The Inverted Prayer: Intercession via Gratitude

Recently, I’ve discovered a new way to pray for others.

Its vehicle is gratitude.

It goes something like this: Lord, thank you for this food. Bless someone who doesn’t have food with a meal today.

It is an endless petition. As long as I am grateful, it continues, like a cross country road trip on Route 66. It becomes a via, a Way, like the pilgrimage from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, over the Pyrenees to Compostelle.

I was in St. Jean when Martin Sheen was filming the movie named The Way. It is about a father’s personal pilgrimage to trek the Camino de Santiago and collect the remains of his deceased son. His was a climb through grief and the extreme loss of a parent whose child has died. I can’t imagine the anguish of his own petitions, his anger, his pain.

I can’t imagine so much about the suffering in the world today.

But I can imagine one person. One person whose stomach is empty, chewing leaves to stave off the pangs.

I can imagine one person whose mental health has gone haywire, who needs medicine.

I can imagine a homeless man who must walk everywhere he goes.

I can imagine a woman in Mexico who has no running water.

I can imagine a senior citizen who has who has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

I can imagine a girl in Afghanistan who has been denied education.

I can imagine a middle-aged man who is unemployed.

I can imagine a young soldier who has lost a limb in Iraq.

I can imagine a widow who is lonely or an adult child who has lost their aging parents.

I can imagine the grief of a parent who has lost a child.

And so..while I am thanking God for food, for medicine, for my car; while I am grateful for a hot shower, the ability to think and process, the class I am taking; while I sing praises for my job and legs that can carry me around the track; while I offer thanksgiving for family and friends, for my 84 year-old parents who are still alive; while I praise God for my sons and daughter-in-law, I can intercede for others, one person, one need, one inverted gratitude at a time—along my own new Pilgrim’s Way.

 

The Jesus Story—What’s Not to Love?

I recently found myself in the back of a room watching a film on Jesus.

It was a naive reading of sorts, a fresh view of the man I worship.

The film was short, but true to the Gospels I’ve preached on and studied for years.

The room was filled with international students, naïve in their own right, new to this country and many, new to the story.

I found myself enthralled and in love once again with the message of Good News found in a gentle Jew.

Jesus’ life was first and foremost a story. A narrative of love. Some say the Greatest Story Ever Told.

It’s a pretty darn good story.

What’s not to love?

I Said Goodbye to a Friend Today

I said goodbye to a friend today.

Actually, I said, “So long. See you on the other side.”
He died two hours later.

But death for him—for all of us—was a process.

A slow turning towards a Light, the shadow falling more and more on this life.

His scant shoulder sharp under the white sheet. His eyes seeing what we cannot.

His wife and children, grandchildren and friends helped him over. What choice did they have?

And what a gift, the final one they could give him.

He’s singing now.

His words are clear.

His body is robust.

His spirit soars.

But his spirit always soared.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.

Thank you, Fred.

 Abientot.

On Lambs, Soul/Sex Mates, and Being a Wonder

I am ‘minding’ Gigi again, my sister’s toy poodle. Did I say she was a puppy?

She likes to run and jump and play with everything. She has unwound my spool of yarn. Her creamy fur is long enough to sheer—and spin. She looks like a little lamb. My son jokes that I could make money off of her coat.

Yesterday, I turned her loose in the back yard where she ran through the wet clover, up to her shoulders. Then, she did something I hadn’t witnessed since I visited the Dingle Peninsula. She jumped straight up into the air. All four paws leaving the ground at the same time.

She defied gravity like the lambs I saw in Ireland.

I’m not sure there is anything cuter than a lamb, or Gigi.

Or more innocently in need of care and protection.

I get the Psalms and Jesus’ words on sheep, but I think the analogy would have been stronger had they compared humans to lambs.

If sheep need to be protected, go one step further, imagine a little white ball of fur frisking on a hillside, popping into the air near a cliff over-looking the tumultuous sea.

Imagine Jesus as skilled in animal husbandry.

I like that use of the word husband, as one who cares and protects and tends.

I like the idea that a husband could be in my future. We will see.

This morning, I opened a lovely message from a writing/thinking partner on facebook who is a brother in faith.

His words were a blessing I receive. He wishes for me a husband, a soul mate, who will love and care for me. He said, “You are a wonder.”

I don’t know about that, or if more than one soulmate–or Anam Cara since we’re speaking of Ireland– exists. I said I also wanted a sex mate, and I do. It is such an important ingredient of marriage.

I guess we are all wonders and we are all lambs.

Lord, sheer me, shoulder me, shelter me, like a husband. I am your wonder and a little lost in the world.

Mouths Are Made for Kissing

Yesterday, I was in church.

It was International Sunday at First Baptist in Marietta.

Twenty-five different countries were represented through a procession of flags and students. Colorful costumes, children, skin tones made it festive. Volunteers in the English School were thanked and six new US citizens received certificates and American flags.

It was a good day.

The children’s minister talked about mouths and their purpose: to eat, to speak, to praise God through song and liturgy.

She left out kissing.

Which would have gone right along with the pastor’s sermon on lust.

Taken from Matthew’s Gospel and the Sermon on the Mount, the preacher approached a difficult subject with finesse and sensitivity.

He spoke of desire as a gift from God.

He spoke of the silence of the Church at best on the subject of sexuality, and at worst, the negative Puritanical message most familiar to us, that sex is wrong and desire is a sin.

