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...
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
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...
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...
Thursday, September 20, 2007
for Alison, who wanted life to be fair
It is seven thirty at night. Michael is finishing up the bedtime routine with Mason and Matthew. Mead went to sleep without a whimper. He should have since he was up every two hours last night teething. At three thirty a.m. he fell asleep on Michael’s chest watching the sports channel. Today I have prepared three breakfasts, seven lunches, changed three dirty diapers and many wet ones, gone to Kindermusic with Mead where we waltzed and floated scarves and banged on drums, dressed three children, washed one load of clothes, pushed swings with children in them, screamed at a rubber snake placed strategically in the grass, mopped up spilled chocolate milk, visited with Alison as we sat watching the children, including her son Aidan whose smile lights up the world, play in the backyard, washed dishes, sat with three small boys and Michael at the Liberty restaurant in a booth eating supper, drove 11 circles fast and tight in the back of the Food Lion grocery store to keep the children laughing while Michael bought limes for the gin and tonic I needed to complete my evening. The crowning glory of my day is the suspicion that my cortisol levels, upped by stress, are causing me to gain weight even though I am eating less. Life is not fair. I should be losing weight… a pound per day… fashionably thin at the end of this week. Instead I suspect I shall have new signs of wear and tear… dark circles under my eyes, a crick in my back from waltzing with a fourteen month old boy, new sags in my jaw line, new weight gain from absent mindedly munching kid snacks.
The Bible reminds us life is rarely fair. It is always a gamble. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. It wasn’t fair that Sarah’s son was born after Hagar’s. It wasn’t fair that Jacob had to work an extra seven years for Rachael. It wasn’t fair that Mary’s son Jesus was executed by of a corrupt religious/political system. It wasn’t fair that my sister’s struggle with depression preceded the advent of the wonder drugs. It wasn’t fair that my friend’s child died in a freak automobile accident or that my friend Judy died in her forties with ALS. Children are born into a country where famine rules and war is the norm. The accident of birth can place you in a loving home or an abusive one. If it is justice and fair play you expect in this world, you might as well crawl under a rock and wait for the end. If not justice, what can we expect from this terrifying gift of life?
We can expect love… undeserved and sometimes unsought love that comes in odd packages…a starving stray dog that places his head in my lap… friends whose intuition leads them to call me out of the blue because something told them I needed them… hearing a piece of music that takes my breath away with its beauty… a fawn standing still in the pasture behind my house looking at me with its beautiful eyes… a family whose imperfection is a creation of love and joy and grief and faith… love for my mountains dressed in autumn’s palette of red, gold, orange, brown and green.
We can expect guilt, guilt that overwhelms us and weighs us down, guilt that comes from things done and left undone. In the early morning hours I can remember so clearly every occasion for guilt. Sometimes my list, which begins with snitching on my sister when I was eight and ends with being gone on my mother’s eighty first birthday Tuesday, can paralyze my soul. I should have known my sister was lost in despair. I should have spent more time with my parents as they were aging. I should have managed money more wisely. I should have gotten a full time job. I should have insisted Adam keep up with his cello lessons. I should be getting better at living life in an organized fashion… and on and on and on.
We can expect grace to show up anyway when we are not looking… grace in a friend’s tears that match your own… grace in Aidan’s smile that is the echo of his mother’s… grace in forgiveness offered and received… grace in getting the steps right the first time to a dance… grace in hospitality extended by those who are very different from me… grace in a Spirit filled, tongue speaking, Cherokee church who remembers me from forty one years ago… grace in my daddy’s old English Shorthorn bull named Ferdinand who likes to have his back scratched… grace in the recognition of my life full of life, moving into the final movement of my symphony here.
We can expect God to be with us. God is in our beginning, our living and our dying. There is never a time when God is not present. Sometimes we cannot find our Way or hear the Voice or see the Evidence or feel the Presence but always, always God is with us. When life is not fair, grief or guilt tear us apart, grace lifts our spirits, love holds us in a warm embrace, God is there. In the dry, cold, hard times that try our souls, God is with us. In the lush, abundant, warmth of blessedness, God is there. Like King David in the Psalms, I can call out to God… Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever. I can also be a green olive tree in the House of God, trusting in the steadfast love of God. Both and… not either or… that is the gift and the curse of the Garden of Eden. Life does not come in neat, tidy bundles but in messy exuberant loud noisy angry sad joyful explosions. I wonder if God had an ADD moment when Creation was taking place ? Thanks be to God for all of life… all of life… ready or not, fair or not, here it comes.
