Deus Ex Machina

It was always in the morning, before work, that I would take a detour into St Martin's Parish Church. It had become routine, like my sunrise jog or the purchase of the telegraph. I had been there every morning for the past sixty days. Yet it still felt absurd when I looked at the cross, closed my eyes and tried to pray.

I work in the oil industry. When you do that the world isnât six thousand years old and it wasnât made in six days. Everything is rational. Everything is measurable. Everything can be hypothesized and falsified yet here I was, 8am, every day, praying to a supernatural God. Itâs idiotic, itâs irrational, itâs wishful thinking but I needed to know: Why? Why did it come to this?
When Maggie died there was nothing else. I needed a reason. We were married for just two years, together for six. Why did she die of difficulties in child birth? Why was the most joyous decision we ever made as a couple the decision that killed her?