Tag Archives: Prayer

November 9, 2011 · 7:33 am

How to Stay Astonished in Five Simple Steps

How’s the old Kathy Mattea song go?   “Standing knee deep in a river, and dying of thirst.”

My wife puts up with me, but it has to be annoying.

“Isn’t it funny that we ingest food,” I say.   Or, “It’s so strange that we have these orbs in the front of our heads that rotate, and that using them somehow results in us ‘seeing.’”  There may be any number of these “isn’t life strange?” statements from me during the day, at which point those aforementioned orbs in her head start rolling.

But I can’t help it.   The fact that we are here astonishes me.

That markings on a material can create communication.   That the seemingly gibberish sounds of other languages have structure and syntax, and that those language emerged at all.   That hearts beat without being plugged in.   For years.   That there is now feverish activity going on in garages and offices and bedrooms and kitchens all centered around creativity and invention that will one day yield future technologies that will put the work of Steve Jobs into a distant, remote past.   Geniuses are being born even today.   Starlight millions of years old will tonight just be arriving in my Seattle sky.  Every relationship is a miracle.   Balance, eye-hand coordination, home runs (in season, at least), and self-sacrifice…all astonishing.   Concertos, voices that can hit high C’s, the warmth of a home, the compassion that wants the warmth of a home for everyone, the impulse to not follow the cruel impulse those that insult and demean us seemingly deserve.    Bodies, processes, architectures, leaves falling, petals of brilliant color inching into being, the storehouses of snow prepping at the hand of God to inflict both beauty and suffering on a wintered country.

I know…we’re too busy to be astonished.

So here’s five simple things to turn up your astonishment on any given day.

  • 1.   Stop what you’re doing.
  • 2.  Breathe
  • 3.  Focus on one thing in front of you.
  • 4.  Reflect on the following:  how did it come into being?  What might the world be like if it was completely absent from everywhere?   What if the thing under reflection was perfected?  What is its goodness in your life?  Who should you thank for that goodness?    Why is there any goodness at all, that we should enjoy it?
  • 5.  Remember that your ability to “do”, to have agency, and to act–that thing that you stopped in step 1–that your breath that you thought about and noticed in step 2, that your ability to shift your mind into a focused point of reflection, musing, remembering, and imagining–steps 3 and 4–that all of this is frankly, miraculous.

We did not ask to arrive on the planet, and contrary to our beliefs, we do not control our exit.   The days are full of surprise, diving possibility (as Barbara Brown Taylor reminded me this morning), dangers, and moments of astonishing reality.

There is always something a bit healing about standing aware inside a miracle.

As you exhale, let your lips form a small “wow.” 

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June 27, 2011 · 7:49 am

An Artist’s Prayer

Dear God,

You make, I make.  You make me to make.  What am I to make today?  What are You making today, and what is the plan for how our making?   In every small corner of every large nation, human beings are setting out to take disparate materials and fashion them into a piece of work that has beauty, meaning, aesthetic unity, and the power to impact and change those who encounter that piece of work. (Though the specifics of the impact and the change hoped for vary wildly.)   Here I sit in my small corner of my large nation, setting out to do the same.

I assume You are intimately aware of the nuance of my thought-life and my feeling-life, of my history and proclivities, of my talents and hang-ups, and You have a perspective on who and what I am that is beyond anything I can grasp.  Yet I am stuck in my perspective; my neural circuitry is what it is, my capacities not unlimited, and it simply isn’t true that I can do anything I set my mind to.   The clock is ticking on this earth-side life of mine, and the sun is hurrying over my head even as I type.  I glance over my art-making, and decisions sit there, staring back at me, demanding (with a certain ferocity) to be made, and made now.  Writing is different than planning to write.   Acting is different that exploring acting.   Dancing is different than vowing to dance.

Lord, I control nothing.   ”The wind blows where it wills…”  My making today will not be enough to combat the enormity of things.   The streams of information, experience, and aspiration that feed a human’s creative work (and by “a human” I mean me) are overwhelming and vast, and to wrestle the elements into a form that contains coherence, beauty, and inspiration may not be as back-breaking as digging in coal mines, but it sure seems that way.   When I ask You to guide me, it seems I am asking You to help me find just what illusions I can live with, because the truth of the human condition seems more than any of us can bear.

And immediately from Your end of the conversation comes a simple, “Stop it.”  By that, I take it you mean the whining.   I can see in Your eyes that decisions must be made, action must be taken, and writing and dancing is to commence now, not later.   The word that seems to be hovering in the air between us is “trust.”    Just trust and move into action, do the work, obey.

