2.3 How 'bout remembering your divinity?

So it turns out that if you aren't threatened with mortar fire, and you're an atheist, it's really hard to pray. Like, really, really, mind-explodingly hard.

I just can't bring a God into the picture. He (or she, for that matter) just isn't there, on the line, listening in. I can't make it happen. I might as well be dialing up the big purple monster in my closet, because that's how seriously and earnestly I can take sending a prayer to God.

Every time I tried to say my own prayer, I felt like I was fabricating something and thus, didn't need to take the project seriously. Maybe it's like when you were so terribly in love with someone once, and then years after you've fallen out and you try to regain the feeling you can't. I don't remember what it felt like to believe in God, not really, because I've so historically situated and academified and broken free from the concept. God used to look at me and shake his head disapprovingly, but then I took off his mask and realized it was just my conscience.

Karma may make just as little sense as God in a cosmic sense, but somehow I find it much easier to play along. My sister, who first brought scary, black-hole atheism into my good-and-evil childhood, explained this belief to me previously: if you have a really bad day, you are owed an equally good day. If I do nice things, nice things are coming my way. If I'm an evil bitch, I have some lessons to learn. Balance.

Maybe it was the trip to India. The spiritual epicenter of the world begets karma and mantras, and I can get behind mantras. Which is why me and the Prayer of Saint Francis click. "Make me a channel of your peace," I instruct myself. Who's your? The universe, the wisdom, the possible. I get a little squeamish with the later "O master, grant that I may never seek," as I find the self-flagellating master-slave dichotomy somewhat less inspiring. But I can go on to "It is in pardoning that we are pardoned" and absorb the message as greatly human and compassionate. We are engaging with morality, and pardoning ourselves. And that is, in my opinion, so much more moving.

The verdict:

• Mantras in, personal prayers out (for the heathens). Those are for the blog.