prayer | pull up a chair

January 14, 2011

sometimes we forget the power of a hug

it was last friday night, i am nearly certain, when my little one, who sometimes is a prophet, climbed into our bed. he wanted snuggles, he said.

and then, as he was wrapped from both sides by arms that have held him since the shaft of light in the middle of the night shone that long-ago hot august vigil on his slippery, pink, eight-whopping pounds, he spoke the words that have blanketed me all week:

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could ever hurt me.”

i know that’s what he said, because as he spoke those words in that pure-hearted voice of a boy who doesn’t censure a syllable, the words–a mere two dozen, swiftly chosen, unfiltered words–pried open my heart, whirled to that place where they will forever live, and i let out a sigh.

it’s not every night you find yourself wrapped around poetry.

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could ever hurt me.”

i am certain those are the words he spoke because i wasn’t about to leave anything to chance, there in the dark. or to the soft spots in my memory.

i asked for the phone (yes, in the dark). i dialed my number at work. and i recited the words into the phone, knowing i’d etched them into the digital memory that is my work voicemail.

that sweet little boy didn’t know—nor did any one of us–how powerful those words would forever ring, especially as they came just 12 hours before a madman lifted a gun called a glock (a name that sends shivers down my spine, the sound of cold-blooded crime locked in its clipped hard-edged consonants), and sprayed bullets into a crowd, into the heart–yes, the heart–of a 9-year-old child.

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could hurt me.”

so we hold our breath and pray.

so we wish.

so we fool ourselves every time we wrap our arms around the ones we love.

as if it’s a shield that cannot be shattered. as if impenetrable walls are forever wrapped around the ones we love, the vulnerable ones, the ones who do not–do not–have rhyme or reason to be taken away.

lord have mercy.

my little boy’s words, now a refrain that i tumble round my brain, like some succulent fruit whose juice i cannot get enough of, his words are what we pray for.

his words are what we need to remember.

isn’t that the prayer at the heart of all our comings and goings?

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could hurt me.”

we are, sadly, old enough and battered enough to understand the limits of those words, a child’s words, to run our fingers along the sharp-edge where our prayers fall off, and pure chance reigns.

but the words are worth remembering: it’s our place in the world, our place by the gift of being grownups, to wrap our arms around our children, around all those we love, the ones whose breath we depend on, the ones whose stirrings matter.

it is all our children ask of us, in the end, to be their shields from the darkness, to chase away the ghosts and goblins, the creaks in the hall in the thick of the night, the ones that scare them to no end.

they lean their little bodies into us, into our soft chests. they ask for so little: wrap me, make me feel safe, shoosh away the monsters.

and while there might always be madmen, and madwomen, who steal the light, who shatter the morning’s hope, our jobs do not cease.

our arms are forever needed, and the hearts that beat in the middle:

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could hurt me.”

make it your job to hug the ones you love today.

even when they don’t put words to it; the little prophet reminded me the other night in the darkness.

who did you hug this week? how did the heartbreaking news of the week toss and turn in the shards of your heart?

as promised last week, when i feel the rumblings of something to say, i will put fingers to home keys. i will write as long as what’s here doesn’t feel too lean. and bless all of you who took the time to let me know you are out there….i can’t give up on a place where civility and deep thinking and heart have always reigned. bless this place in the world, and my prayer is that we can take it beyond.
i found myself this week making it my personal mission to add extra doses of decency and kindness. i looked more people in the eye, other riders on the el; i said thank you in a deeper way to those who unfolded kindnesses, large or small. i can’t turn around a nation’s civility (or lack thereof) but i can make sure i act with wholehearted dignity and grace. at every turn.
how bout you?

6 Comments

January 15, 2010

little left but prayer

ever since the news swept out, ever since we heard the word that the earth convulsed and heaved and paid no mind to bodies in the way, i’ve found it hard to be inside my house, safe and warm, unshattered.

found it hard to sit beside my little one, he in warm pajamas, nibbling on banana, sipping milk, sitting on a stool that had no splinters, that was smooth and whole, warm air swirling all around us, the night’s cold breath blocked by glass and wall and roof.

couldn’t fathom, though we tried, he and i together, how not so far away really there were children crying, couldn’t find their mamas or their papas, maybe. couldn’t find a brother or a sister, or the family dog, the one who always curled beside them when the night came on the island.

haiti, suddenly, isn’t so far away, although the breadth and depth of the destruction in the wake of the once-in-200-years quaking of the earth is so incomprehensible.

i find myself, once again, riveted by tragedy on this small whirling globe.

this one feels so close to home. this one makes me shudder in my warmth, my comfort, my going to sleep knowing my boys are safe.

how can one people be so pummeled? not only now, but always.

how can some of us escape again and again? how can some of us think the car nearly out of gas on a frigid morning is a big fat deal? how can some of us be blessed to worry only that our children might not find the answers on exams?

we’ve been praying, my boys and i, the little we can do. we’ve been imagining who each prayer was prayed for. we imagine a child, or a grownup, we imagine a whole scenario, and then we pray a prayer just for that one someone we’ve imagined.

we paint pictures with our words, try to make the prayer concrete, explicit, particular, for the prayer to come alive….

