That's Weird, Right?

Despite spending all of Lent so far meditating on the call, grace carrying through difficulty, and scoffing at holy figures...I raised one very skeptical eyebrow at the prayer in today's morning staff meeting.

It was a meditation that started with stuff that I could get behind.

Lord grant me your grace even when it's the last class  or the 5th meeting of the day.

Even when it's almost Spring Break and literally everyone in the room can taste it.

But then it moved to something I found suspicious.

[Grant me to want to be better] not for a raise or to win that teaching award or even for a thank you.

I see what that meditation is trying to say.  I really do.  But am I the only one who thinks that's a really, really weird thing to say to employees at a staff meeting (the same week contracts go out no less) even with the best of intentions?

There's a version of religion that feeds into some people's beliefs that it was/is a method of controlling the population.   And "don't seek earthly reward" is a message that your boss just shouldn't be the one to deliver.

But it feels like a step in the wrong direction to be suspicious all the time.  To have such high standards that a sincere theology department director who clearly didn't hear the poem the way I did makes me a bit hostile instead of taking the inspiration as it was clearly intended.

For carrying less about the message than the packaging of the messenger.  Like the people of Nazareth -- uninterested in the truth from the boy who they'd see run around skinning his knees with the other boys.

God grant me a less cynical heart.