And If I Die Before I Wake: Now Hold on Just a Minute!

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; And if I die before I wake -- Now hold on there. Why not extract the intended meaning of if I die before I wake by saying instead, if I die in my sleep. Because you won't wake if you die. Waking won't even meet your horizon.

The semantics may be nitpicky but here's the thing -- the written word is confusing enough to many readers. The closer a writer gets to the exactitude of his meaning, the better the chance that a reader will grasp his intention. On the other hand, no matter what the writer intends, perception is always in the eye of the believer.

So, even if if I die in my sleep should work for the religious follower who believes death begets everlasting afterlife or even if it works for the agnostic who believes death begets oblivion -- should he be caught praying -- the liberal spiritualist might prefer, if I fully awaken to my metaphysical Self while my manifest body lies sleeping. And the believer in a karmic cycle who suspects he has become enlightened and thus supposes this is his last life of many lives may say, If I lose my individual Self to the boundless unmanifest All That Is...

As for the last sentence of the 18th century prayer, I pray the Lord my soul to take, which implies a time lapse between releasing the physical body and transporting the soul -- a pause perhaps in which the Supreme Being deliberates on the soul's worthiness and thence pronounces its eternal fate -- the religious follower will maintain that it, the last sentence, is precise in its meaning. But it is in fact vague.

Hence, a religious man's last words might more aptly be, I pray the Lord I go to Heaven to sit by His throne or I pray the Lord I don't go to Hell to burn with the Devil or I pray the Lord I don't go to Purgatory to put up with excruciating punishment and piercing pain as I purify for God knows how long even though I no longer have a physical body that can feel pain but my spirit apparently can. Here, however, an agnostic would indeed part company from the religious and simply say, I shall be nevermore.