“for a little boy, who is covered in dust, whose arm is broken, who cannot find his mama.”

“for all the children who are crying, and whose cries aren’t heard.”

“for the little one who is hungry, who hasn’t found her way to a slice of bread, to fruit.”

“for the ones who sit beside the rubble, waiting, not giving up hope, listening for whimpers, now fading, three days later when chances slip to nearly less than none.”

it’s all we can do, imagine prayer. construct biography and hold it in our arms, in the arms of our prayer, in our hearts that know no bounds.

we can’t, most of us, board a plane, bandage wounds, salve the brokenness. but we can stay with the mission. we can hold it day after day, hour after hour, night after night, in prayer.

and so we pray. and so we teach our children. we tell them stories. we show them how we pray. we know they listen. they’re not too young, not at all, to start to figure out how very blessed they are. how once again, they’ve escaped. but not far away there is no escaping, and thus we are all left to pray and pray some more.

this day i pray. for the ones who wail in pain alone. for the ones who are lost. who can’t find their way. who can’t find the ones they love. not one of them, i hear again and again on the news reports that crackle in from the broken island.
this day i pray and i don’t stop. there is little left but prayer for those of us who cannot rest when the world’s in pain, deep pain, inexplicable pain. pain they had no idea was just around the bend. about to swallow them whole.

carry on, the litany unspools……

7 Comments

October 16, 2009

inviting in the sacred

someone asked me not so long ago why i search so often for the sacred in my every day.

it’s not so much the searching, really, it’s that i often seem to stumble on it.

it’s just there. kaboom.

i find it, often, tucking little ones to bed. or sitting side-by-side, on stools carved by my brother, in that after-school ebb and flow, when the third-grade day comes rushing out in breathless narrative, and, every paragraph or so, in goes bite of apple, or cookie, or glug of chocolate milk.

i do, yes, find the sacred nearly every time i tiptoe out the door. not the times when i’m near a gallop, racing to the station wagon, keys clunking from my fist, nearly always late for where i was supposed to be, a good 10 minutes ago.

but in the tiptoe times, when every pore of me is wide awake and at attention, when i’m in slow gear, trying not to barrel through, disturb the peace, then it’s almost certain that the sacred will alight on me, as a monarch to a black-eyed susan.

i find the holy breath in birdsong, absolutely. and in the streams of light pouring through the pines, or the crack in the fence that runs along my cottage garden.

i find knee-dropping humility when i spy the moon. or when, weeks behind schedule, a vine i thought had died breaks out in bloom, a resurrection lesson every time.

i find God whenever i’m alone. or maybe that’s the time when at last, i feel the rustling by my side, at my elbow, where my heart goes thump. maybe that’s when at last it’s quiet enough, still enough, for me to hear the holy whispers in my ear.

i do know that God spends time aplenty in my kitchen, at my dinner table. i sink my fists into the egg-rich dough of the challah in the making, and i hear the prayers take off. i dump cinnamon and raisins in a pot of bubbling porridge, and well, i am at one with the heartbeat of all the saints and angels who’ve passed this way, who’ve known what it is to be called to care for others as if you were their mother.

at every meal when we join hands, a circle of palms touching palms, fingers wrapped around fingers, i feel a veil of holiness drop down upon us. especially so when we’ve invited in a friend or stranger we’d not known so well before.
oh, Lord, i even find the sacred scrubbing out the tub. not always. but sometimes. folding clothes. turning on the iron, smoothing out the wrinkles.

isn’t that, at the heart of it, what the sacred brings?

an otherworldly way of living on a higher plane?

isn’t this all just molecules and space between if there’s no purpose to the plan? aren’t we merely moving markers round the gameboard, passing through the stations, checking off the list, if there’s no Teacher, no Comforter, no Great Illuminator?

oh, you needn’t call it by a single name. nor pray a certain prayer.

all i’m thinking here is that to tap into the sacred, to invite it in your home, your heart, your rushing to the train, your talking to the grocery checker, is to take it up a notch. to infuse the beautiful and the breathtaking into the simple act of breaking bread and sipping wine. or stirring soup. or whispering in a child’s ear, “don’t be afraid. i’m here.”

isn’t all of life just a long equation of simple addition and subtraction? don’t we make it into poetry, geometry, by seeing it through a lens that understands, at the heart of every breath, every word, every triumphant act of courage, every heart-crushing blow, that we are not here merely by the power of our own two legs.

but that there are wings all around, holding us afloat, wrapping us, taking us on a sacred flight to everlasting truth and holy wisdom.

that’s why i seem to stumble on the sacred.

i don’t think i’d stay upright otherwise.

do you invite in the sacred? how so? why, for goodness sake?

