holy is as holy does...

As a teenager I sat in the alto section of the choir next to my friend Mike Amsden. Our pastor, Brother Kannon, was a wonderful, caring minister and a well intentioned preacher. Out of boredom with the spoken word, we would read our hymnals. The games (add the phrase "between the sheets" to hymn titles... Amazing Grace Between the Sheets, How Tedious and Tasteless the Hours Between the Sheets) kept us entertained for awhile. Then I began reading the third verses of the hymns. In our church we sang the first, second and fourth stanzas of hymns. The only exceptions to this rule were "Blest be The Tie That Binds", "Just As I Am" and "Amazing Grace". Sitting in that choir loft with a short burgundy velvet curtain separating the choir from the pulpit, I began a career of reading hymns.
We have a new hymnal in our UCC denominational life. Inclusive language, new tunes, new words to old tunes, short histories of each hymn written at the bottom of the page. Reading this hymnal has been interesting. I noticed something yesterday when I was looking for hymns about prayer. My old shaped note hymnals have many songs with prayer in the title... Sweet Hour of Prayer, Did You Think To Pray?, ‘Tis The Blessed Hour of Prayer, Prayer Is The Soul’s Sincere Desire. My new hymnal has seventeen hymns in the prayer section, five of them old hymns, three spirituals and nine new songs. In my old Pilgrim’s hymnal and Broadman hymnal there are twenty eight prayer hymns. All the old hymnals in my collection have a generous section of songs devoted to prayer. Makes me wonder...
One of my favorite prayer hymns is "My Prayer", a petition in music. The words... More holiness give me, more striving within; More patience in suffering, more sorrow for sin; More faith in my Saviour, more sense of His care; More joy in His service, more purpose in prayer.
I don’t ask for holiness much in my praying. This hymn reminds me to start there, with holiness and striving within. Prayer is not a passive activity with an unseen outcome. Holiness... the lively connection to the Holy One, the characteristic that marks true believers in all faith traditions, is a hard won paradox of gift and work. One does not become holy by just asking. All the holy people I have known have become holy through struggle and pain and suffering and hard work. Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu... these traditions all have holy ones and none of them became holy by sitting around and waiting on holiness to descend from on high. All holy ones, whether social activists or cloistered monks, share the inward striving that is required to transcend our cluttered souls. We start with holiness and we can move mountains. We are able to see clearly the pain and suffering that comes with being human in an imperfect world, grieve our losses and failures without losing our way, burning up in the scorching heat of poverty and predjuidice and starvation and war and sickness and death. Our Christian service begins with our commitment to holiness, from our sure knowledge of Jesus’ care. There is the joy... we are loved and cared for so we care for others, doing for the least among us because we have been redeemed, set apart, called to prayer with a purpose.
It is easy to be consumed with righteous causes and passionate oratory and political activism. Preachers and prophets come and go, sometimes with their clay feet showing. Causes shift with the passage of time. Politics have always been a fickle field. Like Peter, my response to Jesus is "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God". John 6:69 If I answer Jesus’ call to follow, I must become a holy one of God also. So today, I pray for holiness in my soul... holiness that comes with inward striving and outward joy... holiness that leads to service as an expression of gratitude for the care I have been given... holiness that is refreshed and sustained through the circle of continuous purposeful prayer. Let us pray...

