A Prayer for the Plague-time

Loving God, first, we want to thank you kindly for your grace and love. Your grace assures us that we are your children, one and all, and comforts us that we are close to you. Your love is truly steadfast; it sustains us in times of trial and reminds us of humility’s virtues in times of triumph. We thank you for the gift of life. We thank you for these gifts today and every day.

We have much else for which to be thankful, God, but our thanks are tempered by the knowledge that your creation can be a sad, lonely, and sometimes terrifying place. Many of our brothers and sisters, especially our aged brethren and those with compromised immune systems, are endangered by this Coronavirus, for which we were so ill prepared. Many are sick; many have died. Many more will become sick; many more will die. We know that you did not cause this new plague, and we know you suffer along with us. Let us be ever mindful that you are holding us especially close to your great heart in this time of trial. Let us feel your assurance that this, too, shall pass. Lead us, we pray, to face this scourge without panic, but with due concern, strength, courage, and perseverance. 

But Coronavirus is only the latest of many threats to your people, God. These other threats have not gone away simply because this disease is occupying our attention right now. When the Coronavirus is only a memory, they will remain. There are many among us who are homeless and hungry, sick or lonely, imprisoned, or victimized by senseless violence. Many are weary from fighting battles against their personal demons. Inspire us to open our hearts, as well as our bank accounts, and clear our calendars to provide the material assistance they need. We ask you to bless them especially; grant them strength, dignity, courage, and serenity in the face of the storm. As you continue to grace us, grace them with the sure knowledge of your presence and love. Lift their hearts and grant them healing.

We know, too, that the world you gave us is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption. We are on the brink of natural disaster on a worldwide scale—a catastrophe of our own making—yet we seem paralyzed and powerless to avert it. Too many people are starving, God, and too much disease goes untreated. And worst, too many of your innocent children are suffering from the desolation of war. Your children are divided against one another—by the inequitable distribution of your bounty, age-old ethnic hatreds, ideology and religion, and by injustice everywhere. All sides claim your special favor in holy conflict, killing one another in your name. Yet the sad truth, God, is that we crucify you once again each time we take a human life or allow one to die because of our own inaction. 

We pray for your loving intervention. We pray you reach into the hearts of all people, everywhere, and make us well. Let your mercy fall down like the waters, and bind us tight under the gentle, cooling rain of your steadfast love. Touch our hearts and end this dark night. Heal us, we pray, not just from this new plague, but also from all that separates us from you.

Though the world is not as we would have it—far from it—still we celebrate you and thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your gifts of life and this planet. Remind us, when we need reminding, never to forget that life is sweet, and there is beauty, compassion, and love to be found in the most unexpected places. And we thank you, most of all, for the extraordinary gift of your son Jesus, whose name is the very definition of love, peace, and compassion. May we take his words to heart and look to his life as our moral example. Help us, always, to strive to bring about your sovereignty, in which, one day, there will be no sorrow and no tears and where all your children can thank you for peace, good health, and plenty. Amen.

Wayfaring Stranger

The movie, 1917, has moved me more than any film I've seen in years. It is an incredibly spiritual movie. Probably the most moving moment came when the hero--a young man who has been tasked with getting a message of vital importance to a unit up on the front lines--has almost literally gone through the fires of hell, weathering a night of incredible violence and  narrowly escaping with his life a number of times (amid scenery that put me in mind of the surreal final minutes of "Apocalypse Now"). At dawn, weary, exhausted, and sick with fear, he comes upon a company of soldiers--no officers—nearly all of them younger than 20 years or so old, at rest in a slightly misty forest. They are resting as still and silent as statues, but one can sense the doom that surrounds them. You know these men are destined to die if the protagonist can't deliver his message. It is at that moment that one of the men--a boy, really--stands up and sings "Wayfaring Stranger" in a heartbreakingly beautiful strong tenor voice. All is still, and there is no sound but the young man's voice as he sings the haunting words to this haunting melody. The scene is one of incredible sadness and grief. My heart broke for these young soldiers; children that young shouldn’t be so faced with their mortality.

