HOMER, Alaska:

Pastafarian prayer opens meeting.

A pastor wearing a colander on his head offered the opening prayer on behalf of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to open a local government meeting in Alaska, the latest blessing from a nontraditional church since a court ruling.

Barrett Fletcher, the Pastafarian pastor, noted the duties performed by the members of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly in his Tuesday message, adding a few of them “seem to feel they can’t do the work without being overseen by a higher authority, “ Kenai radio station KSRM reported Wednesday.

“So, I’m called to invoke the power of the true inebriated creator of the universe, the drunken tolerator (sic) of the all lesser and more recent gods, and maintainer of gravity here on earth. May the great Flying Spaghetti Monster rouse himself from his stupor and let his noodly appendages ground each assembly member in their seats,” Fletcher said.

The only people who stood for the invocation were those without seats in the standing-room-only assembly hall in Homer, which is about 125 miles south of Anchorage.