Perhaps these are the reasons I dreamed of kissing last night.

It was an innocent enough dream, a man, a woman, an old rambling house, a large extended family, and kissing, a lot of kissing. And in between smiling. A lot of smiling.

The two seem to go together.

Thank you, Lord, for making mouths and the joy which comes from kissing. Help us to remember they are your invention.

 

 

Chill

Language is dynamic.

It is constantly changing from one generation to the next.

A good example is ‘chill’.

Until recently, chill was a noun and a verb.

Now, it is also an adjective.

Take the recent conversation I had with my son about his birthday:

I want to chill, I want a chill birthday, were the words my firstborn uttered.

I get his meaning. I understand the words.

Our family tends to go overboard when it comes to birthdays.

I was very tempted to drive to Nashville in a day to deliver a homemade caramel cake, but I am attempting to respect his wishes.

Still, I like the word chill as noun, for I have known one, early in the morning when the dew has fallen.

Within relationships when a member holds a grudge.

Within my own heart.

Lord, I don’t want a chill life. I want to soar. I want to feel.

Please help me locate the places in my heart that have grown cold, cool, towards others, towards you.

Help me to have warm hands and a warm heart.

 

Arrogance

I believe arrogance was the original sin.

Before disobedience.

Before the chomping of the apple, fruit juice rolling slowly, slowly down the bronze of Eve’s body. And Adam’s.

Disobedience was action, but arrogance was an attitude.

And attitudes always precede what we do—or don’t do.

In my life, I’ve sinned against God by thinking I know what’s best and am above the law.

I am special. I can bend the rules.

I can stand with my arms folded, taking it all in, while others bow and bend.

And yes, I am special, but my specialness resides in my relationship to the Creator who knows me better than I know myself. Who loves me more. Who knows what’s best.

Lord, this morning, help me to be humble. To know how limited I am. Prevent me from being arrogant, which leads to pride, which causes disobedience.

Help me to enjoy all you’ve created and not ask for more.

Forgive me for the amalgam of sins which stems from my arrogance, including the sin against others, probably the most insidious.

What Are We Going to Write this Morning?

What Are We Going to Write this Morning?

This is the question which I ask daily after prayers and coffee.

It is a good question, primarily because the operative word is ‘we’.

We is a synergism between God and me, a way of viewing and living the day.

I know no other way.

I’ve tried it on my own and it wasn’t stellar.

What are we going to wear? What are we going to do?

These are questions which follow.

I don’t always hear right or respond cooperatively, or obediently, but I try.

It turns out God is a great fashion expert, and God has stellar suggestions on how to spend, what are often the long hours of my days.

 

Agency—Part Two

I want to speak this morning about the agency of the Holy Spirit.

The third Person of the Trinity in which we move and breathe and have our being.

The One who inspires and guides and intervenes for us here.

For too many Christians throughout history, the Spirit has been positioned as the third place in some sort of God-hierarchy, a less than God the Father, not even close to the Son,..

And yet, the Spirit is the Son and the Father or Parent. The Spirit moved over the face of the earth at the dawn of creation, stirring up the waters, blowing breath into Adam, flying close and fierce as a giant bird, stirring, transpiring, covering, loving.

The Spirit was on the cross in the Christ, stretching, dying.

The Spirit was in the tomb, and in the garden, speaking to Mary.

In the ThM program at Emory, I wrote my thesis on the relationship between the pneumatology, religious practice, and pneumatic experience in Julian of Norwich’s Showings.

Among other research, I explored the names Julian uses for God and particularly her use of Holy Spirit. I catalogued and chronicled and made a fairly good case via agency for her theology of the Spirit or pneumatology—not so unique from others during the thirteenth century.

The Church seemed to grasp then that when you get one Person of the Trinity, you get all three. At any point.

The Trinity was not divided but One. Not a hierarchy but a Person. Not sectioned and assigned but whole and inclusive.

I long for such theology in the Church today.

Agency

I want to speak this morning about agency.

Not as real estate or Central Intelligence but as power.

We all need a sense of agency, the ability to move, to act, to make a difference.

Agency requires a certain freedom and confidence. It is vital to who we are as human beings.

A baby knows agency when she cries because she is hungry and receives nourishment.

She has exercised her will and her need and has affected change.

Two year olds know it well. They stubbornly insist on their own way out of a keen sense of their wants and needs and a new found power to act and change their environment. They must be taught the hard truth that we can’t always have it our way. Still, sometimes we can. Sometimes we can make a difference.

Thank heavens.

Teenagers experience agency when wise parents turn more and more power loose to enable their child to become independent, to make good decisions—and sometimes mistakes–to stretch their wings on their way to adulthood.

And adults..well we possess more agency than we sometimes want.

Even if we don’t feel that way.

Often we feel powerless in our lives, powerless to affect change, to act, mobilize, move into the fullness of our potential. We are overwhelmed by choices and so do nothing, like the main character in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.

And sometimes, our circumstances prevent such movement.

Still, agency is within our grasp. It may mean, like Thoreau in jail, we cannot escape our physical circumstance, but our minds and our spirits can still be free.

We have the power always to choose our thoughts, our attitudes, our response, our inner life.

Prayer may be the best agency I know.

It affects change. It brings about transformation, within and without.

It is one of our greatest gifts, to be with God in an active choice. A decision. A movement forward in the agency that is the pentultimate Central Intelligence, the real estate of our faith.

Prayer is power.

May we exercise it today.