I've been reading about the economic bailout Washington is trying to put together, and the creeping partisanship which - last week, when things were at critical mass - was supposedly not going to play into their solutions.

Washington seems to be run by a bunch of sad clowns who have no idea what the heck they're doing. Or, frightening thought - maybe they know exactly what they're doing, and it's all subtext that we don't get.

I'm not feeling especially confident. In anyone. Today at Adoration, I wondered if it was right to pray for our economic situation; and then I thought - may be downright necessary.

The prayer, of course, must be for wisdom, and the guidance to know the path God would have us travel. But I suspect there has to be some "Lord, have mercy on us," pentitential prayer, too, and a bit of fasting.

Ewwww...fasting. I'm so bad at it. It's such a serious thing to do, and I think often we're intimidated by serious actions, in the same way that we are intimidated (or avoiding) of intimacy. There is an intimacy to fasting that calls for the direct gaze.

But I'm going to begin tomorrow; not a harrowing fast, involving low-blood sugar and all that. I'm intending more of a mindset of denuding and denial throughout the day, of "offering it up," and for more than a day.

Serious times call for serious prayer. And I've never been less confident in the mortal men and women elected to leadership of this nation than I am this week.