PrayerScapes

These prayerscapes are offered in the hope they might be helpful for those who struggle with prayer as their lives are somewhat muted and dimmed by chronic illness.  They have grown out of my own experience of struggling with prayer during the many years I have lived with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.  I hope they might be helpful now to others with similar illnesses; as well, to those who deal with a chronic disability or with a life difficulty that persists, despite efforts to resolve it.

*****

 

Who am I, God?

And what is the meaning of my life…

          with this absence of longed-for activity?

                   with this restless, unwelcome stillness?     

                             with this inability to bolster self-esteem through accomplishments?

My bones cry out with all they have been taught: that meaning comes

          with doing,

                   with producing,

                             with busy-ness, activity, accomplishments.

Help me, I pray,

          to experience something of your Presence in what often feels like Absence,

          to learn new ways to look at my life and find richness in these restrictions,

          to believe your eternal gaze of love affirms my life with or without “accomplishments,”

          to believe that you cherish me, not for what I “do,” but simply because I “be,”

          to find joy in giving thanks for the many graces tucked among the many challenges,

          to hear your invitation to rest in the mystery of my life, the mystery of Who You are,

          to believe that, in everything, you do indeed work to bring about good. 

Amen.

*****

Where are you, God?

And who are you?

Where and who are you in all the wars and ecological disasters around the world? 

Where and who are you in the corridors of children’s hospitals where little ones are suffering and dying before they’ve even had a chance to live? 

Where and who are you in the limits that have confined my life and the lives of all who live with a chronic or prolonged illness or difficulty?

Have you forgotten us, O God?

Or is it the case that you are simply hidden from our human eyes in “light inaccessible,”* in light that surrounds the majesty and mystery of your eternal reality?

I do not know all the answers.

Yet, in spite of the pain of this unknowing, help me to trust, to believe the promise of your Word:

that the arms of Jesus stretched in love upon the cross are your arms reaching for us,

that on that cross you suffered and overcame the full power of evil in the human body of your Son,

that on that cross you shared the pain of our fragile lives when suffering overwhelms,           

that you embrace us in those times when we cry out with Jesus, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”                

that your arms reach to help us find a measure of healing even in all of our un-wellness,    

that your arms reach out in resurrection hope and promise that evil and suffering will never have the final say in our lives or in our world. 

O God, I do believe.  Please help my unbelief.

Amen

*from the hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise”  Walter C. Smith (1867)

*****

Will this ever be over, God? 

Days come when I dare to hope for a medical breakthrough

or a miraculous divine intervention,

but today is not one of them; 

today despair hovers in the very air I breathe;          

the sun rises, but its rays seem dark, foreboding. 

Will this ever be over, God?! 

Can I hope for richer, fuller days of vibrant aliveness and activity,

or is this “it”? 

As I pour out my complaint, God, a quiet inner voice urges me–

to find a measure of equanimity

in acknowledging and accepting my despair;                         

to know that you do not judge me for my dark,

despairing moments; 

to learn to “think small,” and find a measure of joy in accomplishing

little, sometimes even tiny goals;

to be mindful of the richness of each moment,

each task, no matter how insignificant it might seem;

to open space within me for new understandings,

new ventures for my mind and soul. 

Creator of my life, hold close my darkness,

surround, undergird my fragile life

in your everlasting arms.

Amen.    

*****

   

How much I need, O God, an anchoring

in my life’s chronic roller-coaster

ups and downs.

Help me, I ask, to be able simply to live, each day,
                             today,

whatever today may bring;

on the up days of greater energy and strength,

let me be fully alive to all such days offer,

restfully, mindfully, but never over-reachingly;

and on the down days of greater fatigue and pain,

let me again be anchored and fully alive

to all that’s held in my wiltedness—

the stillness, the mystery,

even the elusive presence of hope.

Grant me an anchored-ness

in every day you gift to me,

protect me, in every up, in every down,

from the demons of bitterness and self-pity;

help me to practice gratitude

for every flowering

that colors the drabness

of long days;

open my ears, my heart

to the music of joy

that ever echoes

in all the tumult

of this bewildering

roller-coaster life.

