I am not a believer of any faith, and the most common prayer you can hear from my voice is "pass the salt". However, I claim I have the right to have my own opinion on what is worth praying for.
Praying for oneself or one's beloved relatives or friends is too selfish an occupation to deserve my attention. Praying for the world in general, for world peace, or for the human race, on the other hand, sounds a bit too ambitious for any single voice. There must be a middle ground.

And indeed there is. I think the tragedy that unfolds in the galleries below the Atacama desert in northern Chile deserves the attention of those of you who think they have other means except purely material ones to save people's lives. 33 miners are stuck 700 meters underground, in a copper and gold mine, buried by a landslide that shut off their way out. They are alive, but it will take at least four months to get them out of there, according to official estimates.

Such stories are unfortunately not so uncommon, so despite their tragedy they seldom make headlines any longer. 21st century Man still relies on sending slaves underground to dig the good stuff out. And while safety procedures and equipment have improved in the course of the last two hundred years, they are of course insufficient in some cases.

After the incident two weeks ago, the 33 men of Atacama found shelter in one of the refuges along the mine, and there they got access to oxygen and food. A probe has now reached them, and they have been able to send up a paper message with the news that they are alive and united. A wider probe will dig its way down to provide the men with more supplies, but it will take a very long time to rescue them.

Two weeks in the heat and chill of the underground shelter must have already been a strain for the miners, but four months appear an impossibly long time to spend there. So if you are short of requests for your God, think of them.