HB ficlet: Ineffable [Posner, general]
Title: Ineffable Author: celandineb Fandom: History Boys Character: Posner Rating: general Length: 210 words Summary: Posner has never learned how to pray. Note: For emiime who asked for Posner, prayer.
Posner has never learned how to pray. Oh, he's learned prayers -- all of the prescribed ones for this, that, and the other occasion -- but when he recites them it is a mouthing of the words only. Those prayers give him no sense of communication or even connection to the god to whom they are supposedly offered.
For a time he wondered if that might be because he is queer. He knows that according to some interpretations, being bent in his sexual preferences makes him divinely unacceptable, but he finally dismisses that idea. A god who let him be born this way and yet condemned him for it is no god in whom Posner can believe. He doesn't think it has anything to do with his family's lack of orthodoxy in religious practice, either, because he has seen his mother pray, seen the look of peace on her face when she has finished, and he is certain that she feels her prayers are heard at those moments.
Perhaps one day, he thinks, he will talk to Scripps about it. Scripps is the only boy he knows who might not laugh at the question. Even if their faiths are different, there is still a commonality in their longing to understand those traditions.