It is a given that I will not grasp it all.  You remind me that that is the very nature of the finite.  Maybe I didn’t exactly sign up for it, but it’s the game, and I’ve got no real choice but to play.   So even as I sweat these words out here, I’m telling you again that I am indeed getting on with it, knowing that I’ve asked You a thousand thousand times to guide me already, and I can tell by the look you’re giving me that You agreed (read “promised”)  a long time ago to do just that.   It’s not that You’re tired of this conversation, but I can tell there are some other things You’d sort of like us to discuss.

Like the actual work You’re hoping I get around to.

Today.

Okay, I’m listening.

Oh…You’ll talk to me while I work?

Got it.

What’s that?  Don’t bother with the amen business?   Okay, I’d just as soon keep the conversation open myself.

Hey, sorry about all that over-intellectualizing at the front end of the prayer.  I was just–what?  You’re used to it.  Just how you made me?   Good to know.

Oh, yeah, sorry…the work.

Let me get my notes…

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May 26, 2011 · 7:39 pm

How to Follow Your Heart: Part 2

Start with a cup of coffee.  Fast from coffee altogether.

But pay attention, and let words mean something.  To pay requires cost.

Be quiet.  Find the quiet in the noise.   If no quiet can be found, then sleep, and dream of it.

Breathe.   Oxygen and its life are rarely overrated.   Holding breath does nothing but turn you blue.

Listen.   At the very least, speak more softly.   Not always, but sometimes.   Spirits tend to hover when ears are attuned.

Read.  More.   Take things in.  Discern.  Keep.  Throw away.  And leave the trash alone; digging in it stinks.

Walk.   Go for walks.   Houses, sidewalks, and skies hide masterpieces in plain sight.

Look.  Don’t comment, just look.  See not what you want to see, but what’s there.

Bite your tongue when destruction’s on its tip.

Don’t forget what music moves you.  And once you’ve remembered, don’t fail to turn it on.

Write songs.  Even if you can’t sing, and know nothing of music.

Don’t forget that poems need not rhyme.  But they do need to stand.   Or at least walk a bit.

Dance.  Deny yourself that, even at parent’s insistence (they may be dead, after all), and you forfeit muscle, tone, and grace.  Not to mention joy.

Syllogize.  Make up words for that matter.   If “A” cannot be “non-A”, don’t force it.

Think.   When cognitive dissonance is unbearable, bear it, and think.

When walking in rain, release the muscles and slow down.  Tension is no umbrella.

Give.   Money burns, and is mostly too expensive.   Hoarding is a synonym for fear.

Pray.   Forget it working…talk with God.  Be frank, and let that be enough.

Obey.   The conscience is there.  Ignore it at your heart’s peril.   Authority must be given somewhere.

Delight.   Each one’s good is a gift.   Delight in it as it sustains you and those you love.

Weep.    Don’t be afraid to crack wide open.   What bleeds through is that heart you’re looking for.

Choose.  Life and death result, neither of which are abstractions.

Act.   Passivity is decay, though patience is needed.   Still…move.

Trust.   Who are we to think we arrive knowing anything?   God help us.   He will.

Love.   The greatest of these is love.   True.   What does love mean?  How do I do it?   Will I ever find it?

That answer lies at the end of long journeys along roads I think of as the heart to follow.

His is the heart to follow, to find my own.

Rest.

Do again.

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May 20, 2011 · 9:09 am

Hunting for Books: Lead Me To A Good One

There were hundreds of books, and as always, the stakes were high.  But you can’t think about it that way.  Who wants to remember that every single time you read a book, you–and the world–change?

Choosing a book is like choosing anything these days.   There are uncountable choices, and we are given that crazy human imperative that’s the crux of the whole enterprise: to narrow, weigh, and choose.   Twenty four hours in each day, consciously handling 40 bits of information per second (out of 11,000,000, so says Timothy Wilson in Strangers To Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious), trying to determine what’s best in this absolute dynamo of a life we’re in.    We stand in front of the day like a browser in a bookstore; which stacks to go to?  Which authors? Which titles?  Where to get direction?  What if we pick the wrong section?  What if we get lost in the store?  What if the clerks are jerks and think we’re stupid, or worse, out of touch, because we request that book?

