Blog Archives

Just be a prayerful presence~

1/31/2014

I’ve been rereading my journal entries and blog posts from the past four years, trying to consolidate them into a book. This morning this one from June 2011 was shouting out to be posted again. If I were writing it today, I would add young mothers and young children, who at the moment are dominating my prayer list. The laments and prayers are the same, no matter what the age. This morning, however, I stopped lamenting and heard that maybe I should just be a prayerful presence.

6/1/11 Maybe it’s always like this, but lately I know more than my usual share of people in need of multiple prayers for their multiple problems. Currently I am acquainted with several who are dealing with issues of aging parents, as well as their own personal fear (or actuality) that they will lose their job? I think it is safe to assume that as part of this they are coping with money concerns, as well as all the accompanying psychological baggage. Questions arise: Will I lose my house? What about health insurance? Can I meet college payments? Should we cancel the family vacation? Are there enough funds to get mom or dad the care they need and deserve? Add a health concern of their own or one within the family, or some other particular burden, and it could be enough to lose faith. But it can also be an opportunity to strengthen faith.

      In times of despair we are comforted to know that others are holding our pain and praying for us. It’s what intercessors do; one of the benefits is that they are not personally and emotionally involved in the situation and thus keep clear and pure the energy and channels to God.

    But where does the person in pain go for solace? The Psalms and the Gospels are my favorite places to turn. Psalms of lament, but also psalms of praise and thanksgiving. Jesus’ challenging parables, but also his reminder to consider the lilies of the field.

      In times of despair, I pray for particular outcomes; that’s the best I can do. Sometimes I get the chosen resolution, sometimes I don’t. God understands my human cry for help. But regardless, I always feel embraced in God’ love, whatever that means. It feels right. I am not alone.

Praying for healing and cure~

1/28/2014

I’m praying mighty hard for two families with young children. Particularly praying for the moms: one with postpartum depression, the other about to undergo a double mastectomy. There are others on my prayer list. Life is that way. However, some situations, like those of these moms, are especially difficult, as in extremely tough. Without prayer I’d have no hope. What is one to do with it all the anger, sadness, worry, fear? And so I pray, admitting all along that I can’t limit my prayer to ‘thy will be done’ and ‘may God’s love surround you’. I just can’t leave it at that. I have to pray for cure and for physical healing. I have to judge that that would be better for the women, their children and families. Of course God understand all the messiness and confusion of my prayer. God has heard the laments of the psalmist, and so God will here my lament.

God's grace, my longing~

1/26/2014

The other day I told a friend that the good in my life is due to grace, not to my doing. I meant it sincerely, but in retrospect I wonder if what I said could have sounded a little flip. My friend didn’t take it that way, but a one-liner like that doesn’t begin to touch the depth and power of an incredibly complex theological concept such as grace.

If grace is from God, does that mean some people receive it, and some don’t? Is it like the roll of the dice, or the luck of the draw? Does grace mean that we play no part in it? A yes to any of those questions reduces grace to a trivial idea, man-made, not God-graced. Um, maybe grace is what God makes? A verb as well as a noun?

Tonight as I sit on the ‘deck’ of the cottage, I’m sensing that there has to be some connection between my longing for God and God’s offering of grace.

The Art of Prayer~

1/23/2014

I’ve been working through The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, a collection of ancient Orthodox writings compiled in the first half of the twentieth century by Igumen Charlton, a Russian Orthodox monk. I say working through because every morning I read a small section, no more than a page, and meditate on what it means to me. It is going to take me at least two years to finish the book, but that’s just as I want it to be.

Each entry is a gem for contemplation, for prayer, for meditation. This morning’s reading Chapter IV, The Fruits of Prayer, by Theophan the Recluse.

May the Lord give you the blessing of a strong desire to stand inwardly before God. Seek and you will find. Seek God: such is the unalterable rule for all spiritual advancement. Nothing comes without effort. The help of God is always ready and always near but is only given to those who seek and work, and only to those seekers who, after putting all their own powers to the test, then cry out with all their heart: Lord, help us. So long as you hold on to even a little hope of achieving something on your own powers, the Lord does not interfere. It is as though He says: ‘You hope to succeed by yourself—Very well, go on trying ! But however long you try you will achieve nothing.’ May the Lord give you a contrite spirit, a humble and contrite heart.

Praying for strangers~

1/21/2014

I keep coming back to (and posting) my belief in the unique power in praying for people I don’t know. At the moment I am praying for six such individuals and the situations that surround their needs. Three are requests from friends who know I pray in earnest, the other three were spoken at church during Joys and Concerns.