8 Comments

January 21, 2009

amen, amen…

and so we begin.

yesterday was the day for wiping away tears, for feeling the swell in the deep of our hearts. yesterday was the day for sitting mesmerized before the screen, taking it in, all of it, aretha franklin’s gray felt bow, outrageous bow, flamboyant bow, just-how-we-all-felt, crystal-studded bow. for taking in the tears, welled-up and streaming down the cheeks of an immigrant from gambia, among the many tear-streaked faces i won’t forget. for taking in the poetry of hands that laid the tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick-by-brick the towers “they would then keep clean,” and brought us–two million, flesh and blood; a globe of others through the miracle of satellites and wires, screens and speakers–to the mall, to the reflecting pool, and to the spaces in between the chiseled monuments of those now-hushed american heroes.

but most of all it was a day for taking in the words, the cadence, the power of a president who’s had his eye on re-stitching this torn tapestry for a long, long time.

i sighed out loud when he spoke of whispers from the fallen heroes who lie in arlington, when he reminded us of those who toiled in sweatshops and settled the west, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. when he spoke of hands worn raw.

i held my breath. held it so hard i was dizzy by the speech’s end, the end of the inaugural address, the end of the words that marked the start of what just might be something very, very big.

and i prayed, prayed mightily, prayed without end. prayed, amen, amen.

will keep on praying, so help me, God.

i am teaching myself, reminding myself, to breathe again, breathe a new oxygen.

and for just one day, one sweet fine chill january day, i shut out all the cynics and the critics. in my mind and heart, his speech was a great one, no modifiers need apply. in my eyes, her gown was perfect, and so too the lemongrass one she wore all day. i gasped when i first saw both of them. don’t give a hoot what the sharp-eyed ones have to say. the sharp-tongued ones, i wish they’d just keep quiet. just for one sweet january’s day.

yesterday was not a day for judging. only for reveling. and savoring. and sucking the sweet marrow from the makings of a new america.

today, then, is the beginning. is when we all pick up the mantle laid before us, draped across the bone-cold mall, and across the frozen farmfields and the cities and the backroads and the riverbeds of this once great and once-again, i sense, great united states.

today, if we listened to his words, is the day we all begin anew. begin to be and act and dwell as if we are made of holy fibers and corpuscles and muscle with the strength to do the work, the necessary work.

today, then, is the day we don’t do what we’ve always done.

we start small, i’d propose, and we let it grow from humble shoots and sprouts. we start out wobbly, maybe, a little bashful, perhaps, but then we catch the wind, and, oh lord, who knows where we go.

we begin, just maybe, in the little universe that is our everyday.

we pick up the trash blowing through the alley, not because it’s ours but because it’s there and it oughtn’t be and we shouldn’t let its provenance dictate the hands that do the picking.

maybe, just maybe, we practice a whole new way behind the wheel. we don’t honk for no reason. we let the car coming from the other way take the parking space, and then we wave and nod and make it clear we’re making room for a whole new kindness and generosity.

we look, i hope, into the eyes of the man stuffing cartons of milk and cottage cheese into our grocery bag. we say, have a lovely afternoon. and we mean it.

we go into our children’s classrooms. we tell stories. turn pages. help the one who struggles with a pencil try to find his curly loop, or the ledge on the paper where the letters sit.

and then, more boldly, we go beyond the school where our own children sit, we go to ones where mamas and papas don’t have the chance, maybe, to sit and practice number drills. where there’s no globe at home, so the children in the desks have never really seen just where their city sits at the edge of the lake in the middle of the land mass that seems to run from top to bottom of that globe.

and then, after we read with them, and turn pages, maybe we go make lunch for them. bring cupcakes, for crying out loud. because have you ever met a kid who does not deserve a cupcake for no reason at all? maybe we bring our own children along. watch them make friends. watch them start to understand that the world does not begin and end at the borders of the village or the block they call their own.

maybe when we’re walking down the street, or through the office, maybe when we hear the gossip start to roll off tongues, we say, hey, don’t. please don’t.

maybe all the hundred little choices we make in a day, maybe they all add up.

maybe we start to do what the man at the foot of the capitol meant when he stood up against the chill wind and said, starting today, we’ve got to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking america.

maybe that’s why this morning i am sleepy-eyed from staying up late to watch the ballgown swirl, the white one with the single shoulder sash and all the poofy little posies, the one she kept lifting from beneath the tips of her shoes where it was getting caught while she was dancing cheek-to-cheek, maybe that’s why i’m sleepy, yes, but mostly why, this brand-new morning, there’s a pumping in my heart that tells me there is work to be done.

work for all of us, not just the one who is the forty-fourth and the first, all at once.

let the work begin.

amen. amen.

what will be the ways you begin again the work of remaking your corner of the universe? what frames from yesterday will you not forget, not ever?