I’ve thought about why this song should be featured in a movie about British soldiers in a British battle. “Wayfaring Stranger” is an American folk hymn, the first printed version of which did not appear until 1856. Some say that it bears some relationship with a Scottish song, but the two are about completely different subjects. I haven’t heard the Scottish song, so I have no idea how much, if any, melody the two songs share. In any event, the theme is a universal one, speaking not only to Christians dreaming of the better world that our faith teaches us awaits, but to all displaced people everywhere, who want nothing more than a place to call home and peace in which they can enjoy the fruits of their labor in the company of their loved ones.

“Wayfaring Stranger” has always been one of my favorite hymns, ever since I first heard it, believe it or not in a made-for-TV piece of schlock entitled, Then Came Bronson, back in the late 1960s, and it has been echoing through my head all week. It is utterly sad and expresses great longing, and it just strikes a chord in me. My own life has been marked by the same sort of longing. I have not adopted the theology it expresses—I do not expect that Heaven awaits—but I share its spirit as felt  in  its expression of longing for rest and peace.  Anyway, I composed a new verse for it. I hope you don't find in cheap and trite. I hate to share this kind of thing, because I know how banal I can sound, but I want to share it anyway.  It goes like this:

Soon all my tears will be behind me,

As I join with the blessed throng.

With all I've hurt and all who've hurt me,

I'll sing the everlasting song.

I'm going there to join the multitude

I passed along this path I've trod.

To all I've met, I'll show my gratitude,

As we go home to be with God.

Ridin' That Train

I realize, now, that I wanted to be a minister for all the wrong reasons. Back in 1998, I think, maybe 1997, I persuaded myself I had received God’s call to preach the gospel. But, like so many others who say that God told them to do something when, purely coincidentally, that was exactly what they wanted to do, I was fooling—or lying to—myself. Worse, I was fooling—or lying to—everyone else, because at every step of the journey I received nothing but support and affirmation—from my pastor, to the congregation, to the Florida Conference, the guys who psychoanalyzed me, to the seminary itself. I’m pretty sure my wife, Carol, figured it out right quickly, but she knew nothing she could say would stop me, or even slow me down. I was riding a diesel locomotive, and it was gaining speed, for sure.

The thing is, regardless of whether I was fooling myself or subconsciously lying to myself, I really did believe that my deep desire to go to seminary and a be a preacher came from God. In hindsight, I still believe God was calling me, but the call was to live the gospel and not to preach it. Those of you who know me know I have only succeeded in answering that call sporadically. But I have tried. Lord knows I have tried. Living the gospel is my aspiration but not my achievement.

The real reason I wanted to be a minister, I guess—no, I’m sure—was to feed my ego. I think that’s the real story for a fair number of people who “receive the call.”

My career as a wannabe preacher was not, however,  a complete con, and my desire was not completely illegitimate. It all started this way:

I remember that each Advent, my pastor was in the practice of conducting Sunday night meditation where we would just listen to the quiet in a candle-lit room and, as we felt ready, present ourselves before her for private prayer and to be anointed with oil. Those Sunday meetings were blessings for me. It was during one of those meetings that Loey took me by the hands—why is touch so important in prayer?—and asked God to touch my heart and tell me “how truly loved he is.” It was a transformative moment. That was when I became truly convinced of the truth of those words to which I had previously payed lip service: God is Love. Nothing dramatic happened; only things whereof I had not believed, I now believed. Was this my real baptism?

One weekday, Loey either called me or approached me—I can’t remember which—and told me she had to go out of town on the following Sunday. She didn’t say it, but in retrospect I think it was for a job interview. Be that as it may, she asked me if I would take her role in the meditation service and pray with and anoint parishioners as they desired. I was surprised and gratified. Without thinking twice, certainly without considering the implications, I agreed. 

Sunday night came. I lit the candles, put on the soft New Age music, and poured a little Vigo olive oil in a little bowl. A half-dozen, maybe eight, parishioners showed up. I gave the invitation and stood waiting, not really expecting anyone to come forward. To my surprise, a woman, who I will not name, came forward. I dipped my thumb in the oil and traced the sign of the cross on her forehead. I took her hands, and we prayed. I don’t remember the words I said but I remember as clearly as I remember anything, that I felt like a switch had been thrown and a low grade electrical current was flowing through me. I felt a light shining on us, and the thought entered my head: this is what I should do with my life; this is what I was born for. It just felt so right. The feeling remained strong as I anointed and prayed with three more people.

