One of the more memorable prayers I ever heard was one of Gillian’s. We were living in Scarsdale at the time. It was 17 July 1995. We’d asked her to say grace. This is what she said.

“Dear God, thank you for this Sloppy Joe; but I am not going to thank you for these carrots and I am not going to thank you for this salad. Amen.”

No pretense. No pulled punches. One thinks of Edgar and the penultimate lines of King Lear:

The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.