4 Comments

June 13, 2008

shaky all around

the news seeping into my little world isn’t so swell these days. nothin’ at all to do with today being that unlucky friday. phooey, i say to that. that’s ol’ superstition. and superstitious i’m not. not so much, anyway.

i’m talking about the front page of the paper. and, lately, the business page, too. they’re the ones spelling out the downs and the more downs; whole columns of type, sprinkled with words like recession, inflation, and war that won’t end.

oh, and bosses at work being shown to the door. and other ones, new ones, saying they don’t like what we do. and we don’t do enough. and, oh, by the way, they’re cutting the pages, and the numbers of people paid to fill the ones left.

all sorts of talk, all day in the newsroom, about what’s going to happen, and who’s going to leave. anyone left, we all wonder, still reading the news? anyone left who loves turning a page, not knowing just where your fancy might land, soaking up something wholly brand new you might never have known? getting grabbed by a photo, or maybe a headline. seeing a byline, sinking into the words of a friend you’ve not ever met but feel that you’ve known for ever and ever.

it’s all very shaky. and it’s not only newspapers.

here in the village where i now mostly walk, or pedal my bike, to save the gas in my tank, i see houses for sale. hear stories of folks needing to move.

i know my dear friend the breadman isn’t baking so much. because no one is buying quite so much anymore. and cash registers, all over town, seem to be rigged with an odd little button that makes all of the totals twice what they were.

even at home, there are reasons to worry. the tall one is stiff, with a pain in his back. and all of us grownups, on pins and on needles.

so what do i do when it’s shaky all over, when the world at my door gets blurry and buzzes and is all out of sorts?

i crank up the dial on the parts of my life that matter the most.

i pay attention to what i’m cooking for dinner. i set the table with just a little more care. i cut more and more peonies from out in the garden. i tuck them there by the bedside, even in rooms strewn with little boy’s clothes.

i walk to the library. i sit with my sweet little starting-out reader. we pluck books, chapter books now, from shelf after shelf, whole piles too heavy for one of us only. we take turns with each chapter. we take turns with the book bag. sometimes, each one of us takes one of the handles. we lug it together.

i buy pie for no reason. i promise to learn to make my own crust. i snip herbs from the garden, snip with abandon. it’s summertime now and i needn’t be stingy.

i work in the garden. i pull weeds and more weeds. i stand back and admire the one-inch-by-one-inch that‘s finally weedless.

i sit on the stoop. i let ice melt on my tongue. we stuff chocolate-chip cones with mint-chocolate ice cream. then, for no reason, really, except for the joy of redundance, we sprinkle jimmies on top, those bit-lets of bite-able sugar. then we try not to bite, but only to lick. not once have we made it, not once without biting. these are the games that we play when we play for no reason, ’cept for the pure joy of playing at play.

as the world around me feels all very shaky, i sink deeper and deeper into what i love most, on a scale that gets smaller and closer to home, closer to heart.

it’s almost, you might want to think, like whistling in the dark. only that’s not what it is if you look from the soul side. it’s whistling, all right, but with very deep roots.

it’s the whistling of grownups old enough and wise enough, and humble enough, to know that the whole of the world we most likely can’t change.

but we can keep the ones that we love from feeling the bumps and the worries, from noticing that all around the edge of this boat, the waters are sloshing, are getting quite queazy.

we can make this place we call home a fine and true respite. the place we come back to, because it soothes us and calms us. because in a thousand small ways, we can dust off the dirt, and polish the places that just might maybe shine.

we might not steal headlines. we might not cinch deals. we might not be brokers of peace ’round the globe.

but what we do with our days, and our hours and minutes, just might make the difference in just a few blessed lives.

and those lives, some of them, were handed to us, for just a short time, really and truly.

someone wiser and truer than i’ll ever be, someone infinite, someone you maybe call God whispered once upon a time, spoke to each of our hearts. said, this is my beloved, and this is yours, too. i’ve breathed in a life, i’ve sculpted with love. it’s your job, should you so choose, to cradle, to take by the hand, to teach the words and the poems and the stories. to tuck into bed with a prayer, to draw tight the sheets. to kiss sweet blessed heads, and send dreams off to dreamland.

give the gift of your calm. give the gift of your grace. give laughter. give whimsy. give ice cream with sprinkles.
make each hour count.

make it be simple. make it be rich.

and then that Someone reached out and gave us our loves.

a wise friend of mine tallied the world as some of our children have lived it: 9/11, afghanistan, iraq, columbine. then there’s tsunami, new orleans under water, virginia tech, and gas at 4-plus-bucks-a-gallon. and, sure as heck, i’m leaving out a thing or two that’s kept you awake.