I was attending orientation after I did reach Eden Theological Seminary a couple of years later, when each of us was asked to tell the story of our calls to ministry. I told this story, and a woman told me I had experienced “a miracle.” Considering the way things turned out, I’m not so sure, but you can see how I came to believe I had been called, can’t you? And I had, just not to the ministry.

I had been called to be what we are all called to be. You know what that is; if I were more creative, I’d try to tell you anyway, but others have described it far more accurately and eloquently than I can. I can only say that, in a nutshell, we are called, as Kurt Vonnegut so eloquently put it, to “Be kind to each other, dammit!”

Wake-up calls can be gentle or they can be dramatic. Some of us don’t respond to gentle, so we must beaten over the head. Some of us respond earlier and with less reluctance, my wife and my friend Judy among them. It took a dramatic gesture to get my attention, and it took an even more dramatic gesture to convince me that my take on the first gesture was wrong.

2165 Poorly Organized Words on Prayer

During our meeting at the Black Dog Café the other night, as the conversation topic got around to prayer and before we actually prayed, Judy asked me, more or less, to define prayer, that is, how I conceived it. “What is prayer?” she asked. As I was pondering that one, she said, “It’s not a wish list.” I agreed with that, but beyond that I had a little trouble. I don’t remember what I said. It always works that way. When someone asks me a profound question—not very often—I can’t come up with an answer that satisfies me. 

So I go away, let it stew for awhile, and write about it. I write stream-of-consciousness. I have a few ideas about what I want to say, but I’m likely to head down some rabbit trail at any time. I can’t help it—that’s just the way my mind works. The result is an unorganized mess, full of awkward word and phrase choices and riddled with grammatical mistakes. That’s what happens when you bat out 1700 words in two hours. Do I edit? Not as much as you might think. I do sometimes go back later and clean it up a bit--correct misspellings, tortured syntax, the more obvious errors of grammar. Sometimes I'll add a paragraph. But over 90% of what you read here is exactly as I put it down the first time. Well, not this entry, I admit. I have edited this one a bit more heavily than others; the original-as-I-wrote-it material is probably down to 80%.

I’ve probably read a hundred—maybe more—essays, testimonies, and the like that purport to define prayer. Some of them are very beautiful, inspirational, poetic, and true, but none of them work, for me, to answer Judy’s question, “What is Prayer?” This essay is an attempt to answer Judy, but you can expect some diversions. The thoughts are all mine; I haven’t consulted any outside sources. I’m sure many people have expressed many of my ideas, but, for better or worse, I own them. I arrived at them independently.

I’ll get to what prayer means to me, eventually, but now that I’ve had a chance to think it over, here’s the best definition of prayer I can come up with: If you think it’s a prayer, it’s a prayer; if you think it’s not a prayer, it’s not a prayer. In other words, there is no satisfactory definition of prayer. Prayer cannot be placed in a one-size-fits-all box. It is  bigger than any box we can construct. Too, it is such a personal thing that even if I attempted a definition, mine would differ from yours. Everyone has a different conception of prayer. There are commonalities, but, at least in my experience, no two people share the exact same feelings and thoughts about this most personal activity. If everybody has their own definition, there is no definition at all. For you, Dear Reader, prayer is what you think it is. For me, prayer is what I think it is. For anyone else, prayer is what they think it is, regardless of whether you or I accept it. 

Too, my definition of prayer—and yours, too, probably—is constantly shifting. One minute, you might think prayer is a supplication, cry for help for yourself or on behalf of someone else, and you’d be right. The next minute, you might think it’s a chance to give praise to the creator and sustainer of the universe, and you’d be right then, too. And in yet the next minute you might really believe prayer is that wish list Judy rejected, and even then you’re right, distasteful though Judy and I might find it. You might think your actions are your prayer. You’re right. The bottom line is that prayer is whatever you think it is at the moment you’re praying.  