Amen.

*****

Sing me Joy, Spirit God,

you who took on human flesh

to know our woes, share our pain,

help me know that I am seen,

accepted,

understood.

Companion me, Lord Christ,

that I may share your joy—

despite my disappointments,

sometime loneliness and pain—

in all the wonders of this world.

Remind me of your promise ever

to be with me

in all the twists and turns

of my chronic life,

to love me ever

even when I find it hard

to love myself.

JOY!  Fill my chronic cup

to overflowing, gracious God. 

Amen.

Pentecost Prayer

Spirit, very soul and breath of God,

Wind who swept across the deep darkness

of earth’s primordial waters,

Voice who whispered to prophets of Old,

Blazing Tongues of Fire that descended

in a rush of multi-lingual ecstacy

on the day of Pentecost,

 where are you today?

*

Come again, O Holy One,

sweep and whisper,

breathe and blaze again  

your fiery wisdom, power,

comfort and hope

in the deep, deep darkness of our time,

as the waters of chaos swirl,

menace, and threaten to drown

all that we hold dear.

A Prayer for the President

I have struggled to know how to pray for the man who is currently the President of our United States.  In my discouragement and dismay at his lack of respect for the truth, his treatment of other people, and his policies which seem to undermine the long-held goal of our nation to offer “liberty and justice for all,” my prayer has been a simple, “God, please stop him.”  And then I usually add a rather vague prayer for his body, mind, and soul.  

Last evening, I came across this blessing/prayer from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us.”  It is a prayer which I will pray often in the days ahead, especially as we as a nation confront the pandemic that has stretched across our world.  I hope you will find this prayer helpful as well.

FOR A LEADER

May you have the grace and wisdom
To act kindly, learning
To distinguish between what is
Personal and what is not.
May you be hospitable to criticism.
May you never put yourself at the center of things.
May you act not from arrogance but out of service.
May you work on yourself,
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.
May those who work for you know
You see and respect them.
May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.
When someone fails or disappoints you,
May the graciousness with which you engage
Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.
May you treasure the gifts of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue as a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old,
And you never become a functionary.
May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of held dignity,
The springtime edge of the bleak question.
May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.
May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.
May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.

 

Pillars of the Earth

I found these little weeds growing alongside our driveway.

Pillars of the earth,

they seem to me,

these tiny weeds,

short, but standing tall,

holding up the mystery

of all that is, that was,

that is to be.

*

Or bell towers, perhaps,

their leaves the spiral

steps that carry us

from earthy dust to

white-marbled blue

of vast cathedral sky.

*

Or maybe minarets,

tiny spires, sturdy elegance,

a call to prayer, to offering of thanks

to garden gods for intricate designs

of all things small, for

holy winds that hum

through patterned stairwells

of our weeds and of our world.

God’s Wine: A Poem for Passion Week

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,

Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine. 

from “The Agony”

George Herbert (1593 – 1633)

***

God’s wine…

          seeping through the world

          to quench souls parched amidst the plenty of their lives,

          to slake the thirst of displaced millions yearning

          for a place to call their home;

*

flowing…

          through the veins

          of Peter, Paul, and Magdalene,

          the veins of Calvin, Luther, Julian,

          Teresa, Tutu, King;

          even through the veins

          of tiny lives like yours, like mine;

*

trickling…

          through ghettoes and prisons,

          through barriers of poverty, of bigotry, of hate,

          each sip the promise I am with you

          in the darkness that surrounds;

*

spilling…

          into bright-lit mansions fitted with starched,

          manicured faces, masking fear and greed,

          intoxicating even these, the worldly-wise, with

          visions and dreams—

          vaguely unsettling.

*

God’s wine…

          to be sipped together,

          believer with the one who doubts,

          ghetto sister with Wall Street stockbroker,

          asylum seeker with the builder of walls,

          the felon with the judge,

          Republican with Democrat…

*

          …in a land beyond lands,

          with a hope beyond hopes,

          with a prayer beyond prayers,

          with a knowing beyond knowings

          that God’s Kingdom will come.