And then that searing thought…what does God want me to read?   Lots of people have strong answers for that and since the world is ending tomorrow, I thought maybe a religious title would be in order.   There was my old friend Max Lucado (well, old acquaintance) smiling at me, and Jeffrey Overstreet’s books are there (made me smile), and maybe I should get some evangelical fiction (I’ve never actually bought a book from that section) so I’ll feel better about things.   N.T. Wright interests me (the C.S. Lewis of our day, some say).  I picked up a copy of Genesis from the Jewish publishing world, a Kabbalah oriented version, thought about it, put it back.   I’ve got eighteen Bibles already, and while there are at least hundred titles explaining quite clearly how to get the JOY! I still wonder about on a daily basis, none of them have convincing enough covers.  I looked over a couple of eastern religion titles (don’t remember them now, though one had to do with zen and dogs), but thought no, not right now.

Gift cards always make me think “Art book”, but the only one I saw that interested me was an eighty-five dollar book on new sculpture.  (The one picture I saw in it was a five foot wide tongue sticking out of a massive blood red wall.)  I wandered up and down the sale aisles, the pressure growing, astonished at how many books I’m not going to read. There are zillions in which I just have no interest.   There are whole sections I will never venture into, and yet there they are, waiting for those who are fascinated by and committed to the worlds they contain, though I’ve never seen anyone standing over there browsing.

Graphic novel? Almost went to the cashier with one; I put it back.  Avoided the DVD’s, though House and Friday Night Lights flitted through my brain.  Remembering pleasant younger days of reading, I wandered to the science fiction/fantasy, and again, started downstairs with a title in my hand, then turned around and put it back.  A new journal?  Soduko puzzles?  Goodness gracious, a theatre book?  A book on writing?  Some more poetry?

Good grief.  C’mon, what am I here for?

Start with the basics.  Fiction or non-fiction?  Issues-related books (I do need to be changing the world, after all), but if I go that way, I have to pick an issue.  Civil War?  Got lots of those just now.  Half the Sky?    Half the Sky is a book (and a movement, looks like) on changing the world through empowering women economically, thereby pushing back on all the truly awful ways they’re oppressed in the world.  It got several votes on my Facebook inquiry post (“What book should I get with my gift card?”–I thought it was worth asking), and frankly, now I’m dealing with a bit of guilt that I didn’t pick it.  The non-fiction book of choice came from another FB post-er, a slim little volume about change, which is one of the dominant themes in the hamster wheel that is my brain. Looking it over last night from the safety of my just-before-sleep perch, I’m not thrilled with the choice, but perhaps it will be helpful.

I’ll bet I circle back around to Half the Sky.

I also landed on a couple of fiction titles, one recommended and one that just intuitively looked good.   What I know is that I need to reboot my reading, especially as a story-teller.   When I reported back to the Facebook world my acquisitions, a couple of folks applauded my choice of People of the Book.  Maybe that one’s a winner.

Hundreds of choices, and the course of my life shifts a bit with each one.  Which is why I often speak a little prayer under my breath as I browse the stacks.  ”Lead me to a good one.”

It’s hardly a prayer at all, but I still toss it out there; and I’m serious about it.   The “lead me just now” prayer comes in handy in all kinds of choosing moments.

Choosing books, choosing moments, choosing lives, and mundane little prayers under the breath for guidance.

We’ll see if God cared enough about my reading to answer me this time.

Maybe He’s still working on it…

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May 16, 2011 · 7:34 am

How to Pray

The disciples wondered how to pray, and asked Jesus to teach them.  The gospel of Matthew records the version of Jesus’ reply we know as The Lord’s Prayer.   Simple, direct, covers all the bases; praise, petition, and ascribing appropriate glory.   Paul says plainly, “Pray continually” or more famously, “without ceasing.”      And to the church at Ephesus, he writes, “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests…and always keep praying for all the saints.”   Jesus told his disciples to pray in secret, to not make a show of it, or the praise they would get from their peers would be the extent of their reward.   (Funny word, that.  ”Reward.”)

We talk of relationship with God.  Do we mean something fundamentally different than our relationship with the other persons in our lives?  I have relationships with my wife, my kids, my extended family, my friends, and even those who I meet for the first time on any given day.   This is odd to say, but in relationship we exchange energy, we trade in the essences of who and what we are.  The clunky word for it is communication.  In communication,  we offer bits and pieces of our selves, impulsively give or elaborately planned, and this delightful, intriguing exchange anchors our human experience.   We attach many values to this process: love, honesty, beauty, kindness, and of course, all of their opposites.

