When I have a little more time than usual to devote to prayer (which is always just a little, but as they say every little bit counts), I’m often struck by the fact that after a few days of regular prayer that lasts more than 10-15 minutes, up come truths that are really hard to face, that make me want to go shopping or eat something or watch an E! True Hollywood Story rather than return to prayer and be vulnerable and stay with it.
This week it has been the return of a keen awareness of the distance between the god I preach and teach about and the internal god whose voice judges (or blesses, but really mostly judges, and not happily) my daily actions. So I sit in quiet and attempting to meditate and am met with a litany of things I probably didn’t do right, things I could have said better, people I should have called or if I did call them I should have called sooner or said something more smoothly, times I should have been more playful with my son and less in a hurry. Because my meditation time has been on the fly for months, there’s a backlog of errors and grievances against myself and others and even the planet (why can’t I ever remember to put the re-usable grocery bags in the car when I go to the store?) that have to be spit out before I can even imagine listening for the spirit. And all I can do is sit there and hope that the great loving heart I tell people creates the pulse of the universe can help to mop it up, and maybe tell me that I’m forgiven and always was, and how to live from that awareness and genuinely spread that love a little more in the day to come.
I rise from prayer with no great previously un-heard nugget of wisdom, no gospel passage illumined with brilliant new meaning, just an awareness of my need to rest in a loving embrace I don’t have to earn (and couldn’t if I tried). And then I’m called back to my need to learn to live that truth in a world that wants me to want to be more thin and wealthy, less content with what I have and who I am, and certainly less apt to ask about the meaning of it all.
So, what do you think is going to happen next with Lindsay Lohan?
Lord and Spirit of infinite mercy and compassion, Whose love for us knows no bounds, and Who never condemns us in our human incompleteness, but Who constantly, tirelessly, eternally calls us toward unity with You in spite of our flaws: Help Your servant P not only to declare Your truths in her public prophecy, but also to recognize Your soothing whisper in her private moments. Refine her powers of discernment, that she may more easily differentiate the quiet affirmation of Your still, small voice from the harsh negations of her own superego. Grant her such sure knowledge of Your forgiveness, when she falls short of her own high expectations, that she may learn to forgive herself also. And, we humbly beseech You, if it is Your will, take away from her that measure of her superego that impedes her from delighting in Your omnipresence, and transfer it instead to our suffering sister Lindsay Lohan in her weakness, who, let’s be honest, needs it a lot more, that both their lives may be transformed into a ceaseless song of praise to You, in whom we live and move and have our being. This we ask in the name of your human Son, whose humble example of human potential fulfilled serves as a beacon to us all. Amen.
Thanks for that prayer, FWA. It’s a real blessing to have another pray for you, one that it’s easy for a pastor forget. I still may need to reel you back in to write prayers for worship!