The U-cal-peetus Tree or The Eucalyptus Tree?

I love to wallow in words. Some of my best childhood memories include words... Daddy teaching me to read, making up silly words, a song, "The U-cal-peetus Tree" sung by Rosemary Clooney, the word game in Reader’s Digest, books checked out every week from our Carnegie Library, laughing at the old time pronunciation of some common words. One of my favorite classes in high school, taught by the slow speaking Mrs. Adams, was American literature. I devoured the text book readings in one week and then had to suffer through the rest of the school year as we dissected the meaning and construction of each piece. The one college course I remember with clarity, that has been a continuous part of my life, was a course on T.S. Eliot and his poetry. That process of reading the poems one at a time, learning to appreciate the craft and art contained in the arrangement of the words, the deep feeling of connection to the poet, to the world, to myself and to God was a powerful experience that taught me a new way to read words.
Reading poetry taught me to read the layers of meaning contained in words. There could be many worlds contained in one poem, each one a different path with a new destination. Seminary courses taught me the history, culture and language of the Bible but my poetry class taught me how to really read the Bible.
That is why I love all the translations of the Bible. It is a word creation full of layers upon layers of meaning, word puzzles unending, a lifetime of treasure hunting contained in those ancient words. Every translation that has been created, whether in the language of a tribe in South America or in Russian or southern vernacular, contains some new way of hearing the Word. The power of the old story, re-told in many languages, is not constrained or contained in one "correct" translation. They all have beauty, meaning, new ways of seeing, a way to connect to the God of the past ( Greek and King James), the modern ( the Revised Standard Version), and the future (the Inclusive Version and some yet to be written).
As a child I was taught not to stack any other books on top of the Bible. It was a holy book, a power-full book, a book of mystery. We acknowledged that by treating this one book differently from all others because the Word made flesh was real for us. I miss that sense of awe and mystery, that respect accorded to the Bible. I know there are other holy books, other pathways to God but this in my book, my path and I can spend my life reading this one book, searching for meaning and instruction without ever completely understanding it. I will never be able to "rightly divide the Word of God" but I can keep on trying.
So this Sunday, I will carry my old Bible to church, beginning again to hold the written Word in my hands as I worship, honoring its importance in my life of the Spirit by keeping it close. I wonder what worship would be like if we just read from the Word and waited? Read different translations and heard them side by side? Read the Japanese version translated back into English to hear the cultural differences? Just sat and listened and like Mary, ponder these words in our heart? I wonder what we would hear if all we heard was the Word made flesh in many different languages? Would we hear the God who has been present in history, is present in all our world now and will be present in worlds to come? May it be so.

with every eye closed and every head bowed...

Lisa met me on her screen porch, asked me if I had heard... "Heard what?", I asked. "Jill died with an aneurysm last night". Jill was our therapist. She had a rare gift, the combination of self deprecating humor that included you in the joke, technical skills, a connection with her own roots that was echoed in her mountain accent (sometimes thicker than others) and the ability to listen with a third ear. Lisa and I had come to depend on her as she led us through the wilderness of ADD with neurofeedback and talk therapy. We sat in stunned silence and wept for her husband and family... and ourselves. The next few years I wandered in the fields of medicine and dietary supplements. Some made me crazier than normal. Some helped. None were without side effects. Now I am working with another therapist doing neurofeedback again. Last week for the first time since Jill died, I slept through the nights consistently without waking up, or circle thinking, or eight track thinking. I am told this is the one of the first signs of my brain getting the messages of neurofeedback. Sleep, blessed sleep...
Terry, my new therapist, tells me my brain is strange (not news for some of you). I am constantly working to control both my busy brain waves and my fuzzy brain waves, bouncing around constantly with jagged rhythm patterns in my breathing and heart rate as my brain struggles to find equilibrium. Even in my sleep my brain struggled to rest. Like mothers of young children, I had become accustomed to my sleep deprivation. It felt normal to have to take a nap, wake up feeling drugged, not be able to go to sleep easily at night. That is beginning to change.
This morning I woke up considering the parallels of sleep to the brain and prayer to the soul. With good sleep, the right kind of rest for my body and brain, I find an ease in my daily living that has been missing, a perspective that allows me to not get as caught up in the busy brain-fuzzy brain war. I still have ADD. I still have to work harder than most of you to get tasks completed. But I feel different... hopeful, centered, rested, in touch. And that is what prayer does for my soul... a neurofeedback for my spirit.
When I pray, my spiritual self settles. I do not need to engage the problem solving, task oriented, information gathering, controlling parts of my self. I simply settle, get still, get quiet in the body and spirit. That is very hard to do. Much like learning to work my brain waves, learning to work my praying self has been a matter of practice and learning. I have had some good teachers.
At our church revivals the evangelist would always ask us to close our eyes and bow our heads as we sang the invitation hymn (especially when no one had come forward to make a profession of faith or rededicate their life to Jesus). As I grew up in the faith, I judged that an unnecessary prayer practice. I’ve changed my mind. The act of closing my eyes shuts out the world around me and bowing my head is a physical way of recognizing I am not in charge. Other faith traditions have different physical responses that are used in the act of prayer... rocking back and forth while standing, palms turned upward, spinning dancing. The physical act is a signal to the brain to move to a different space, shut down the thinking, open to the Sacred Mystery that surrounds us, unseen and unheard until we stop and listen.
Another teacher in the art of prayer is my examined life. When I look back over 61 years of living, I can remember and feel the prayers that have sustained my soul. Some came in the middle of great pain and suffering, wrung from my soul in ugly gasps for release and rest. Other prayers have been joyful magnificats of ecstatic flight that soared in graceful arcs to the Holy One. Some corporate prayers in worship linger in my memory... Hugh McMullen praying before the Sunday offering... "The Lord loves a cheerful giver but He will take it from a grouch". The greatest number of them however have been small prayers in passing... as I drive and am quiet, as I sit and drink an afternoon cup of tea on the porch, as I read my Bible. An old phrase from my religious training floats to the surface of my mind. I have a "burden laid on my heart" and the only way to set it down is to pray. So I pray for Liz and David, their children, Margaret in the hospital, Tina going to dialysis, Mama visiting her sister for the first time in years... all the stuff of my daily living offered up to God in passing and then set down, left for the Grace of God to lift and carry. My soul’s breathing and heart rate evens out into rounded hills and valleys, no longer the jagged peaks that come with being disconnected from God. I am grateful in ways words cannot describe for the art of neurofeedback that teaches my brain how to settle and for the art of prayer... prayer that rests my soul, prayer that gives me a hiding place under the wings of the Almighty One, prayer that sustains and re-creates my life so that I may learn to pray without ceasing, a life of prayer. Thanks be to God.