***

 

Here’s the full text of George Herbert’s poem “The Agony”

Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of the seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

*

Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.

*

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

 

 

 

 

Engine against th’ Almighty

“Gare St. Lazare” (Claude Monet 1840-1926)

Prayer

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

(George Herbert (1593-1633)

***

          Prayer.  Something we will never fully understand.   Something that eludes all of our attempts at explanations.  Yet, despite our inability to understand the mystery of prayer, we pray.  Sometimes in desperation.  Sometimes in hope.  Sometimes in awe and gratitude.  Sometimes in simple trust.

          George Herbert, 17^th century poet and pastor, was a man who prayed.  A lot.  Prayed especially to listen for and to experience God’s presence in his life.  In his short poem “Prayer,” Herbert offers us a sumptuous feast of images to describe the mystical experience of his prayers:  “church’s banquet,” “the soul in paraphrase,” “God’s breath in man returning to his birth,” “sinner’s tow’r,” “bird of Paradise,” “land of spices,” to note just a few.

          So rich these images.  Quite beyond the reach of most of us.   Herbert, a one-time member of Parliament, later a pastor in a small rural setting, clearly experienced God in profound ways during his times of meditative prayer.  He loved the God to whom he prayed, and he loved his “milky way,” his “church-bells beyond the stars” times of prayerful communion with his God. 

          But prayer for Herbert was not confined to the mystical and the meditative. Two powerful images in his poem stand out as quite different from the “softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss” of his more contemplative experience.   “Engine against th’Almighty.”  “Reversed thunder.”  These two images speak of prayer that pleads with God on behalf of the needs of others or asks God to help with personal needs.  Herbert clearly believes that our prayers do somehow touch God, and he “images” petitionary prayer as very powerful.  No “softness and peace” here.  These prayers look more like the steam engine in Monet’s “Gare St. Lazare,” as it thunders into the station spewing forth billows and billows of steam.

          As poet and as wise pastor, Herbert doesn’t try to explain how our prayers might influence God.  Nor does he offer a sure-fire formula for “how to pray to get what you want.”   He makes no promises that we will receive just what we pray for.  He simply describes the power of intercessory prayer.  “Engine against th’Almighty.”  “Reversed thunder.” 

          Through his own personal prayer experience and through the experiences of his parishioners, I’m sure Herbert had known times when his intercessory prayers did seem to bring about the very change for which he asked, in his life or in the lives of others.   But I’m sure he also knew times when his intercessory prayers did not result in the changes for which he asked, but, instead, brought about changes in his attitude and understanding of that for which he prayed.  He would have remembered that this was certainly the experience of Jesus in Gethsemane.  Jesus’ prayer was, I believe, an engine thundering against the Almighty.  A plea.  A cry of desperation as Jesus’ sweat became drops of blood.  “Let this cup pass from me!”  But the cup did not pass.  Jesus walked through the agony of desertion by his followers and then felt utterly forsaken as he hung on that Roman cross bearing the weight of the sins of the world.  Yet, somehow, through his thunderous prayer, Jesus was given the strength to say “if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

          “Engine against th’Almighty.”  “Reversed thunder.”  Vivid descriptions of intercessory pray.  I see these images also as an expression of some of the anger, frustration, weariness, and despair we sometimes feel towards God.  I hear in these little phrases an encouragement not to run from our anger at God, but rather to let it roar as a powerful engine, trusting that God will never turn away from us, but will always listen carefully to us, accepting the thunder of all our questions, doubts, despair, anger, and frustration. 

          “Church-bells beyond the stars heard.”  “Land of spices.”  “Reversed thunder.”  “Exalted manna.”   Such a banquet for our souls at prayer.  Exotic dishes to help us taste some of the richness of the gift of contemplative prayer.  To help us experience more of the power of petitionary prayer in a renewed awareness that, in the end, come what may, we pray to a God who is a God of love and resurrection.  To give us courage to be completely honest before God in our prayers—to let the thunder of our questions, doubts, and anger roll. 

