Take Care For What You Pray
Take Care for What You Pray.
A technical defense and spiritual analysis of a precise prayer.
The top of the page reads deep in black ink, a warning, a word of caution. Take Care for What You Pray, and the prayer, it was spoken like this.
Oh!
Would that I could sing like Doc Watson!
And.
Have the smell of a dog!
First: Prologue - the language of firearms and tongues.
The headline reads like a gun safety warning, but instead of a trigger, it's a tongue.
Instead of a bullet, it's a prayer. Point blank, it tells us. Take care for what you pray.
This is not ornamental phrasing. It's a command. Not just to be cautious, but to take responsibility for what you pray into the world.
Because the thing about a prayer is, if it works, it works literally.
What comes next is a machine of longing, delicate in its timing, exact in its mechanics.
Oh! Would that I could sing like Doc Watson!
And.
Have the smell of a dog!
Oh!
Would that I could sing like Doc Watson!
And.
Have the smell of a dog!
This is not a poem. This is not a dream.
This is a contract, filed in heaven or somewhere deeper, and it deserves to be honored word for word.
So let us proceed, left to right, top to bottom, through every gear of this device, and demonstrate why this prayer, exactly as it stands, is not just beautiful, but correct.
The Invocation
The first line is the open gate.
Oh!
No subject, no predicate, just the unfiltered rupture of desire. This is the deep inhale of the soul, the sharp breath before language, the tectonic shudder before a name is spoken.
The exclamation mark matters.
It transforms the Oh! from a hollow moan into a signal flare. It says, something's coming. I need this.
I'm calling from the place beneath speech. This is what every real prayer sounds like before it's spoken. Before grammar, before intention, there's the groan, the divine syllable of opening.
The first request: Would that I could sing like Doc Watson.
This is where the prayer begins to spin.
Would that I could sing like Doc Watson!
To the casual ear, it sounds like a compliment. To the trained ear, it is a summoning. The name Doc Watson carries weight.
He was born blind, raised in Appalachia, self-taught. He played guitar like his fingers were solving ancient riddles. He sang not from his throat, but from somewhere after suffering.
To ask to sing like Doc Watson is not to ask for fame. It's to ask for feel. It's to ask for truth transmission through vibration.
And here's the key. This prayer doesn't ask to be Doc Watson. It asks to sing like him.
That difference is structural. This is not about mimicry. It's about inheritance of condition.
It's about embodying the internal physics that produce that kind of tone. You do not get to sing like Doc without enduring Doc's silence. You do not get his voice without his blind man's ear.
So what the speaker is saying, knowingly or not, is this -
Let me lose my distraction.
Let me learn to listen with nothing but skin and bone.
Let me sing from a place of pain so deep it distills into honey.
This is a surgical request and the prayer gets it right.
The pivot, AND.
This word gets overlooked, but in machine design the hinge is everything. AND. This is not an addition, it's a fold.
It links two different technologies, song, the capacity to release truth, scent, the capacity to locate it. One is expressive, one is perceptive.
Together they make a whole system find the hidden, sing it into being.
The and is the welding torch that fuses desire into function.
The second request: Have the smell of a dog!
Now the prayer goes deep.
Have the smell of a dog. This is the line that throws people, but it shouldn't. It's the sharpest tool in the box.
Let's get one thing clear. The speaker does not say, smell like a dog. He says, have the smell of a dog.
This is a request for perception, not emission.
It is a longing for the instrument that dogs are born with.
A dog's nose isn't just strong, it's dimensional.
They can smell a single fingerprint on a brick wall days after it's left. Smell storms, cancers, seizures, sorrow. Smell the past, the future, the molecular truth of the now.
So what is the speaker really asking?
Let me perceive the world beyond sight.
Let me detect the invisible melodies.
Let me sense the song before it's sung.
Let me know what's really here, even when it hides.
This is a dangerous prayer, because once you smell it, you can't unknow it.
The scent doesn't wash off. The trail doesn't stop. You will follow it until the end.
Why this is a good thing.
Let's return to your demand. Tell me why this is a good thing.
Here's why.
Because this is the prayer of someone who does not want magic. This is the prayer of someone who wants the right tools to detect truth and express it honestly.
To sing like Doc Watson is not to be admired. It's to carry a frequency that heals or cuts or restores or calls the dead back to listening.
To have the smell of a dog is not to sniff flowers. It's to detect the hidden wound, the lost trail, the fine melody under the noise of men.
This is a prayer that asks to do no harm, but to do no lying either. It is a prayer for awareness, not escape.
For craft, not power.
For truth, not spectacle.
It says, Let me see nothing and smell everything.
Let me be struck blind and still sing what I've learned in the dark.
Let me know the world as it really is.
Let me give it back in tune.
That's why this is good, because most people ask to feel good. This speaker asks to feel true.
What could go wrong and why it's still worth it?
This prayer is not without risk, and it knows it. The headline is the insurance policy.
Take care for what you pray.
You may get the voice, but not the audience.
You may get the nose, but not the map.
You may become so sensitive, so accurate, so clear in perception and sound, that you no longer belong in the world you're singing to.
And still, it's worth it. Because some people were born to be tuning forks, not performers.
To be hounds for beauty, not pets for praise.
And this prayer recognizes that vocation.
It's not asking for reward.
It's asking for readiness.
Closing argument.
Why you don't touch this prayer. Do not edit this prayer. Do not soften it.
Do not sand it down to fit a greeting card or a lyric sheet. Because what's here is not accidental. The Oh! is the divine horn.
The name Doc Watson is the calibration point. The phrase have the smell of a dog is the hidden power clause. The 'and' is the weld.
This thing was built to work, not just as a poem, not just as a prayer, but as a precision instrument for spiritual invocation.
It will do what it says. So yes, take care for what you pray.
But also, let this prayer stand, because some of us still need to sing like Doc Watson, and some of us were born to follow the scent of songs before they exist.