now, in grade school and high school, even in pre-school, they practice drills year after year, in case of intruders. our cold-war atomic-bomb scares replaced with very real fears that a classmate, or passing-by kook, could burst through the door, carrying guns.

some nights, as i lie in my bed, whispering prayers, and begging for mercy, i ask for a cloak of untattered peace to fall on my house.

and then i wake up, and give it the whole of my heart: i crank up the oven, i tuck in a pan of cinnamon rolls. i wait for the sound of the feet that i know. the big ones and little ones. even the cat’s.

and i do what i think i do best: with all of my might, i aim to sew even though i can’t thread a needle (not anymore anyway, not without my old-lady glasses). i stitch this old house with gracenotes of beauty, and fumble for even a loose knot of calm. i pay attention to nooks and to crannies no one might notice. i iron out wrinkles. i wring out the worries.

it’s called housework. and mine is of and for the soul.

i owe it, i do. to the ones whose everyday stories are being inscribed at my old kitchen table.

and besides, long long ago, i promised: dear God, bless me with life, and i’ll make it most noble.

how do you make your world a little bit calmer, a little bit richer, when all around it feels like the walls are starting to crumble?

8 Comments

March 21, 2008

no darker day

all night i tossed and turned, wondered if i would write how lonely it is. how achingly hard. to be the sole believer in a house i call home.

oh, there are others who believe other things. just no one else who believes what i do.

no one else who spills tears at the thought of the story, deep thought. deeper story, the one of today, the one of good friday, no darker a day.

no one else who came with me to church last night, who stripped off their shoes, stood in line, knelt down to wash the feet of another. no one else who knows what it felt like, how it wrung me right out, the man i don’t know, his deeply brown hands, tenderly, thoroughly, washing my feet.

it is, was, a wholly powerful moment. metaphor, yes. but literal, too. sensual, really. warm water was poured, my bare bumpy feet there in a bowl, a white porcelain bowl. no ceremonial sprinkle and wipe. not this. no.

i could barely look up. couldn’t breathe. all around me, humility loomed. filled the church, right up to the rafters. this church where i went–unlike the one of palm sunday–is a church that i love. it is filled with people of colors, filled with bodies so broken, but spirits that look to be whole.

beaming and grinning and shaking a shaker, the young handsome man strapped to a wheelchair. the boy with the face that is pretty much mangled. the one who was blind. the old lady who only could shuffle, and barely at that. all of them, there. so very there.

for three hours, i think, i was bathed in all of the ritual. the latin, the spanish. the incense, the candles. the bread and the wine. oh, and the song. cello and tambourine. children with bells. and the pouring of water on bare naked skin.

even i, a soul who’s felt not very holy of late, i was pulled right back to the flame deep inside. long long ago, a story was put there. a story i simply believed. over the years, it got jostled around. couldn’t be. yes it could. hmm, i wonder. oh, geez, i don’t know. i don’t even know anymore.

it’s the sad sorry fallout from hours and hours of listening, and hearing the people you love, people whose thinking you trust on all sorts of matters, come down, on this one, on the far side of the fence.

it’s the part of the jewish-catholic equation that isn’t much aired. and sometimes i think that it should be. it might untangle a knot.

there’s the words of the rabbi: you can’t believe it both ways. and the words of the priest: you love the same God. and then there’s me, sometimes lost in the middle.

it’s not likely to happen, perhaps, if you didn’t start out deeply believing. or caring too much. but on both of those scores, i raised my hand.

and that’s where the rub comes: after 20 long years, two-fifths of my life, of listening to scholars who find it all rather unlikely, but even moreso, watching the pain on the face of the man who i love on that long ago sunday of palms, or hearing the words of my firstborn when he says he finds it mostly improbable, my whole core has been shaken and rattled and, sometimes i fear, broken to bits.

i hold onto shards. pray for the blue glowing flame not to go out.

but then, on a night like last night, i go in a church, i take off my shoes and it all floods right back. the whole power and glory of a church that holds up this day, and the ones just before and right after. says, look at this. look how human and horrid and broken we all can be. look how this one single soul was betrayed, was mocked, was beaten, was made to carry a cross. and he died without raising his voice. except to cry out: “Father forgive them. they know not what they do.”

it’s a moment, i swear, to carry me far. it’s a moment i thank holy God for. each year, i come back. and many hours between.

but the hollow deep hole in my chest, when i feel all alone, and not very certain, it makes for some hours of unbearable darkness.

and how uncanny it is that this day, no darker a day on the calendar, somehow is lit from behind. like that sun through the clouds. or a star breaking through in the murk of the night.

it might be, just might be, a soul, after all, that refuses to succumb to the doubt.

perhaps, in the end, that’s what my easter miracle is. the maybe that turns to a yes. the yes that won’t fall to eclipse. do you struggle, when it comes to believing? what brings you home, time and again? is it the power of story, or the break in the clouds? i send you blessings, as we all wait out the darkness, counting on light to come in the dawn.