          Deep mystery this thing called “prayer.”  Something truly beyond our grasp.  Herbert concludes his poem with two simple words, “something understood.”  Not “everything” understood.  Merely “something.”  Just enough to keep us at it.  Just enough to keep us reaching for those “church-bells beyond the stars heard.” 

 

 

 

Unholy Holiness: a Pastoral Memory

          I had heard the stories:  “N” barking on the telephone; “N” making outrageous demands on those who tried to help her; “N” lashing out at the clergy.  A very feisty, very angry woman.  “N” had good reason to be angry at life and the world, reason to be angry at God.  She had been widowed, left to cope alone with adult children who had physical and mental issues.  Added to this burden were her own physical problems that confined her to her home in a wheelchair.  Her mind, however, and her often acid tongue, were clearly not confined.  They continued to function quite, quite well!

          Sigh.  Serving as a new pastor at “N’s” church, I was scheduled to take the sacrament of holy communion to her.  “Be careful,” I was told, but all the warnings I had been given hardly prepared me for the shrill voice I heard screaming for someone to “answer the damn door” when I rang “N’s” doorbell.

          Heart pounding, I entered that “damn door” when one of her adult children opened it and then waited as he wheeled “N” into the living room.  She was disheveled and clearly in pain, her face distorted as she said her “hello”, which sounded much more like “what the hell are you doing here?”, even though I had made the appointment with her just a few days earlier.

          I introduced myself and made some comments inviting her to tell me of her illness and her pain.  She did.  With very few pauses to catch her breath.  She had a story to tell, and she would tell it, and I knew simply to sit and listen. 

          “We’re off to a good start,” I thought, and I was becoming more relaxed, when suddenly a second adult child exploded through the front door and virtually collapsed on the sofa.  Needless to say, I was very concerned and wondered what needed to be done for her.  But clearly “N” was not the least bit concerned, and the shouting match that ensued between mother and daughter quickly assured me that the daughter was quite okay, physically at least.  More okay, in fact, than I was at the moment.  I cannot deny that I was relieved when she slammed back out the door.  “N” simply shrugged.

          I opened the way for her to talk about the distressing episode, but no, she wasn’t at all interested.  She looked instead at my small communion kit, and I knew it was time to proceed to the business at hand.  I carefully opened my kit, filled our two cups with wine, and placed the cups and the paten with the wafers on a clean napkin spread on the table.  I read a passage of Scripture, we shared a few thoughts about it, and then I began the liturgy:  “In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread and gave thanks…” 

          Again, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.  Very solemnly.  Very thoughtfully.  Very reverently, “N,” who moments before had been cursing her fate and screaming at her children, brought her gnarled hands together and quietly bowed her head.  And with that simple gesture, I could feel “N” stepping into another sphere, into a holy space.  And the room, which moments before had been filled with such unholy venom, was transformed by that simple gesture into a hallowed, sacred place. 

          Amazing.  I had never before encountered such reverence in all the many home communion visits I had made as a pastor.  I had entered “N’s” home praying simply to be able to survive the visit.  But I left that day humbled by what I had learned.  For what I had seen and what I had experienced was the reality that the simple gesture of folding the hands and bowing the head could open up a sense of the holy, even in the midst of all the messiness of life.   

          All this was far away and many long years ago, but I still think of “N” now and then, resting as she is now in the nearer Presence of God.  And when I think of her, I often find myself bowing my head, folding my hands, and stepping into that sacred space that hovers just beneath, just above, just beyond all the scarred and fractured hours of our days and of our nights. 

          I really must think of “N” more often.  

Cursing Fig Trees, Moving Mountains, and Praying: A Lenten Reflection on St. Mark 12:12-24

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, [Jesus] was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.  He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

St. Mark 12:12-24

***

I really wish Jesus hadn’t said what he said in the last paragraph of the passage above. Or, at least I wish the gospel writer had given us something of the conversation that must have immediately followed this, so we could have a better sense of what Jesus might have had in mind in this rather enigmatic statement.

