i live in an apartment complex that has water issues/and every now and then we dwellers get an e-mail/saying that the water has been shut off temporarily

last night i found not by e-mail/but by a gurgling sound and no water/that it was happening again

and the timing was awful/because i had yuck on my hands/and needed to wash them

i handled that crisis by using the drinking water in the fridge to wash/depleting my potable water supply by about a third

but another crisis began to loom/that of a growing need to answer the “call of nature”

and it seemed to me that the middle of the night between sunday at 10:26pm and dawn monday morning would not see a renewal of water service

consequently and from desperation/i created an ad-hoc religion called the Church of Immediate Needs/central to which dogma was the proposition that the presiding deity or reality-aspect or supernaturally-powered listener would prioritize prayer by immediacy of need weighted by relative outrageousness of request/and if the need were sufficiently immediate and the request sufficiently modest/it would stand an excellent chance of being answered in the affirmative

and having formed this religion immediately prayed that water would fill the toilet tank after i flushed and if possible would also resume gush-on-command from shower head and faucets

and then fell into mildly troubled sleep/and woke at the urgent message from my body’s evacuation system/sent at 3:57am

and stumbled to the bathroom sink and manipulated the faucet control

and LO AND BEHOLD like a car engine cold-starting the spigot sputtered and coughed/but then gushed blessed and holy WATER

and i was able to take care of business

.

so now there is a new church…or is there?

perhaps our own bodies have their own Church of Immediate Needs

and “Gotta go! NOW!!”

is a prayer