Norman Spinrad At Large

                                       AN AGNOSTIC’S PRAYER                                                by Norman Spinrad               agnostic (common definition): someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in God               gnosis:literally knowledge               gnosis mystical and philosophical definition: direct experience of the transcendent               gnostic: one who believes that faith or the acquisition thereof must be based on such                 direct interior gnosis rather than dogma or scripture.    As I write this I’m sitting in a hospital bed with stomach cancer after a serious setback, and because of who I am, all I’ve written for four decades, and my connection to extensive networks of good and caring people all over the world, I know, because they have told me, that many people, some believing Christians, Jews, maybe Muslims, are praying for me to the versions of God in which they have the sort of faith that I do not, some like me, agnostics,

                 This is more or less self-explanatory, written in real-time on my laptop, first at home, then from a hospital bed, and posted in real-time to a group email of friends and on Facebook, hence raw and repetative, but I believe, useful and honest in original form except for spelling check.    I think AN AGNOSTIC'S PRAYER may be of free-standing interest itself independent of the personal story which finds me writing this, having created this blog, still recovering, but, not 100% cured and in for some more chemotherapy, so I will post that separately too.            March 23        I have been diagnosed with stomach cancer and told that it is presently inoperable due to involvement of a mesentery lymph node, and my only chance to even live out the year is to undergo prior chemotherapy of one kind or another to shrink the secondary in order to make the primary operable.      I’m in the hands of Sloan-Kettering, which is supposed to be the best there is at least i