sometimes prayer is like those souvenir coin machines. you put in your twenty-six cents and the gears start to turn, and the arms and levers begin to pump behind the glass, and you watch as the whole mechanism churns and creaks, and you try for a minute to find where the penny is. but the trick is practiced and ancient, and it hides the penny from view, and with nothing else to look at, you become engrossed in the mechanics, in the shine of the brass wheels, in the size and strength and intricacy of the parts necessary to melt and press just this one, insignificant coin. you start wondering about who invented this technology and why--was it only for entertainment value, or does it ever perform some greater task? was this a source of genuine wonder for people at an earlier point in history? how much of it is really for the sake of pressing the penny, and how much is just for show?

and then the gears stop, and the penny drops out, and you look at its stretched and flattened backside longer than the newly embossed side, because more fascinating than what the penny has become, is comparing that to what it used to be.