    What is this power in praying for people I have never met and am not connected to in any personal way? I believe it is in the clarity of prayer; clarity as in no judgments, no ideas about what they should do, and no excessive hope for the right outcome. Pretty much, “Thy will be done.”

    That being said, I do ask God to intervene when I dare believe that God and I would want the same outcome. I have to believe that God wants the mother of three young children to survive cancer surgery. But my prayer isn’t limited to survival/cure; I also pray that faith, hope and love will surround the entire family.

     When I pray for strangers, I pray as a compassionate human being, minus the agony, fear, anger, worry, you name it, of family members. They have enough to deal with! Whether they know I’m praying for them or not, I know that my prayer lifts some of their burden, and places it in a hopeful perspective as I carry some of the load to God.

Prayer is freedom~

1/18/2014

“Prayer is freedom,” Thomas Merton writes. How refreshing! How freeing!

I found the following, quoted from Contemplation in a World of Action, in one of my favorite daily devotionals, Through the Year with Thomas Merton. The piece is too lengthy as a daily quote, and besides, abstracting a sentence or two detracts from its power. So here it is in its entirety as offered in the devotional.

Prayer is freedom and affirmation growing out of nothingness into love. Prayer is the flowering of our inmost freedom, in response to the Word of God. Prayer is not only dialogue with God: it is the communication of our freedom with his ultimate freedom, his infinite spirit. It is the elevation of our limited freedom into the infinite freedom of the divine spirit and the divine love. Prayer is the encounter of our freedom, with the all embracing charity, which knows no limit and knows no obstacle. Prayer is an emergence into this area of infinite freedom. Prayer, then, is not an abject procedure, though sometimes it may spring from our abjection. But prayer is not something that is meant to maintain us in servility and helplessness. We take stock of our own wretchedness at the beginning of prayer in order to rise beyond it and above it to infinite freedom and infinite creative love in God.

Prayer dream~

1/16/2014

In last night’s dream I was explaining to a group of women how I prayed and what was important. I said that I mainly prayed in very personal ways—walking and talking with God, listing gratitudes, praying for others, clearing my heart of judgments, and thinking through how to the right thing as far as God was concerned. I told them that my prayer was between God and me (and Jesus) and that I didn’t need another human being or a liturgical setting. One young woman was surprised by the idea that there was no correct way to pray and that all I needed was God and me.

Then she started interrupting me and I asked that she let me finish.

At this point the dream morphed into a dialog, mainly with myself, about how people often don’t let me finish… to a realization that I probably allow that to happen… to becoming conscious that I too, interrupt.

Now, as I sit here writing, it occurs to me that when I pray, I don’t interrupt God, nor does God interrupt me. It just isn’t part of the plan.

Pray right now~

1/14/2014

Sometimes there isn’t much I want to write about on this prayer diary blog. Like right now. I ask myself why that is so, since prayer is so central to my life. At the moment the answer that comes is that prayer is beyond words, that sometimes to talk about it detracts from its sacredness. Like right now. That instead of writing about prayer I want to be praying—for two friends who are having surgery on Thursday, for the mother of three who had to stop breast feeding because she’s scheduled for a double mastectomy, for…. Like right now.

Remembering a friend~

1/12/2014

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for a friend at the Unitarian church in town, the very church that my husband, children and I attended for close to fifteen years. It was there 45 years ago that I met Denny, and where I returned yesterday to remember her and celebrate her life.

Denny had been raised in the Greek Orthodox tradition, and although she and her husband attended First Parish, it was always clear that she was a Christian at heart. This was most apparent yesterday in the references to God and Christ, in hearing a recording of Denny singing ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, in the choir and hymn selections, and most obviously in the postlude, ‘Christ the Lord is Risen Today’. I was deeply touched by how many in the congregation started singing along. Evidently Denny had planned her service and I wouldn’t be surprised if she planned that spontaneous responses as well.

(I've written more about Denny and the service on www.acottagebythesea.net)

Joys and concerns~

1/9/2014

Usually in the winter I am at the cottage during the week and home on the weekends. But last Sunday, due to the first snow storm of 2014, my schedule got turned around and I attend church near the cottage where a friend from divinity school is pastor. Similar to the church I attend, prayer time included Joys and Concerns. And no surprise, the joys and concerns were similar; celebrations and healings, illnesses and deaths, and everything in between.

As I sat in the pew it came over me that this same heartfelt outpouring was going on in little white clapboard churches all over New England as well as in big brick ones throughout the United States. We know that those prayers don’t stop at our borders. Joys and concerns are spinning around the world. Human beings trying to make sense of concerns; trying to find the joy. It’s universal. We are one.