Could Jesus possibly have meant, when he used that word “whatever,” that if I asked for a luxury car or a condo in Switzerland, or for my friend to be healed of his terminal cancer, that God would certainly provide that, if only my faith were strong enough? If only I prayed my prayer just right, with all the right words? If only I thought more positively about God and what God can do? A casual reading certainly suggests this, and as a result, thousands of Christians down through time have either given up on God or beat up on themselves, thinking they simply did not have sufficient faith.

Such a shame, as I believe this passage can deeply enrich our prayer lives, but only if it is understood in the context of the whole of Jesus’ life and teachings. So I like to imagine that a conversation something like this might have followed Jesus’ words to his disciples that day.

***

Peter: Wow! That is really something, Rabbi. I love that kind of power! I’d love to zap some people the way you zapped that fig tree! And I’d love to move a few mountains in my life!

Jesus: But Peter, I “zapped” that fig tree to underscore what I just did in Jerusalem when I went through the temple and denounced the flagrant abuse of that holy space. My “zapping” of that fig tree was simply to show you God’s power when it comes in judgment on those who abuse their faith to enhance themselves and make life more difficult for others.  

Peter: Oh! So you mean it wouldn’t work if I was just angry at my wife or at my friend John here and uttered a curse on them? Rats! But maybe just as well. I know I’m hot-tempered, and I’d probably feel so sorry for what I did the very next day. But I’d still be interested in just how I could muster enough faith to move some of the mountains in my life.

Jesus: Well, Peter, as to removing mountains, that takes a little more explaining. It’s true.  Sometimes God does remove mountain-like obstacles in our lives.  Sometimes God doesn’t.  Sometimes God simply asks us to live with these obstacles and to grow an inner, mountain-solid  strength as we struggle with them day after day after day.  But there is one mountain–the Mount of Olives, visible just just over your shoulder, which God, in God’s time, is most definitely planning to move.  I wonder if you might recall the passage from Zechariah where the prophet uses highly symbolic language and predicts that the Mount of Olives will be split in two at the time of God’s final coming to earth to rescue his people.

Peter: Well, I was never really good, Jesus, at remembering all the promises I was taught as a child, but I think I do remember that passage, as the image is so startling. Isn’t that the one where the prophet is talking about God’s coming judgment and God’s coming reign, a wonderful time when there will be no more night and when living waters will flow out of Jerusalem and spread across all the earth? And yes, the prophet does say that “on that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley; so that one half of the Mount shall withdraw northward, and the other half southward”? (Zechariah 14)

Jesus: Yes, that’s it Peter. And my rather cryptic statement to you was really a reminder of that promise. Some terrible things are going to happen in the days ahead, but I wanted to reassure you that if you pray for God’s coming kingdom, you can trust wholeheartedly that it will someday come. So whenever you see the Mount of Olives, Peter, Friend, remember the poetic imagery of Zechariah’s prophecy, and let your prayer be for God to come and establish God’s reign. God will indeed answer that prayer! You will then see walls and mountains shattered all around!

Peter: Okay, okay. I think I’m beginning to understand what you meant about moving mountains. Sometimes your words are so mysterious, Rabbi ! I guess you do want us to think more carefully and deeply about the things you say. And I promise to try. But what about that last bit of what you said, when you said that whatever I ask for in prayer, if I believe, I will surely receive it? That sounds pretty straightforward to me!

Jesus: Well, Peter, let’s look at this a little more closely too. I do want you to ask for whatever your heart longs for. But I also want you to be aware that as you pray, believing that with God nothing is impossible, believing that God will respond to your faith, you may discover, as you draw closer into God’s orbit, that some of your desires may change. Right now you would love to zap or remove some of the troublesome people and situations in your life. Tell this to God. Believe that God is understanding and responding to you. But also be prepared to be in dialogue with God, to listen to God as well as to speak to God. And be prepared to grow and change in your innermost desires.  

Peter: Well, that’s a bummer. I guess I should have known that you had something like that up your sleeve. I know you spend hours and hours alone with God, and you always come away with a renewed determination and strength, a new confidence in your mission and purpose in life, even in those times when everything seems to be going against you.   Okay. So maybe I have a bit to learn. Maybe I have to really open up to God, learn to trust that phrase from Psalm 56: “this I know, that God is for me,” even when things and people aren’t going just the way I’d like them to go in my life.

