Prayer: The Great Cop-Out

Warning: this post may be hazardous to your dysfunctional prayer life.

There. I said it up front. So if you are feeling uncomfortable, you have time to go elsewhere. I won't be offended. :)

In the past few years, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how our spiritual approaches can sometimes be exercises in condoned dysfunction. Condoned because...who wants to argue with anything that has God attached to it? That just feels too dangerous. So we often accept whatever comes in the name of spirituality (and God), without digging very deeply into the dynamics.

This morning, reading The Education of Millionaires, it struck me that prayer is one of these condoned practices that, in truth, can sometimes be a cop-out and therefore a form of dysfunction.

When did it strike me? This quote, to be exact, which is the opposite of a dysfunctional prayer approach to problems...

"You see a problem in your life or in your surroundings and fix it. You don't count on some higher authority to make things better; you make it better yourself, whether or not you have the authority."

Throughout Ellsberg's excellent book, he follows person after person who approached life as a problem solver, to good effect—not only propelling them towards greater success but also making them more able to give compassionately to the world.

What problems are you (and I) avoiding fixing today, by praying about them instead of actually taking action to effect change? Dangerous question, I know. It is meant to be.

Just for the Fun of It

When I started this Art Pilgrimage, I didn't have any rationale I understood. It was just for the fun of it.

And that is why I am reading things like this enormous book on Art History. I can't give you a single good reason for it. I have no plans to be a curator, an art historian, an art history teacher.

When do we stop doing things just for the fun of it? When do we begin doing everything in life for "a reason"?

I don't know. But I'm done with that. I really am.

But here's the strange thing. There have been "outcomes" connected to my pilgrimage. Ones I didn't foresee. Ones that go past amorphous (and wonderful) happenings like personal satisfaction and spiritual awakening.

In a convoluted path that would take too much room to explain, the Pilgrimage led to a poetry book. Then someone wanted to buy one of the art pieces I posted here (I gave it away... why not? :) And, most recently, another piece was chosen for an art show in Germany. Um, what?

I am not saying all this to try to impress you (we have a different kind of relationship than that, I hope). I am saying all this to give you a nudge. Are there things you've been wanting to do "just because"? Do they seem frivolous, out-of-place, hard to justify or explain?

All the better. These are deep places. Why not... jump in.

Pieces

So many pieces floating in my life right now, little sticks adrift in a stream. I strain to see a pattern, watch and wait to discover which ones will land upon the shore... a sort of flotsam that finds itself connected by fallen reeds, dead leaves, string from old cloth, but, still, connected. I want to know which ones will float away, forgotten, dash against rocks, splinter, split.

I strain to see.

And my mind reaches for a "borrowed prayer."

Give us.

Give us this day.

This day.

Let me be content to watch the pieces floating, twirling in eddies, bobbing. Let me not strain to see. Just let this be upon my tongue...

Give us.

Give us this day.

This day.

Fatten

Can't get the last stanza of a poem I wrote this week out of my head. A poem called "To Handle a Hen: Advice from my Stepbrothers."

A hard poem indeed. And the last stanza, this...

Once baked, the flesh will flatten,
stretch, evaporate into brittle crispness.
This is best: fat's no good for your heart.

My own poem speaks to me. Reminds me what it takes to sin against others. Yes, to sin against others it helps to turn them into ghosts, waifs, thin things, paper dolls, flimsy realities.

But... if they begin to take shape, inflate, fatten, turn in three dimensions before my eyes... rise up, dance, flex fullness, pop, bubble, burgeon... well now, that changes things.

Fatten my friends, Lord, my family, the invisible oppressed of the world. Fatten them 'til I can hardly reach 'round one side to the other. Fatten them. In my mind and heart.

Mind Reader

I drive across town, alongside the river, and I think...

My life is changing, with the force and volume of the Midwest floods. How can I see the landmarks anymore, drowned as they are in the passion of the water?

I feel like it would be easy to be carried away, lose my bearings, end up downstream in places I cannot understand or navigate. The pace of my heart quickens.

A little thought comes that maybe it is time to find a priest of sorts, a place to talk, to be, to find anchor — rather than resorting to burying myself in some safe spot underground. What credit is it to you? I can almost hear You saying, if you burrow and deny? That too causes darkness, isolation.

Okay, I say. But where do I begin? What ears, what heart, what hands can I trust to handle my soul, save You?

When I get home, You have answered me in my in-box. A friend has, for reasons unrelated to my silent struggle, recommended that I find a spiritual director. And she's given me a trusted name, a place to start.

Mind-reader God, how dear You are to me.

Sweep

The wood floor shone, golden amber. Swept. For the first time in... months? It was finally accessible.

I had rearranged the furniture. Put one girl's clothes in a new dresser I dragged down from the attic. Alone. (My shoulders still bear the pain.) Cleaned up the toys, put some away for good. Removed the old baby books, well most of them, except a few that are still favorites with these beyond-baby girls of mine.

Above the "new" dresser, I put up Eldest Daughter's note-holder. A horizontal bit of wood with clothespins, in rainbow color. Clothespins that would hold photos, I suddenly decided. I found a moody picture of the two girls, pensive by the side of a misty lake. I found one photo full of sisterly hugging mischief. A Christmas picture. Two of the girls picking strawberries as wee little ones. I LOVED each girl even as I swept through with changes I knew they wouldn't understand, nor welcome.

I was not disappointed. Well, in the sense that the girls reacted as I knew they would. Youngest girl came in speechless. Oldest child wept on her bed. Long, long sighs and tears for the dust I'd swept from the corners, for the loss of something, perhaps she wasn't even sure what.

And I thought of you, Lord. You with your broom. You rearranging things beyond my understanding. And I thought of me. Me. Weeping on my bed.