Even Jesus, as far as I know, never tried to define prayer, at least not publicly. The gospels tell us he was a man of constant prayer, and they demonstrate that his very life was a prayer. I’m no biblical scholar, but I’m only aware of three instances in which the language of his prayers was recorded. The first is where he taught us the Prayer of Jesus, the one church-going Christians recite—usually without thinking about it—every Sunday morning. The second was in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he asked that the cup be taken from him and finally surrendered to God's will. Finally, there was his agonized cry upon the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Three, and only three, very different prayers. If there are others, please let me know; I’ll stand corrected and incorporate the information into a future revision.

I don’t know, but I think that most people, when they think of prayer, which is probably not very often, think of bowing their heads and clasping their hands, perhaps kneeling, getting real serious (putting on their God-face), and uttering some high-falutin’ language, generally expressing noble thoughts in words they’ve used so often they’ve lost all impact. They may request healing for themselves or someone else, maybe they’ll request God to reach down and instantly make them better people, or they’ll ask for something called “world peace,” (as if they have any conception of what that would look like—heck, I know I don’t). Finally—and I think this is most common—they ask for stuff. A girlfriend or boyfriend. A new job/car/house, money, or some other tangible object—the wish list that Judy and I both despise. (Can I get an Amen, Joel Osteen? Robert Tilton?)

Sometimes, our prayers aren’t really prayers at all. Instead, they’re mini-sermons, or exhortations, in disguise, imploring you, Dear Reader, and me to adopt the sort of attitude, behavior, or belief they think we should adopt. (“Teach us that Donald Trump is thine anointed, O Lord,…”) And I admit it’s hard to keep that kind of thing out. How can you object to something like, “Teach us to love one another?” But think about it: why do you have to be taught to love one another?” Better would be “Teach us how to love one another.” But now I’m being pedantic.

It has been a long time since I was asked to stand in for the minister and lead a worship service. In olden times, however, I was asked to do it a number of times. Part of my duty as a substitute preacher was to offer a sermon and, later,  that essential part of any mainline Protestant worship service, the Pastoral Prayer. Now I believe that on Sunday morning, the preacher is addressing the most important things in their congregation’s lives. Accordingly, I believe the congregation deserves the very best the preacher can offer, every time. Some preachers can wing it but not many. A lot more think they can than actually can. It is quite a feat to prepare and deliver a good sermon or pastoral prayer in any case, but to deliver it off the cuff or with a bare outline—that’s like hitting the triple double in basketball, batting for the cycle in baseball, or picking a trifecta at the horse races. And to pull it off over and over again?

It takes work—exegetical, theological, rhetorical—to develop a coherent twenty-minute sermon or a pastoral prayer that catches people’s attention and speaks to their hearts, that both challenges and inspires them. A preacher’s belief that they can do that without adequate preparation may be sincere, but in most cases such a belief leads to negligence at best and, at worst,  masks for laziness or intellectual/spiritual incapacity. 

How many times have I heard something like, “I’ll just say whatever God puts in my heart.” Well, when it comes to excuses for not preparing, that one’s right up there with “The dog peed on my homework.” You, sir or ma’am, are not the Apostle Paul. You’re not Moses. What if God doesn’t want to put anything in your heart that day? What then? You have to have a Plan B, because your congregation is expecting a sermon. You can’t just say, “Sorry, guys, God hasn’t told me what to say today.” Do that more than once and you’ll find the congregation forming a search committee and looking for an interim pastor. And, sooner or later, God will refuse to put anything in your heart, just to teach you a lesson in humility.

I don’t know how good I was at preaching a sermon or offering a pastoral prayer—probably pretty good but not exceptional, except for one sermon I delivered on Lent—now that was a sermon! (I guess everybody has one.) However good I was, however--and I'll leave that judgment to those who were there or read it later--there is no way I could have been as good as I was if I hadn’t done my exegesis, painstakingly wrote, edited, and re-wrote my script—both sermon and pastoral prayer (and yes, it is a script)—rehearsing my delivery, and reading it in the pulpit from a manuscript after having gone over it enough times so that I wouldn’t look like I was reading it while I read it. I’ve heard too many bad sermons to think that many preachers can get away with anything less. (Apropos of nothing, once I wrote on the blackboard in a seminary classroom, “I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my exegesis…” I thought it was funny. The class didn't get it.)

