No One Prays for Recharge

Petition and Its Objects in a Dry District's Intercession Book

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions reads, in the order they were written, the 388 petitions concerning water in one unnamed congregation's intercession book across the 127 Sundays of a dry spell. The petitions for rain grow from a single word into statements of depth, rate, paddock and date, which the essay reads as a congregation itemising what its prayer had always meant; none of them asks that the aquifer the town drinks from be restored, and the essay argues that a petition needs an answer that can arrive on a day.

@misc{slop_ixja8o,
  author       = {Vigdis Emenike},
  title        = {No One Prays for Recharge: Petition and Its Objects in a Dry District's Intercession Book},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.ixja8o},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-close-reading-ixja8o/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}