The Bible reminds us life is rarely fair. It is always a gamble. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. It wasn’t fair that Sarah’s son was born after Hagar’s. It wasn’t fair that Jacob had to work an extra seven years for Rachael. It wasn’t fair that Mary’s son Jesus was executed by of a corrupt religious/political system. It wasn’t fair that my sister’s struggle with depression preceded the advent of the wonder drugs. It wasn’t fair that my friend’s child died in a freak automobile accident or that my friend Judy died in her forties with ALS. Children are born into a country where famine rules and war is the norm. The accident of birth can place you in a loving home or an abusive one. If it is justice and fair play you expect in this world, you might as well crawl under a rock and wait for the end. If not justice, what can we expect from this terrifying gift of life?
We can expect love… undeserved and sometimes unsought love that comes in odd packages…a starving stray dog that places his head in my lap… friends whose intuition leads them to call me out of the blue because something told them I needed them… hearing a piece of music that takes my breath away with its beauty… a fawn standing still in the pasture behind my house looking at me with its beautiful eyes… a family whose imperfection is a creation of love and joy and grief and faith… love for my mountains dressed in autumn’s palette of red, gold, orange, brown and green.
We can expect guilt, guilt that overwhelms us and weighs us down, guilt that comes from things done and left undone. In the early morning hours I can remember so clearly every occasion for guilt. Sometimes my list, which begins with snitching on my sister when I was eight and ends with being gone on my mother’s eighty first birthday Tuesday, can paralyze my soul. I should have known my sister was lost in despair. I should have spent more time with my parents as they were aging. I should have managed money more wisely. I should have gotten a full time job. I should have insisted Adam keep up with his cello lessons. I should be getting better at living life in an organized fashion… and on and on and on.
We can expect grace to show up anyway when we are not looking… grace in a friend’s tears that match your own… grace in Aidan’s smile that is the echo of his mother’s… grace in forgiveness offered and received… grace in getting the steps right the first time to a dance… grace in hospitality extended by those who are very different from me… grace in a Spirit filled, tongue speaking, Cherokee church who remembers me from forty one years ago… grace in my daddy’s old English Shorthorn bull named Ferdinand who likes to have his back scratched… grace in the recognition of my life full of life, moving into the final movement of my symphony here.
We can expect God to be with us. God is in our beginning, our living and our dying. There is never a time when God is not present. Sometimes we cannot find our Way or hear the Voice or see the Evidence or feel the Presence but always, always God is with us. When life is not fair, grief or guilt tear us apart, grace lifts our spirits, love holds us in a warm embrace, God is there. In the dry, cold, hard times that try our souls, God is with us. In the lush, abundant, warmth of blessedness, God is there. Like King David in the Psalms, I can call out to God… Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever. I can also be a green olive tree in the House of God, trusting in the steadfast love of God. Both and… not either or… that is the gift and the curse of the Garden of Eden. Life does not come in neat, tidy bundles but in messy exuberant loud noisy angry sad joyful explosions. I wonder if God had an ADD moment when Creation was taking place ? Thanks be to God for all of life… all of life… ready or not, fair or not, here it comes.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
I AM What I am What I Yam
It is Tuesday morning and I just finished breakfast with three of the grandsons. Michael was feeding Mead and I was helping Matthew and Mason. Oatmeal was the dish du’jour with applesauce on the side. It was a relatively calm night. Mead woke at 12 for his bottle and at three for the pleasure of it. Mason woke crying at 6:15, missing his mama. Suddenly I am thirty three again, juggling babies and cooking meals, running carpool to preschool and trying to keep up with the wash. Now I remember why I was tired all the time. As I sat rocking Mead at three in the morning, it occurred to me that we are all on the way to the same place… different arrival times but the same destination.