7 Comments

March 17, 2008

transforming time

this week is holy, my calendar tells me, my church tells me. some wee small voice deep inside me tells me too. i don’t feel so holy of late, though. feel ragged and worn. tangled, too. like the branches that jut from my pine, the one whose trunk i stared up and into, trying to find, maybe, some sign of nesting begun.

the challenge this week, then, is to take time that feels ragged, feels spent, and see if maybe, just maybe, i can start to build holy.

perhaps, like mama bird, out collecting old string, and tatters of cloth, i can take little bits of each day. maybe even each hour, and start to weave something that feels like a soft place for my soul. my soul needs a nest, needs a roosting place. my soul needs somewhere to perch. somewhere to swell, feel full.

i walked myself into church yesterday. felt wholly alone. it wasn’t a church that whispers my name. it’s stone, piled on stone. but it’s not far from home. and it is holy week, so i thought i should be there.

i remembered the words of my mother, perhaps the lastingest words she’s ever uttered: don’t let the church get in the way of God. i gave that a try. i tried, really i did, to pay no attention to the girl next to me, a teen with tight pants and big furry boots, who kept checking her iphone for something. the time maybe. a text from a friend. i didn’t notice till later how her brother must have spent his palm sunday, shredding the palm into bits. leaving it there, in a heap on the floor, where someone not looking might step, might crush it into the slate.

instead, i listened to the story. i wept right along. i thought a lot about suffering. how the dominant metaphor here in my church is a God who suffered in ways no human should know. but i suppose there has always been solace that at least, no thanks to the dark inhuman hours of the passion of Jesus, we are not alone.

still, every year, when i listen, when i hear about thrashing and stripping and mocking, i wince, then i swallow back tears. more often than not, the tears spill anyway. i can’t hold them back. don’t want to. they sting. and shake me down deep.

i think, as i swipe at my wet messy cheeks, about unbearable sins, ones then, and ones now. i cannot stand, either, all the stories i read in the papers, the ones about women and children and men, all put to insufferable deaths, or just barely escaping. and living instead with the frames, endlessly looping, of the horrors that always can come.

it is a sobering start to a week in which we live it again, the betrayal, the trial, the slow march to death on a cross among sinners.

achingly, slowly, we live it again. in vigils that last for hours and hours, late nights in a church where the pews get harder and the air, always, gets thinner and staler, tougher to breathe, till you think you might wobble right down, or give up the ghost.

since i, like emily dickinson, of late, find my church more in the woods than the pews, i will do an odd dance this most holy week. i will step into the place of the candles and incense. i will hear all the stories again. i will kneel and wash the soles and the toes and the calluses, even, of a stranger. i will genuflect, and make the sign of the cross.

but i will try to make holy the hours that shroud all the church time. i will, for this one week especially, try to push back the things of the world that distract me, that pull me away from the point. and the whole heart of the matter.

i will, if i can, stop the worry about runs on the bank, and layoffs at work. i will try to forgive all the slights and cold shoulders. will, if i can, excuse the snapping of tongues, and the mists of unholiness that seep through the cracks in the door and the windows i’ve opened for air.

i will try, for starters this week, to listen for whispers of God all around me. i will look for the pure shafts of light, the ones breaking through branches.

i will collect, as much as i can, the ribbons of cloth and bits of stuffing from pillows. i will build, if i can, a fine nest. a place where my soul, once again, can roost, can give birth once again and again, to the thin-shelled belief that this time all around us–these hours, these minutes, these breaths–all are anointed, are holy.

are ours to inhale, if we just settle down and start breathing. again.

how and where does this holy week find you? i find solace in the partitioning of time, in the marking of days and weeks and seasons as holier, perhaps, than others. the challenge is to find holiness in the everyday. it is always the challenge. particularly, i find it now. how and where do you go to find a breath, a heartbeat, that you know is one that is sacred?

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January 18, 2008

when chill, er, arctic winds blow…

with all its might that mercury is push-push-pushing, trying with every ounce of january muscle to get up to where the one meets the zero, calls itself a brisk ten above.

even the rhododendron leaves, just outside my window, are curled tight into a rod, curled as if their life depends upon it, which in fact it does.

the feathered traffic at the feeder is slow to none, and, mostly, sparrow shiver in the pines. i think they’d like to call for carry-in, or better yet delivery. but the lines, i fear, are iced.

the morning when the world is frozen is a morning when you’d prefer, perhaps, to catch the nearest plane to tahiti. but, dang, that would entail walking to the curb–at least–to catch the taxicab.

so instead, why not do what i love best, and make yourself a list. a list is a beautiful thing. a romantic thing. you sketch your hopes and dreams. tick them off in little snippets. barely even have to finish your thought. you know what you mean. it’s you, for cryin’ out loud, making that there list.

so, then, with no ado–it’s too cold for adoing–here is the way i’d like to spend a ch-ch-chilly day at the end of a long, long, long, long week:

*crank the brand-new tunes my manchild made for me, the soundtrack, perhaps, from “once,” the movie a dear old friend told me months ago would inspire me. he was right. and now i can’t stop mumbling with all the words, my own odd version of pretending i too can sing along. which i can’t. just ask my boys. even the cat took to under the bed.

