Connection between prayer, morality?

While reading the “Sounding Off” responses to an assistant football coach’s suspension whose team prayed at games, I noticed that people who commented blamed all sinful practices on the removal of prayer in school.

When I went to school, the class had to memorize prayers and recite them daily under threat of being hit with some wooden instrument. We uttered the words we didn’t understand dutifully because we were afraid.

I hardly see any connection between that practice and morality in this country.

Perhaps they’ve forgotten the Ku Klux Klan and their torturing and murdering of black people, women being imprisoned for attempting to vote, the Salem witch burnings, the savagery of uncontrolled organized crime, the free tormenting and physically harming of gay people with no repercussions, and other atrocities too numerous to mention. Most wars throughout the world are religion based. And even as the holocaust took place all the while people were praying.

I do believe, however, that in a free country, nobody, including Joe Kennedy and his team, should be prohibited from praying if they freely choose to do so and he should not be subjected to any punishment. any issue to generate the support of wealthy individuals (and certainly many “deep-pocketed” individuals would have stood to deepen their pockets had the pipeline been built), when are we going to begin assigning more importance to leaving behind a more habitable, less polluted planet than to the creation of what amounted to a relatively few long-term jobs? When are we going to stop measuring every political decision simply by how many jobs are created or lost while failing to measure the real and serious damage we are doing to the world our children and grandchildren will have to live in?

It is time to start thinking about them and stop thinking about us.

• Accept help from professionals. Home healthcare and hospice typically are covered when medically warranted. These folks can answer questions, note changes in condition, educate and provide medical equipment, and even give a hug.

• Do things for yourself. Exercise. See friends. Take the dog for a walk. Join a support group. Go to the doctor when you need to!

Remember that caregiving is one of the toughest jobs there is; don’t underestimate the importance of your role.