pastor prayers

Yesterday I made a visit to a member of the church who turns 94 today. As I said goodbye we held hands as we always do and I spoke a prayer for her. Sitting there, I was overcome by the realization that the hands I held in mine, knotty and losing their strength, had touched and been touched by people and things all over the world (she was very well-traveled) for nearly a century now. And I left with a little tingle in my hands and a sense that god herself had touched them and offered me a blessing even as I spoke words for dear Mrs. S. This is my prayer to the god present in those hands.

Let me feel you close, embodied One, as you rest in these hands that have felt the fine silk of China, filled white gloves for formal balls, gracefully offered themselves for kisses from gentlemen offering their respect. In the impossible thinness of this skin, help me to be mindful of the tenderness of each soul I encounter. I am washed with awe at the air that has touched this skin, the sun and wind and rain that have danced on it and offered it pleasure and pain. In the countours of veins, the knobs of joints, the arthritic curve of fingers, let me know the grace of living through pain with dignity. In the softness of warm palms train me in humility; help me to yield my certainty so I might greet new insight. In the trembling of arms (moved by sobs or by nerves — it’s hard to know which, and may be none of my business), burst open my heart so that it might embrace the suffering of the world, and feel the warm light of love seep through the cracks in this aged skin. Teach me the wisdom of tradition, the lineage of those in my care, that I may know my own. In the name of life abundant and full and the beauty of age, amen.

Thank you, Jesus

One of my favorite art purchases ever is this ex voto from Guatemala. I found it at my favorite gallery about 9 years ago. It’s a thank you note to God (or in this case Christ the King of the Mountain) for having survived a school bus accident, hand stitched by the person giving thanks. As soon as I saw it, I was touched by it. At the time it was because it made me think about how often when we make it through something scary we move straight through the “thank goodness I’m alive” and on to: “whose fault was this?” and “How can I make sure I’m never so scared again?” or, in many cases, “Where can I get some financial recompense for being so threatened?” Taking the time and trouble to mark the sheer fact of survival when things could have turned out otherwise, to actually make a beautiful tribute to the fact of being saved… well, it just hadn’t ever occurred to me.

When I bought it, I had just graduated with my M.Div., been through a divorce, and had a brush with death in the form of a pulmonary embolism. I had plenty of reason to be thankful just to be walking around somewhat intact. And so I carried it home on the plane as a reminder of the constant need to offer thanks and praise. I don’t usually think of prayer as having magical powers or as something one does to stave off bad events in life. I certainly don’t tend to attribute miraculous survival to the person of Jesus. But whatever the direction of prayer, I am ever more convinced that it is important as an acknowledgement of the struggle and the joy of our lives. We sanctify them by offering them up, just as they are, to some great and ultimately unnamable force. And when we say them out loud, make them into art, preserve the significant moments of our lives, we come to understand them in a new way, to offer them a bigger context and sometimes a greater purpose.

As I have held onto this particular prayer from the journal of Zenaida, I’ve also come to realize the power of holding and honoring anothers’ prayer — one that belongs to someone I may never meet, with a life I probably can’t imagine. Most of us are familiar with prayer chains and different ways of sharing prayer as a way to magnify its efficacy or just to feel held in community. From Catholic altars and shrines to puja offered at Hindu shrines and temples, there seems to be a universal human need to offer prayers publicly, to share them and believe they can be heard — if not by the gods or goddesses, then by our fellow humans. Who knows, they could be one in the same.

One of my favorite parts of the liturgy we do at my church is the Morning Prayer. Before worship begins, anyone in the congregation is invited to write down a prayer and light a candle on a table at the front of the sanctuary. They can indicate whether they wish for it to remain private or want it to be shared, and then as I speak the rest of the prayer I read the words of prayer of the folks in the congregation. On the days when I think about its meaning too deeply, I end up choking back tears. There is something astoundingly powerful to me about having the honor of speaking the prayers of others. I consider it the centerpiece and most religiously important part of our worship.

I don’t know how many people are reading this blog (my stats just say how many hits there were, but I don’t know about duplicates or from where), but I’d like to offer this as a place where folks might also offer prayers to be shared. Not in a creepy chain-letter way, but as a way to offer up genuine thanks, or concern, or sorrow, and let it be held by a larger community that will offer some tender care. I can hear many of my beloved rationalist atheist UU’s rolling their eyes at how cheeseball it may seem. But I’d be willing to bet that even you folks have some deep yearnings that you’d love to get off your chests and have a little bit of help holding.

Give it up, dear readers. Do you have a thank you note to God? A lament? A tirade? A full-on angst directed at the universe? Let’s hear ‘em.