prayers, pray-ers and grace

I have been "praying without ceasing" for the past twenty four hours, one of those please, please, please prayers. So when I woke up early this morning, my morning prayer examined my praying. I have two kinds of prayer, thank you prayers and please prayers. Yesterday was a day full of both.
As I woke to the sound of the telephone in the night and my oldest daughter’s voice telling me they were grounded in Italy, her tears kicked my pray-er in gear. Her sons are anxious to see her and she is ready to be home. I e-mailed my friend who prays with me and asked her to pray especially for Megan. Mama drove up for our morning check-in and I gave thanks for having her near while I prayed for Judy whose mom is dying. I prayed for Lisa who is grieving her mom’s death still. When I sat down to write I prayed for my friend Cindy who is writing a book of healing and exploration. On my drive into town, I passed by Tina and Vince’s house. She was at dialysis and his cancer has returned. I sent prayers of blessing winging through space to the dialysis center where they waited to come home. At supper that night, we said grace, a word of thanks for the food on our table, for the friends and family we love, for the farm garden that grew the vegetables we were eating. And so it was all day, full of prayers.
My friend Pitts and I had a conversation about prayer some years ago. She said she had changed her mind about prayer as she got older and smarter. As she began her career as a religious professional, she wasn’t sure prayer did any good for any one except the pray-er. Now she believed in prayer and its unseen power... still unsure of how or when prayer worked. Most of us give lip service to prayer but don’t really believe in it. If we did, we would be more cautious in our praying.
Telling someone you pray is risky business. Many in my generation, the sixties kids, were raised on a steady diet of close your eyes and pray... bedtime prayers, grace at the table, public prayers at ball games and in church. But Viet Nam and the Civil Rights struggle, assassinations of president and presidential candidate and civil rights leader, riots in our cities and the distrust of our political system seemed beyond the power of our prayer. And yet... what else could I do but pray? I couldn’t be Jesus and bring the dead soldiers back to life. I couldn’t give the garbage collectors in Memphis a fair wage. I couldn’t quiet the flames of hatred and fear in the cities. But I could pray. So I did, quietly. I didn’t want anyone to think I was one of those uneducated, irrational believers. I got older and some wiser... think what you will... I pray. I talk about prayer with my friends. I have "prayer partners"(remember that phrase?) And we, like children determined to be heard, pester God with our prayers, trusting God our Father and Mother, will eventually respond.
The power of focused energy sent spinning out into the time and space continuum towards God must make a difference since nothing in creation is destroyed, only transformed. These winged petitions and grace-full sighs make their way to the Source of All Being, One who Cares, and as I am transformed by the act of praying, I believe God is also transformed. God must be renewed by the loving belief that comes as we pray our way through our lives. I am unutterably grateful for the practice and power of prayer. Wherever two or three are gathered together...

Cat Square on a Sunday afternoon...

We pulled into the Cat Square Superette with the trailer tire smoking. Twenty minutes earlier we had picked up a load of hay and were headed back home to the farm. The drought has been so bad we only got one cutting of hay, not enough to feed the cows all winter, and there is none to be had in our part of the state. So there we were in the parking lot of this superette on a Sunday afternoon, two hours at least from home, our covenant group coming over at seven p.m., broken down in the middle of Cat Square, N.C. The middle was about all there was to Cat Square... a crossroad with a closed service station on one side and a superette on the other. For those of you who have not been to a superette, it is a small grocery store much like the one I went to with my grandmother in Walkerton, Virginia. There is a meat market in the back, drink coolers on one side and frozen food on the other. The aisles in between carry the necessities of life... dog food, nuts, bolts and nails, bread and cookies, juice and vegetables, soup, movies to rent.
Michael went into the store to ask for help. A few minutes later he came out and said "You have to see this"! I went in and spent time looking through the aisles, watching and listening as I drank my Yoohoo and ate butter cookies (on sale for fifty cents). The butcher/cook/owner and helper were cleaning up behind the meat counter. Potato soup was simmering on the stove for the lunch crowd on Monday. Sirloin was on sale. People came and went, were greeted by name, questions were asked and answered. The cashier sat at her place in the front of the store, smoking her cigarette and talking on the phone while she made change. Out front, three African American guys laughed and joked, greeting other folks as they drove up. A young man, lonesome and looking for a new audience, began to tell me his life story. People came and went, greeting each other, men tipping their hats, women offering hugs and waves. Everybody seemed to know who everybody else was. And there we were, Samaritans with our ox in a ditch (excuse the mixed Biblical metaphor, please). The owner made a few calls to people he knew and soon help was on the way.
As I sat there listening to Dave tell me his woes (ex-wife on crack, raising 4 year old daughter alone, left NASCAR job to be at home with her and can’t find work, found Jesus last November and life has been getting better, job interview this week), I felt at home. These strangers had taken us in, offered help on a Sunday afternoon, provided for us. When you are far from home, broken down and unable to help yourself, kindness and community become an immediate necessity that cannot be purchased at a superette. But, there it was and it was freely offered.
As we drove up our driveway, our group sat on the deck watching the moon, sharing the holy, looking for a new direction for our gathering. We were hugged and clucked over as we settled in and caught up. Michael told the story of our afternoon in Cat Square and something clicked for us all. We wanted what they had... community... and we wanted to experience this with each other and with God. As we talked about a new name for our group, the word "homecoming" mattered to many because they felt that described what they want to do... come home to themselves and to God. But the story tickled our funny bones so we decided on a new name. The Homecoming Group a.k.a. The Cat Square Superette Bridge Club Parlor Dancing Society. That just about covers it all. Maybe Tee shirts are in our future. So for our next meeting Pat Parker, our designated question asker, will help us assemble an altar with holy objects we bring. Every time we meet, a new altar will be built. We are bringing our Ark of the Covenant to life, to our shared lives. We will have communion every time we meet, sing and pray as we depart to our separate lives, bound by the same ties that bind the folks in Cat Square, N.C., the ties of loving community. Home, sweet home...