*fill the troughs, pour hot water into bowls for all the critters. there is nothing so satisfying–for this faux farmer girl–as making sure that all God’s creatures are duly fed and watered. i’d distribute little blankets if i could, but instead i put out extra christmas trees so they could harbor in the branches. more real estate, the better for those birds, way i figure it.

*grab the mcdonald’s coupon books, and drive to where it’s dark and even colder. pass out books to every hungry hand that reaches your direction. give the folks on lower wacker drive a place, and means, for getting in and out from this coldest cold. God bless my mama who gave me those books for just this purpose. God bless the soul who inspired her, whose story we found out only when he died, how he spent his winters doling out hundreds of dollars in vouchers for a hamburger and fries, and a hot, hot coffee that bought a seat where heat was all but guaranteed.

*once back home, grind the beans and get your own hot coffee going. stoke the steel-cut oats, while you’re at it, too. i’ve got the grandest formula these days: scottish steel-cut oats, 1/4 cup; water, 1 cup; sprinkle of salt (don’t ask me why, all i know is it works); flaxseed, 2 tsps.; sprinkling organic raisins, cranberries, apricot, chopped; 1 walnut, 1 almond, chopped; dry milk, 1/3 cup; cinnamon, a good stiff shake or three. now, get the water and the salt a bubblin’, stir and dump the oats, then all the rest. let it simmer half an hour. dump it in your favorite bowl (mine is red with fat white stripe), grab a porridge spoon (mine is wooden, and it sailed in from old vermont). take a seat at the kitchen table, staring out at birds, who might be staring back at you. invite them in, for heaven’s sake. they might love the porridge.

*whisper benediction for the oats, the birds, and all the souls far colder than you have ever been. pray to God that warmth blows in, deep and boldly to their souls. don’t let them die, God, frozen to the city’s underbelly.

*and, besides all that, the best idea for how i’d like to spend an arctic day is invite a house full of folks i love. cook all day the day before, and fill the vases with blooms galore. stack the logs to make a fire. putter here and there, making it a house that shines, and shouts: warmth dwells here. come in, come in. leave your cares outside, where chill winds won’t stop blowing.

peace i wish you at the end of this long week. and warm toes besides.

do you like lists as much as i do? what would you do on a chilly arctic day when the poor old mercury makes it up to 10, then dwindles back to less than zero?

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November 22, 2007

blessed be

blessed be the words that spill, that carry us from broth that’s God’s, to bowl that’s yours, that you sip. and sometimes, without a napkin, you might shlurp.
blessed be the year that was, the time that is now, this breath, and the next, and the next.
blessed be hearts that beat as one, and those that beat to a rhythm only they can count.
blessed be this table, where we gather, where we lay down our fears, the aches of our heart, our joys, our deep delight. did i mention our worries? blessed be the whole darn sloppy mess.
blessed be the moon. oh, the moon, the moon.
blessed be the dawn, the lifting of the veil of night, the pulling back of blackness, revealing eyes of day.
blessed be the rustlings, maybe starting now, in kitchens everywhere, as cooks begin to stir through roadmaps, going back in time. taking stops along the way at hearts no longer here, at hearts too far away, to generations and countrysides and newborn cities of long, so long, ago.
blessed be the pomegranate and the pumpkin.
blessed be the turkey cookie with the raisin eye.
blessed be the lumps that will not leave the gravy.
blessed be the little children nestled in their beds. blessed be their cheeks all pink from rubbing on the sheets. blessed be their quietude in dreams, and their animation in the moment of their waking.
blessed be the bones of mine, and maybe yours as well, that creak and whine on rising from the bed.
blessed be the spinning wheel of seasons, the chance to start again. the resurrection cycle. from naked limb of winter, stark against the sky, to filigree of spring, flamboyant summer green, and then, at last, the bold disrobing of the autumn, now settling starkly once again.
blessed be grace, seed child of the divine, the wind-borne fertile wisp we sow, searching every day for here and there to plant it, to await the bumper crop of something far beyond us.
blessed be the rising and the setting of the sun, the sky an endless doodle pad for dabbing color, drawing pink and orange in streaks. blessed be God’s water color.
blessed be papa bird, and mama and the babies, too.
blessed be the cat.
blessed be the clouds that scuttle by, or come like circus critters, a carousel in puffs and odd-shaped taffy pulls. do you see the tail, the trunk, the camel’s hump?
blessed be the pit-a-pat of rain.
blessed be the boy who snuggles close, who whispers, “can we cuddle? like in the little days, when i couldn’t say a word?” and then, before he dozes off, he softly tells you, “you smell like popcorn.”
blessed be anywhere and everywhere and places in between.
blessed be the day, the hours when the busy work unfolds. and the night, when soul is center stage.
blessed be the farmer. and the farmer’s hands, his breath, her back, and the worries that she bears.
blessed be the light and song of those no longer here. blessed be the ache inside our hearts as we feel them wholly missing. blessed be the squirming as we try to find a way to breathe that doesn’t hurt so much in the bald-faced truth of their absence.
blessed be the broken places deep inside, and blessed be the healing.
blessed be the child who looks you in the eye, and tells you he finds God not in religion A or B, but somewhere wholly all his own, somewhere very much evolving.
blessed be the mothers and the fathers who take it all in stride.
blessed be all the ones who never leave our side. who take the outbursts and the murmurs, who weather all the many moods.
blessed be the friends who hold up our wobbly hearts.
blessed be the blessings that really never end.
blessed be you.
and blessed be this day of deeply saying thank you.