PS: Later update — I will have intermittent email access at best for the next week, so if you don’t see a comment right away, know that it will be posted as soon as I can get to it.

Ever since I attended New Mexico Girl’s State, and especially since I moved away from New Mexico 12 years ago, when I return and take in the landscape I start to sing the state song in my head. Which is a problem for many reasons, including a natural aversion to state or national songs of any kind as well as an inability to remember more than the first three lines of this particular one. And of course the chorus. Always, the chorus.
There I was last weekend, riding through the desert (my horse with no name an Avis rental car, apologies to Mr. Young) to arrive in the only landscape that has ever captivated me and made me certain there is a meaning and purpose to this existence that is magical, eternal, and unknowable to mere mortals. New Mexico is where I go to be home, not just in the sense that I know people there and have a personal history there, but where I go to be reminded of my place in the order of things — or the disorder of things, as the case may be.

There is nothing that can match the sense of being surrounded by the mountains and mesas, the sky that stretches forever and carries every expression in the weather it brings, the tenacious animals that make their homes amid the mesquite and sagebrush. I sat on a rock early one morning deep in the Jemez Mountains and stared down into the valley, felt the crisp sun on my face and arms and the pink glow that rose from the light landing on the orange earth dotted with bushes, and, further up, Ponderosa Pine. I was overcome with an urge to throw myself into the valley, to be enveloped by its beauty, washed clean by the daily thunderstorms, healed by the effusive hot springs, consumed by the very life of the place. I imagined being held by the earth, swallowed by her and held on her tongue for a time before being spit out (too bitter to be kept for long), renewed. I wanted the land to want me as much as I wanted it: passionately, irrationally, adoringly.

But truly the thing that has always been most calming about this landscape to me is its indifference. The magnitude of its existence, the sense of time before time and long after my time makes it a trustworthy place to leave the struggles and the celebrations of my own life. Death can be held here, and finds company with people who have mourned it in many cultures, through wars and droughts and blizzards and floods, with many gods and One True God. Life, too, is precious and always worthy of note. The people are gentle with each other, strangers, because everyone has a sense of being a stranger here. There is no mistaking that there is something much larger than yourself that determines the fate of your existence; the illusion of personal invincibility is not one that can last in this landscape.

I’m so grateful for my brief reunion with the god of open skies and hard rains, of eternal mountains and cool streams of living water. My heart is welling with thanks and praise to the people who have been my sustenance in that landscape, who I have carried in my heart just as I have saved the earth from Santuario de Chimayo on my prayer altar during these many years away.

O fair New Mexico, I love I love you so.

Each night at supper time, we say a grace that consists of each person saying what they are thankful for. I was introduced to the practice by my friend and then-roommate Jill right after seminary, and came to love it as a simple way to reflect on the day. One’s theology can change over time, but god help us if we ever lose the need to give thanks. Our 4 year-old son Kian rarely begins a meal without ‘thankful fors’, as he calls them, and often is our biggest enforcer, including choosing the order in which we will share. When we sit down to dinner everyone is hungry and Enrique and I are especially in a hurry to get to the brass ring at the end of the day: the window of quiet time for grown-ups after supper, bath and bed for Kian. Let’s just say that thankful fors can be a little rushed.

Now that we’ve reached the delicious evening and the house is quiet, my heart swells with all I have to be thankful for just from this one day.

As Emerson might say, we are in the midst of a “refulgent summer” and it is indeed a luxury to draw the breath of life. I give thanks and praise for the simple joys I have had the time to savor today. Noticing the progress of our garden: the height of the tomatoes, the broad leaves of squash, the preponderance of mint. Tossing the baseball to Kian, who loves tapping the bat against the base (a brick left over from the patio) and wiggling his butt vigorously much more than actually hitting the ball. The precious hours I got to spend alone, tending to my being with exercise, practicing congas, and reading. The reunion with the family at the end of the day. For Enrique who stopped at the farmer’s market when he could have just sped home, and brought us a scrumptious harvest of fresh peas, tomatoes, and beets. For the time spent shelling the peas, opening each pod to let its fruit spill out, smooth and round over my fingertips and into the bowl. For Kian’s earnest efforts to open the pods, and his companionship while we did the most delightful chore I can ever remember doing. And then for the taste of the peas, enjoyed in the back yard where we eat as many summer dinners as possible, with tabouli and veggie burgers and happy conversation. And the cherry on top: Scott Wells’ assistance with getting the kinks worked out of my blog setup.

Thanks and praise be to the source of all, whose presence felt so near to me in all these things this day. Amen.