By RAY WADDLE

Recently I attended a graveside ceremony, the strangest ever.

People gathered silently around the freshly dug hole while the clergyman led prayers.

But there was no coffin. There was no deceased.

Instead, the clergyman, a rabbi, placed a stack of old hymnals, prayer books and loose sheets of text into the burial site. What the materials had in common was they were old and tattered, ready for discarding.

And this: They all contained the word God.

In Jewish tradition, the divine name is so sacred that any printed works containing “God” must be discarded with reverence when the time comes.

Leaving the service that day, I felt ashamed. I could not stop thinking how casually the word God is used, and slurred, in the furious world beyond that gravesite.

We are awash, ironically, in pious God-talk. Think of how many world headlines erupt everyday because of actions in the name of God. Violence is globally justified in the name of the Lord. Legal showdowns escalate over the place of God in public life. Politicians are expected now to talk publicly and easily about their faith in the Almighty.

Turn the channel, and there stands the corporate-minded onslaught of cursing in God’s name in movies and on cable TV.

Omigod! as teenage girls say coast to coast.

Whether this divine discourse is motivated by heartfelt passion, cynical motives, higher ratings or thoughtless habit, one thing is clear. The result is not a climate of devotion and reverence but the opposite – a deflation of the divine name, a cheapening of the sacred.

As a kid, I learned what everybody learned: Don’t say the Lord’s name in vain. It’s there in the Third Commandment.

In those days, this meant one thing – don’t curse using God’s name. (Everybody knows the two-word curse.)

But all this chattiness about the Almighty -- each river of blood in the Mideast and everywhere else, flowing because “God is on my side” -- screams out that taking the name of the Almighty in vain is not limited to a curse word. The sacred name is vainly used whenever anyone gives no real thought to what it means to call on the Eternal Spirit or live up to divine hopes of healing the world.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” prayed someone who knew.