These are the people that I will put on my prayer list. Their hearts feel broken and they may fear that, like Humpty Dumpty, they are powerless. I can’t fix them, but I can send the salve of God’s peace, which sooths. God will put them back together again. Don’t ask me how this works. I just know that, with faith, it does.
I been thinking about the people who have experienced heartfelt tragedy and sadness during this past year. Are they glad that Lent is coming to an end? Is this Holy Week and the anticipation of Good Friday too much for them to bear? Are they afraid that they will feel no Easter joy, that they won’t be able to sing Hallelujah?
These are the people that I will put on my prayer list. Their hearts feel broken and they may fear that, like Humpty Dumpty, they are powerless. I can’t fix them, but I can send the salve of God’s peace, which sooths. God will put them back together again. Don’t ask me how this works. I just know that, with faith, it does.
0 Comments
I believe I blogged about Wilderness Blessings when it came out last year but I can seem to locate it right now. Whether I’m posting again or for the first time, I am convinced than that this is an important book. Before I finished reading it four months ago, I gave my original copy to my niece who is a cardiologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. As I continued reading last night, I came to Jeff’s discussion of prayer-- his understanding of prayer and how prayer affected him during Jacob’s second surgery. I’ll write about that in the next few blogs. Here’s today reintroduction. Yesterday Jeff Gallagher and I got together at his church office in Kittery Point to catch up and talk about writing. Jeff went to divinity school with me and was a field education student at my church. He is now the father of two boys, Noah a third grader, and Jacob a kindergartener, who has Down syndrome. In 2013 Jeff published Wilderness Blessings: How Down Syndrome Reconstructed Our Life and Faith, a book about his (and his wife Kristin's) early experiences parenting Jacob. It is a book about love, parenting, Down syndrome, medical wonders (specifically at Children's Hospital in Boston), faith and so much more. It is how all these aspects, especially the ‘wilderness’ ones, can become blessings. As I go back through my journals and blog entries to write my memoir, I’m rather surprised at how foundational my mom’s faith is to me. I’m realizing that I emulate many of her spiritual practices, although for sure I don’t come close to her humility. I’m not trying to copy her; that would be the last thing she’d ever want, which is a perfect example of her humility. But I do find myself following some of her ways of living out her faith: going to church, visiting people, daily Bible reading and prayer, reading out loud the copy of “A Diary of Private Prayer” that she gave me, praying for people, and questioning when I judge. Occasionally Mom and I talked about our faith, but it is what I observed, more than what she said, that grows deep in me. She would never have consider blogging about her faith or about anything personal; she was too private for that, and besides, she exuded an remarkable certainty about her faith. She didn’t question or ponder the way I do; in that way we were very different. Like Mom, out in my world, I don’t wear my faith on my sleeve. I talk with a few friends about it, I attend church regularly, I visit, I agree to pray for people, I blog. This feels right, at least for now. “Thanks, Mom; I’m very grateful.” The world weighs heave on my heart these days. No different from the rest of you, but at the same time, so particular. My prayer requests run the gambit, as I’m sure yours do, too. We’re all in this world together. I’ve been waking up lately to a pall, a sadness. But then God steps in, which of course is grace, and I start listing gratitudes; and with that, I don’t feel as alone or in such despair. Hope balances the heaviness of the world; no, hope conquers the heaviness. With hope God remains present to me. I hate to admit this, but without suffering I wouldn’t know God. Of course, I’d rather skip all of that and just hang out in heaven. I’d rather pass over all that Jesus went through and fast forward to the Ascension. But that’s not the way it works; it is through suffering and death that despair and helplessness lose their sting. That’s just the way it works, the way God works. As the song goes, ‘You can’t have one without the other.’ With those situations that seem too much to bear, my only hope comes when I remember how Jesus got through it, always starting with gratitude. That’s a good way for me to start, too. One of the benefits in getting up at 5:30, is that regardless of all the holiday activities, my solitary morning prayer time is never compromised. Very few people get up that early, and if they do, they are into their own meditation ritual. Activities or parties start after a big late morning breakfast, so no interruption there. This season my prayer time has been more heartrending, more necessary, and more powerful than ever. As my faith grows, so does my desire to be with God and to ask for and receive God’s guidance. I’m still amazed at how each morning God’s presence returns to me, to the mind of my heart. Of course during the day I let it fly away. It disappears, but less often and for shorter lengths of time, so it seems. Every year of life waxes and wanes. Every stage of life comes and goes. Every facet of life is born and then dies. Every good moment is doomed to become only a memory. Every perfect period of living slips through our fingers and disappears. Every hope dims and every possibility turns eventually to dry clay. Until Christmas comes again. Then we are called at the deepest, most subconscious, least cognizant level to begin once more to live newly again. Christmas brings us all back to the crib of life to start over: aware of what has gone before, conscious that nothing can last, but full of hope that this time, finally, we can learn what it takes to live well, grow to full stature of soul and spirit, get it right. There is a child in each of us waiting to be born again. It is to those looking for life that the figure of the Christ, a child, beckons. Christmas is not for children. It is for those who refuse to give up and grow old, for those to whom life comes newly and with purpose each and every day, for those who can let yesterday go so that life can be full of new possibility always, for those who are agitated with newness whatever their age. Life is for the living, for those in whom Christmas is a feast without finish, a celebration of change, a call to begin once more the journey to human joy and holy meaning. Joan Chittister from In Search of Belief visionviewpoint@benetvision.org On my cottagebythesea.net blog I wrote about ‘the death issue’. I didn’t get into God’s part in all of it because on the blog, which is about silence solitude and simplicity, I try to refrain from expressing my faith. As you know, however, Christianity offers hope as far as death is concerned. Scripture is replete with it; our purpose is God’s kingdom now and forever; God is always with us even in the darkest of times, and until the end of the age. It’s not easy to hold onto this hope, and all by ourselves, it is impossible. But through prayer, hope is never far away. Death holds no sting. Jesus’ life was about death, but death was not the final word; Resurrection, was. I just got word that a young mother, a wife, friend, a woman full of light and love has died. What can we make of such unfairness? We lament like Job, like the psalmists. Like Jesus we call out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ I am grateful for all these laments, especially for Jesus’ words that let me know that I can be angry, that anger, despair, and even hopelessness are all part of the human condition. Simone Weil writes: “Affliction constrained Christ to implore that he might be spared, to seek consolation from man, to believe he was forsaken by the Father. It forced a just man to cry out against God, a just man as perfect as human nature can be, more so perhaps, if Job is less a historical character than a figure of Christ.” Jesus and Job called out to God in their affliction, but they never left God, they never stop believing in God’ love; they just didn’t understand. That’s where I am now, trying to understand, waiting in hope for the resurrection. Thank God the story isn’t over. I’m at the cottage, so grateful to wake up in this sacred place; the silence, solitude and simplicity is palpable. I arose at 5:15 and sat of the deck (living room) for almost two hours, just being in God’s presence as it washed over me—it remains with me still. I am blessed to be here with no obligations other than to take care of myself in the most rudimentary ways--eat, sleep and be safe. But blessings are not to be coveted or selfishly held, and so I know I have another obligation, one that God has given me, and that is to pray for others. When I am here, it is easier for me to clear out the cobwebs of chatter, judgment, critique and analysis that get in the way of being with God. When I am here, the space between God and me (and others) is transparent, and that, I believe is when prayer is heard and answered. Prayer, God, faith, hope, all such mysteries, and yet today I sense I have a handle on it all. I am especially praying for a friend whose son just took his life, and for a few others who are walking a precarious road. I know that my prayers are being heard and answered. ‘Very grateful.’ |
Contact me
bobbifisher.mac@mac.com Archives
August 2023
Categories
All
|