Jesus: Now I think you’re beginning to get it, Peter. It is something like that. My own dreams for the kingdom have had to be “revised” as I’ve gone along. But I keep going back to God in prayer, and even when I’m shaking my fist at God because things are happening so slowly and so haphazardly, I still have a deep sense that God is with me, that God is for me, that God is shaping me and my desires, even as I bring myself more fully to trust in the mystery of the working out of God’s purposes. I’ve told you that I believe that I am going to be put to death before too much longer. Do I want this? No, I do not. And when the time comes, don’t be surprised if you hear me begging God to “let this cup pass from me.” I will be praying then exactly what my heart longs for, to be spared a vicious and violent death. But I hope you will then also hear me pray, “Your will be done,” because I think that’s where all our deepest prayers must culminate. Not with an “okay, God, I give up” sense, but rather with a deep trust that, no matter what happens, God is there for me, for us, bringing us and our world a little closer to what God has in mind for each of us and for our world.

Peter: Whew! That’s a lot to digest. Think I’ll ever be able to learn all of that, Rabbi? Ever really be able to pray like that? I sort of preferred my simplistic understanding of your zapping that fig tree and your promising us whatever we ask for in faith.

Jesus: Just keep working at it, Peter. I can assure you. Growing a meaningful faith is truly the task of a lifetime, but it is a most worthwhile task. As you work at this, there will be the joy of knowing God and knowing yourself more intimately, more fully. And yes, there will be struggles as well. There will be questions. There will be sorrows. But you will not be alone, even when it will sometimes feel as though you have been abandoned by the very God to whom you pray. Somewhere, somehow, in the depths of your soul, even when you are crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? why have you forgotten me?” I can assure you that you will experience an Unnamable Calm, and you will be enabled to say—and really mean it—“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

 

The Art of Prayer

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836 –1904)

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

My prayer at times is calm, a

still life, fruits and flowers

carefully arranged, pastel

petals of gratitude shaping

trust and dropping peace;

quiet listening for that

whisper from beyond, elusive

though it be.

*

At other times, I pray a

Jackson Pollock kind of

prayer; jagged lines of grief

and questions slashed across

the canvas of my life; daubs

of anger, neediness, and greed

flung onto the walls that shape

the contours of my soul.

*

A mystery, this business of prayer;

I do not understand, but yet I pray;

not as a master artist; more like a child

offering crayoned sketches to her mother’s

love; yet pray I do; paint my longings

and my needs, my tangled fears,

my angers, and my joys; and like that child,

simply trust that kindly, grace-filled eyes

will see and treasure all my brush strokes,

all my reaching—for a presence,

for a wholeness, for a beauty,

in my life and in my world.

After the Earthquake: An Old Woman Prays in Nepal

(in a ruined temple the day after the April earthquake)

Life smashed to ruins around her,

shards of centuries piled high to

bury treasured icons, chairs, and roofs,

arms and legs, as well as hopes

of mountain sunshine, it buried, too,

in all the dust that every footstep

stirs into the fragile air, scented now

with death and stunned to silence as the

earth continues to rumble and spit

black ashes over all the lifeless eyes

of both the living and the dead.

*

Yet the old woman clasps her withered

hands; bows her ancient head; accepts that

there are ways unknown to her, that

there is mystery in and beyond this strange,

strange thing called life; that powers

outside her grasp determine much of her

tomorrows and todays; she nods to them,

both reverent and perplexed.

*

A sparrow hops and chirps across the

waste in which the woman stands; she,

too, in time may sing again, but not today;

today her voice is only arid wind, a

wind scraped raw across the jagged

rubble of her soul; the sparrow cheeps and

chirps again; the woman bows again;

and I bow too—to her, to mystery, to

sparrow song of a God whose eyes hold

loving fast each tiny creature sifting through

the wonders and the terrors of our world

when mountains quake and shred the

patterns of our lives to dust.