Back to prayer. I’ve never been very good at extemporaneous prayer. That’s one reason I place so much emphasis on preparing and writing things out. In fact, I’m a bit suspicious of those who are good at it. Numerous times I’ve been at a gathering where someone was asked to give a blessing, whereupon the chosen one ripped out 90 seconds of nonstop chatter that sounds good but means nothing, because it’s just done by rote with no thought given to the context. It is a salesman’s spiel, a pitch. They might just as well be selling vacuum cleaners. It always makes me wonder, “How many times have they rattled off that same speech?” I know that blessings and the like share many of the same elements and that certain expressions are common to all, but…Admittedly, some of these guys really are that quick thinking—sincere, thoughtful, and eloquent. I believe that more often, however, the pray-er has likely rattled off the same words so many times that they’ve lost all meaning for both speaker and audience. Just one more box to be ticked off on the event program. (Am I too cynical? I’ve been accused of that.)

No. Give me a prayer that might not start until the person has had a minute or two to think about it. Give me a prayer where they consider the context—the occasion, the audience, and the setting. Give me a prayer that doesn’t come out in one long smooth pitch, but, rather stops and starts as the person gathers their thoughts and searches for the right things to say. That’s my kind of extemporaneous prayer—the kind that’s never the same twice, that’s reborn every time it’s offered. I find the spirit of God in such a prayer.

Now. After meandering like young Billy in one of those Bill Keene Family Circus cartoons and chasing down one rabbit trail after another, Judy, I’m finally ready to tell you how I think of prayer for myself. I wish I could say that when I pray alone or with a partner or small group, I pray for humanity, the wretched of the earth, or any of the other noble prayers that other people pray. And when I write a prayer, I do write about some of those things. But in a more intimate and personal setting, I lower my sights to the personal and immediate. I look at prayer as a series of chances—chances I can take or not, depending on my courage that day.

Prayer gives me the chance to come to the quiet and bring others with me.

Prayer gives me the chance to let go of those fears, anxieties, and depressions that I’ve written about before and let God shoulder them, if only for awhile.

Prayer gives me the chance to unload on someone who is always ready to listen and never grows tired of my bleating, someone who suffers when I suffer.

Prayer gives me the chance to drop my mask, not worry about my vulnerability, and open myself to God.

Prayer gives me the chance to reach out to those who are with me, to experience the joy of human touch, both physical and spiritual, to help them lift up their concerns and to experience their caring.

Prayer gives me the chance to open my eyes to really see the world in new ways, in all its distress and beauty, and to feel God’s compassion for all creation. It gives me the chance to envision a world where there is justice everywhere and where there are no more tears, no more pain and sorrow.

Prayer gives me the chance to open the doors that stand between me and the Universe and God in the Universe; to transcend my human limitations; to talk to God in ways that require no words; to lose myself, come out of myself, and join God’s dance in time and infinite space.

I’m sure I’ve left some things out. 

I don’t pray often enough. I don’t know why. Sometimes I'll pray every day for awhile. For the last month or so, I've been in overdrive. But my prayer life, as I suspect is the case with many of us, waxes and wanes. Perhaps having a prayer partner now will inspire me to keep at it, 

And this is my invitation to you: If you are standing in the need of prayer, if you need a prayer partner, I am here for you. Call me. We’ll work it out.

Amen.

Prayer? What Will People Think? Should We Care?

Yesterday, I did something I never thought I would do: I prayed, in front of God and everybody, with a friend—I’ll call her Judy—in the semi-crowded Black Dog Café.

This is just not the sort of thing I do. It came about like this.

I’ve been friends with Judy for a long, long time, but recently—over the last three months or so—our relationship has taken on a decidedly spiritual dimension. We have started to, on occasion, meet up for the express purpose of talking about God, God’s love, our spirituality, and our personal faith journeys. This is the sort of conversation I have been hungering for, and I have received it as Moses’ people must have received manna in the desert. Despite having known her for many years, even having prayed with her in the past, I was unaware—but not surprised to learn—of the true depth of her spirituality, a depth which even now I doubt I can fully appreciate.