We are all traveling to the “I AM” by becoming our own reflections of the one “I AM”. God gave the “I AM” name as noun and verb so that we might have both process and destination for our living here on earth. When Mead pushes me away, when Matthew tells me I have hurt his feelings, when Mason calls my name and laughs as he walks in my shoes, when I groan at the three a.m. wake up call, we are each becoming the “I AM”. How much fun/pain/grief/joy/grace there is in being and becoming the I AM. Watching and being with my grandchildren heightens the awareness of my own growth towards God as I watch how they grow.
Our children had their different heights marked on the door frame as they grew. Like those painted over pencil marks, our signs of growth are covered over with the passing of time if we don’t make time to remember. These are some of my I AM signs… verbs… mother loving, eight tracking, multi-tasking, art creating , writing, giggling, weeping, making music and hearing music in my soul…nouns… daughter, woman, wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, writer, calligrapher, lover of cows, farms and mountains, child of God. What is the Great I AM calling me to be and what is my destination?
Perhaps God wants for me what I wanted for my children and for my grandchildren. God wants me to have joy, joy that is more than just happy, joy that runs like a bubbly underground spring popping to the surface with laughter and giggles as I feel the Love that called me into being. God wants me to have a purpose in my being, work that not only does what is necessary to sustain life but work that also creates life in my being. Sometimes these works are the same thing, often they are two separate experiences. Most of all, I think, God calls us to be grateful. My grandchildren’s “thank you’s” sweeten the giving. I give them something they love… a rubber snake, construction paper, crayons… and we share the gratitude for giving and getting. How can I not be grateful for this most wonderful gift of life? How can I not sing my gratitude every day?
Few of us are called to be Prophets of the Big Picture. Most of us are called to be Ministers of the Miniscule…tending to children, cleaning house, making meals, balancing the checkbook (or trying to), showing up for PTA meetings and Sunday School, going to work and coming home. Now and then in the middle of our everyday lives, the I AM knocks on our front door, sits by us as we listen to NPR on our way to work, shines in the faces of our grandchildren night and day, even at three a.m. As I live this day tending to the many small tasks that await my attention, I am looking for the I AM, hoping for a revelation, a sign, a chance to hug God and say “thank you” for this most amazing life.
We are all traveling to the “I AM” by becoming our own reflections of the one “I AM”. God gave the “I AM” name as noun and verb so that we might have both process and destination for our living here on earth. When Mead pushes me away, when Matthew tells me I have hurt his feelings, when Mason calls my name and laughs as he walks in my shoes, when I groan at the three a.m. wake up call, we are each becoming the “I AM”. How much fun/pain/grief/joy/grace there is in being and becoming the I AM. Watching and being with my grandchildren heightens the awareness of my own growth towards God as I watch how they grow.
Our children had their different heights marked on the door frame as they grew. Like those painted over pencil marks, our signs of growth are covered over with the passing of time if we don’t make time to remember. These are some of my I AM signs… verbs… mother loving, eight tracking, multi-tasking, art creating , writing, giggling, weeping, making music and hearing music in my soul…nouns… daughter, woman, wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, writer, calligrapher, lover of cows, farms and mountains, child of God. What is the Great I AM calling me to be and what is my destination?
Perhaps God wants for me what I wanted for my children and for my grandchildren. God wants me to have joy, joy that is more than just happy, joy that runs like a bubbly underground spring popping to the surface with laughter and giggles as I feel the Love that called me into being. God wants me to have a purpose in my being, work that not only does what is necessary to sustain life but work that also creates life in my being. Sometimes these works are the same thing, often they are two separate experiences. Most of all, I think, God calls us to be grateful. My grandchildren’s “thank you’s” sweeten the giving. I give them something they love… a rubber snake, construction paper, crayons… and we share the gratitude for giving and getting. How can I not be grateful for this most wonderful gift of life? How can I not sing my gratitude every day?
Few of us are called to be Prophets of the Big Picture. Most of us are called to be Ministers of the Miniscule…tending to children, cleaning house, making meals, balancing the checkbook (or trying to), showing up for PTA meetings and Sunday School, going to work and coming home. Now and then in the middle of our everyday lives, the I AM knocks on our front door, sits by us as we listen to NPR on our way to work, shines in the faces of our grandchildren night and day, even at three a.m. As I live this day tending to the many small tasks that await my attention, I am looking for the I AM, hoping for a revelation, a sign, a chance to hug God and say “thank you” for this most amazing life.
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