the notion that I was so fundamentally pissed off that I was branded; that somehow the woman in the twin set recognized, on an almost telepathic level, that I was a fierce and negative force.
   The woman walked away well before I could sort out my feelings about the incident. I was satisfied, to a degree: ostensibly, I was strange enough to attract her attention, a lightning rod for disdain. At the same time, I was appalled at the suggestion that I needed the help of someone else's god. I was still unfamiliar with religious people who were so aggressive about their faith. I was raised in a complacent, goutish Lutheran church—there were lackadaisical potlucks, vague sermons, craft projects, donuts. There was no holy rolling or catching the spirit or full-body baptism, which I now think is unfortunate. Perhaps I'd have a higher opinion of organized religion if I'd been raised by people who could quake and spasm like indie-rock guitarists. But no. No pyretic possession. Not much talk about spreading the message, either; consequently, I didn't have any framework for understanding the woman in the twin set. And because I was a lazy thinker and biased, I decided that any offer to pray for someone was presumptuous and creepy. Then I wondered if the woman in yellow would make good on her promise.

I've been working retail for about a year now; long enough that I spend most of my day feeling sort of heavy-lidded and anesthetized. A few days ago, I helped a woman with a lush accent. Her words sounded rich and heavy, like they were unfolding; I remember thinking, "Man, I need an accent." I helped her find a CD; she bought a book about flags and told me that I'd been most helpful. And then, smiling: "I'll say a prayer for you."
   When I thanked her, it was sincere. I didn't use my retail voice.
   I don't get tips; sometimes people leave their pennies on the counter. Frequently customers ask me to throw away gum wrappers, receipts, Kleenex, and other things that modern people keep in pockets and purses. Given the choice between a friendly prayer and a piece of someone's pocket lint, I'll take the prayer.
   I told a friend that I dug the flag lady's offer, and my friend said I was going soft. So be it. I still don't believe in God. And, not incidentally, I don't believe in the power of positive thinking, let alone the power of prayer. But I like the idea of a stranger wishing pleasant things on me, thinking that I deserve a little good fortune. I don't frequently get unsolicited approval from friends or strangers. Most of us don't. And so, lately, I've been thinking that if I were the praying kind, I'd pray a whole hell of a lot. I'd do it with an accent, just to make it special. And I'd pray for everyone—not just girls with black fingernails and big boots.

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