Our meeting yesterday was not meant to consist of the kind of spiritual discussion we’ve been having. Instead, it was, in her words, to “have a negotiation session on how we do this friendship.” I’ll admit, as I told her, that it sounded slightly ominous. Demon-ridden as I am with Anxiety, I couldn’t quite let go of my reptile brain’s fear that this was the kiss-off, even though my law school-brilliant brain knew it was not. And of course it was no such thing. She explained some things; I explained some things. I think that when we were done we each understood the other better, and I think that in the talk our relationship was enriched. I know that I had a better idea of where this spirituality thing was going; I think she did, too.

You probably haven't, but if you have read some of my earlier blog entries, you know that I have been longing for someone to be, for lack of a better phrase, my “prayer partner.” I believe in the power of prayer, and I believe that when two people pray together there is a synergy at work, a multiplier effect. The Good Book has Jesus saying, “Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there is love.” Since God is love, when two people pray together, God is there. God is there all the time, of course, but when you’re holding somebody’s hand in prayer, you feel God’s presence coursing through your blood in a way that is otherwise inaccessible, for me, at least.

But praying with another person is an intimate thing; I am a shy person (really!), and I have never been comfortable asking someone close to pray with me, to feed my hunger. I can pray with strangers—I was required to do that as a student minister at Eden Theological Seminary. I can pray with groups; I have even led groups in prayer and offered pastoral-type prayers at worship. I’ve been able to pray with a couple of former pastors. But friends? It’s hard to ask a friend to take that friendship to another level. It’s risky. Precisely because it involves such intimacy, it involves a placing in them degree of trust that I’ve only ever achieved with a few people, who I can count on one hand. More, it involves asking them to place the same sort of trust in me.

So it was with abundant hesitation and, frankly, fear of rejection, that I finally broached the subject in an email. I simply asked her if, in our next conversation, we could spend some time in prayer together. You can’t imagine how relieved when she replied in the affirmative—she didn’t just say “yes,” but she was enthusiastic. I have come to believe that all people of spirit have a longing in their heart for a fulfilling prayer life. I believe my request struck some sort of chord with her. I believe that maybe she had that longing in her heart and perhaps wasn’t even aware of it. I believe maybe she decided to go out on a limb and trust me, too.

Be that as it may, our conversation last night meandered, as conversations between friends will, and gradually worked its way around to prayer. This was the first time we had gotten together since that email exchange. I was still a little nervous about it. But then she said, “Yes, I’ll be your prayer partner.” Well, the next move was obvious. If we were going to be prayer partners, we couldn’t just keep talking about it—we had to actually do it. But where? When? The answers were (1) here and (2) now. But we were in this semi-crowded café, albeit in a back corner. Judy looked at me and said, "How do we do this?" Were we really going to pray together in front of all these people? Out loud? What would people think? Wouldn’t they think we were a couple of bible-thumping fundagelicals? Would they think we were crazy? At the very least, won't we look silly? Would some people be offended? 

So we hesitated a bit. We looked around a little furtively, sort of like we were doing a deal for some loose joints—it was kind of comical. Then it was as if we came to the same conclusion at the same time: it doesn’t matter what they think. We simultaneously reached out and clasped hands. And suddenly, there we were engaging in private prayer in a public place. we prayed. We prayed aloud—quietly, but aloud—and we prayed silently. We prayed for each other, and we prayed for ourselves. And do you know what? As soon as I closed my eyes—I always close my eyes when I pray—I forgot all about those other people. I lost all self-consciousness; I wasn't worried about what anyone thought. The people had disappeared from sight and sound, leaving only Judy, me, and God. It doesn’t really matter what words we used; the really important communication took place in the silences between and around the words. God was present. I felt it. I think Judy did, too. It felt...right.

When we broke, I opened my eyes and looked around. No one was looking at us. No one gave any indication that things were other than completely normal. Our hesitation had been over nothing much.

Soon after our prayer ended, we left, each of us going our separate ways. We will pray together again, I think. That’s what prayer partners do. I don’t know when—when the time is right, I guess.

I am glad Judy and I prayed together. I felt warmed and comforted. I felt, for the first time in awhile that I am truly God’s child, that I am truly loved, as is Judy, and as are you, Dear Reader.
I expect that “Judy” will get around to reading this sometime. I truly hope that this helps her relive those moments. I hope they were as precious to her as they are to me. Judy, thank you. A better friend one could not ask for.