God is unfathomable.  But our faith is that He is there.  Francis Schaeffer helped me to understand His “there-ness,” His “personhood.”   That He has a “character” to be learned and known.  Enoch, in Genesis, walked with God, and knew God.  Jesus, in his John 17 conversation with God, notes that this is the essence of life eternal…to know God.   We of the Judeo-Christian tradition interact with what we call “the Word of God,” a reality the writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews says is “living and active.”

In relationship with Anjie, Amy, and Daniel, and all the others of my life, their words mean a lot to me.  To listen, to hear not only their word choice and sentence structure, but to listen to the joy in their voice, or the sorrow.  Their “word” also consists of body language that tells me in an instant if they are up or down, burdened or lightly moving through the world.  I pay attention, and learn much.

All of this is to say that prayer as we often approach it, puzzles me.  I’m fairly sure that in many hearts, prayer is puzzle that seems impossible to solve.   “God” is a word that points to so many perceptions in our world.   We reach out to find, to touch, to connect with, to be heard by, to listen to…the most fundamental reality we can think of. We seek our beginning, our anchor, our destiny.  We seek a place to stand as the world comes apart in tsunami, marriage break-up, death of friends, financial ruin, and the multiple despairs that nip at our heels.   No atheists in foxholes, someone said, and the basic cry of the human crisis–help!--is perhaps the beginning place of all true prayer.

The impulse to write this entry came from touching a place of honesty with God this morning.   Do you ever find yourself praying along, going down the list, in the well-honed groove (whatever that might be for you) yet behind those thoughts are deeper thoughts, other thoughts, thoughts that hover underneath your prayer life, but for whatever reason, those aren’t the bits and piece of your self you typically offer to exchange with God?  It’s not that you’re avoiding something, it’s just that to pay attention to this deeper river is often more work than you’ve got energy for.  Or maybe you just don’t notice.

This morning, I stopped the “on-top” prayers, and went for the river further down.

Damn me if you want, O God, for not getting it right, but this is all I’ve got.  This is what’s on my mind.  This is who I am today, and what can I do but be this before You? What do I think but what I think?  There is an end to my logic, to my ability to process, to my exegetical skills, to my exposure to the miraculous, the faithful, and the evidence that sends faith into assurance.  So, here are my questions. Here are my doubts.  Here are the crises facing the people I love.  These are the amazing things that I see, and these are the amazing things I hope for.  These are experiences that I can’t make sense of.   These are the thoughts that threaten to derail me.  These are the political issues that make me babble like an idiot.   People are suffering here, and the human race seems really nutty in its design.   Talk to me.  I’ve read a hundred books on how to talk to You, and they all say different things.  Advice comes in all sizes and shapes.  Candles, music, postures, styles, volume, pace, faith vs. honesty, power of the word, journals, incense, five minutes or an hour, Holy Spirit groaning, leading, healing, an angel language, and public prayer.   Listening, paying attention to breath, silence, dancing, prayer walks, the laying on of hands, anointing with oil…all advised with a hope of an outcome that will mean “prayer works.”

Does it work?  Do I work?  Do You work?  What is the work of us together, in relationship, traveling the realities You made for us to walk in together, nutty, heart-breaking, and breathtakingly beautiful?

I tricked you with the title of the blog entry.  How to pray?  The answer to how to pray is to pray.  To be.  To speak.  To talk.  To think.  To immerse (baptize) our life in going hand in hand with God through the plain-jane ways of days.   I have no idea how to pray, and I pray always.

I enjoyed my weekend with Anjie.  We watched TV, worked in the yard, worshipped on Sunday, slept, chatted over breakfast scones, thrilled over our children, laughed with common friends, worried over people we love, and discussed how in the world we’re supposed to help.   We trotted out some ongoing struggles, spent some money in support of things we believed in, made some decisions about how to do our schedule this week.   We looked forward, we looked back, we looked around.   We embraced and kissed, revealed and no doubt kept stuff to ourselves.  We talked to God together, said goodbye for a few days as our work calls to us, and we exchanged energy that is all about the faith we have in each other.  Not perfectly, not without tension in moments, not without mystery that escapes us, but all in all, relationship that is as it should be, and perhaps a bit more.

Conversation with God.  To know what’s on His mind, for Him to know what’s on mine.   His will for me, my will as it interacts with His.   His freedom moving with mine, and mine with His.   Life from life, word from word, action from action, I metabolize whatever He gives me moment-to-moment, and we talk again.  As Paul, in all kinds of prayers, in all kinds of ways.

I cannot hide from the One I want to know.  I cannot hide from the One I want to know me.   I’m trying to be done with any such hiding.   I fail, but I try.

How to pray?

Maybe it’s a little like writing.  Put some blood into it…

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