carry on. this blessing is communal. it is in the power of our many voices that we might make a noise that cannot be unheard. and i for one am listening….

oh, about the photo up above. that’s my little one, just the other night. he was making a story, illustrated, of how when you’re in love, you make kissy faces. note the sun in shades. and blessed be that child. and the stories that he spins. blessed be the hand that’s learned to move a pencil. and the heart that takes it off the page. it seemed to me quite fitting for a blessed be this day…..

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October 10, 2007

the gospel of the pillow

the day had been long, had been wretched, had been draining in that way that day after day of worry can make it.

the task at hand, at least according to the books, was getting the little one into bed. the clock said so. the dark said so. only the little one seemed to dissent. he seemed wide awake for a few innings of baseball.

so it was me, the one who slid onto the sheets, curled in a ball, and lay there, eyes closed. just breathing. feeling the rise and the fall of my chest. hearing my heart. my heart that all day had felt like it was trudging a mountain. or cracking in half.

that’s when the boy who struggles with pencils spoke: “are you hurt? are you worried? are you tired?

“you need to sleep,” he said, touching my hair.

“grownups,” he told me matter-of-factly, “are more important than kids.

“you want your grownup to stay alive to keep you safe.”

he started to put his hands to the back of my nightgown. he made little circles where the angel wings might have started to sprout, back when God was deciding if we’d be the species with wings or without.

he was the putter-to-bed, this long achy night. it was my little one, with his hands and his words, who woke me up from my over-drained stupor. i didn’t move, didn’t flinch, but i tell you my spine tingled. had i not wanted to scare him i would have sat wholly up. his words pierced through to my heart.

i whispered them back, as if a refrain. “you want your grownup to stay alive to keep you safe.”

i realized that was his prayer. mine too. dear God, i whispered so no one could hear, give me strength. the sort of strength i’d needed before. the strength to get up a mountain. to look out from the top.

just earlier that very same evening, i’d been in a church listening to a very wise soul. a woman who’d once struggled with polio. she said, and she meant it, “you can survive anything. you have to decide to survive.”

i decided then and there that my weary old bones had nowhere to go, except to lie by the side of my lastborn. i let his hand circles and his words wash over me, fill me, soothe my twittering heart.

i asked him then about grownups, about why he thought they might be more important than kids (a point i would argue, if not in inquisitive mode).

“they make your food,” was his very first thought, one that came without pause. “they check it out at the store. and they make it, the farmers do.

“they’re good for the environment, the garbage people are,” he continued.

“they stop people from doing mean things,” was the last of his litany.

i lay there absorbing the gospel according to the one whose head shared the pillow. i lay there thinking how God speaks to us, some hours, in the voice of a 6-year-old boy.

i lay there feeling the tenderness, feeling the power of his wisdom. i marveled long and hard at the miracle of how the teacher speaks to the student at the hour of absolute need.

i marveled at the clairvoyancy of a child. how a child sees through the thick of a heart, through the tangle. how a child, as if a surgeon who works with micro-sized scalpels, can incise right to the core of the matter. can feed in the words that the heart needs to hear. can wake up even the sleepy.

i thought, as i reached out and stroked his soft curls, no, my sweet, the grownup is the one who desperately deeply needs the eyes and the voice of the child.

at my house last night, it was the child who was keeping the grownup so very safe.

there are many voices of God all around us, if only we listen. have you been struck lately by one voice that rises above all of the others? that comes out of the din, speaks straight to your heart, points the way toward the light? are you, like me, amazed at how often that voice is the voice of a child?

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Category: prayer