Prayer, God's Will, and the Multiverse

We are tired of multiverses, because multiverses are exhausting.  Every variant of every narrative?  It's inhuman, unmanageable, utterly overwhelming.  We are creatures of linear space-time with a limited amount of organic storage in our sloppy noggins.  At a certain point, we have to stop considering every single freakin' possibility and just go with something, or we go nuts.

Disney and Marvel haven't quite figured this out yet, but having wrassled theologically with the concept of the multiverse for years, I'm quite aware of how inhuman it can be.  It can shatter the self, and unless approached with caution, be inherently dis-integrative.  

My faith is paradoxically both multiversal and orthodox, idiosyncratically heretical in ways that at many points in the history of the Christian faith would have resulted in my being turned into a human S'more, charred and crisp with a screamy filling.  

My sense of the reality of God...meaning my intellectual assent to God's transforming presence in my life...arose from my engagement with the idea of the Many Worlds.  There, finally, I found an understanding of existence in which God was both necessary and inescapable, where the Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans, Being Itself, and the Numinous had the elbow room they needed.  It's the beating heart of my practical theology.

Years ago, I expressed that journey in a book.  Who wants to read a book on faith and speculative physics written by a small church pastor?  Very few people, as it turns out.  

But...why does that matter?  It does not.

That theology still shapes and stretches me.

One struggle that I encounter in my faith comes at the foundation of my prayer life, as I speak the prayer taught by my Master.  "Thy will be done," I say, every morning as I rise, and I'll often pause to reflect on how beyond my grasp even that simple statement is.

God's will, from my theology, is everything.  Every. Possible. Thing.  The Divine Self-Expression, the Logos?  It's everything, as omniscience must be.  Everything that can be known is known to God.  God's thought is perfection, and perfection means completeness, eh?  Every joy, every sorrow, every delight, every horror, all of it is part of the Divine Will.

"Thy will be done," I pray, knowing that with all possible futures open, this could include terrible things.  

There's a possibility, every day, of my own failure and inadequacy.  Of my own death.  Of the suffering of those that I love.  It's the fundamental challenge that rises from our mortal freedom.  God knows what our most abject desolation looks like, and to God, that knowledge is as real as this very moment.

It's a grim, hard teaching.  But that, if I am honest to my spiritual intuition, is part of God's will.

If it weren't for Jesus, that knowledge could leave me anxious and fearful, or estranged and angry.  But the life and teachings of Jesus define God for me, and they press back hard against my doubt and my ignorance.  There are things God knows that we would best not know, as we were warned in Eden.  God is entirely aware of how far we can fall, and will allow us to fall farther than we can imagine.

But the Gospel shows God's simultaneous desire that we not partake of that knowledge.  

Our flawed wanting, our greed and lust, our resentments and hatred?  Our compulsive injustices, and our pathological gracelessness?  We are shown they might be overcome.  We can understand our smallness, and embrace Christ's mercy, and find in Jesus the nature of the Good.

I see in Jesus the fullness of what it means when God's love is made real.  When I pray for God's will in my life, that's how I understand it.  What is the most Christlike outcome?  Sometimes, that's healing or teaching.  Sometimes, it's forgiveness.  Sometimes, the cross.

All are God's will, and as I pray, I hold to that truth with fear and trembling.

Prayer and Preparation

Growing up, personal prayer disciplines weren't really a thing I learned in church.

I did pray, but it was primarily something I did at home.  There was a simple grace before meals, an offering of thanks for food and fellowship.  At night, as a small child, I'd pray with Mom before bed, after which we'd tell each other "Sillies," meaning the silliest thing we could think of.  That usually got me giggling, which may or may not have been the most efficacious thing to get me to sleep.

But in church?  Not that I can recall.  I mean, of course there were prayers in worship, which my preteen and adolescent brain mostly tuned out.  In Sunday school, we learned Bible stories, talked about helping people, and did actually service work.  All of that was lovely.  There was much progressive activism, and some marvelous opportunities to serve.  The life of the spirit wasn't really front and center.  My Presbyterian denomination being of a strongly intellectual and liberal bent, the point and the purpose of the practice of prayer wasn't really presented.  

In my late teens, I can't really recall praying at all, and when my home church split in one of those tempest-in-a-teapot ego-pissing-contest fractures that so often happen in congregational life, that was that.  Prayer didn't seem to change the arc of anything in the world, and church?  It was just precisely the same human mess you found everywhere else.  Church folks who thought otherwise were, or so my late adolescent thinking went, either earnestly naive or hypocritical.  At best, church was unnecessary, so I went with the naturally solitary tendencies of my introversion, and just stopped going.  

But the yearning for meaning didn't fade.  

In college, I found myself praying infrequently and clumsily, usually in the form of calling out to the heavens in the wee hours of the morning when God's presence seemed close. 

That deepened and became more pressing, and as I returned to church seeking meaning, I was drawn powerfully to service ministries.  But I also found I hungered for prayer.  Again, I didn't have deeply ingrained personal rituals of invocation and supplication.  It just wasn't taught, because what mattered was justice and equity and service.  The spiritual thing was your own journey, utterly idiosyncratic, do-whatever-floats-yer-ark-if-ya-feel-like-it kinda way.  Or you can just not, because, again, it's all about your unique journey.

This is, I am now convinced, one of the primary reasons the progressive church has withered.  A disciple of Jesus who does not pray is like a Buddhist who scoffs at meditation, a Muslim who thinks alms-giving is for suckers, or a Wiccan who turns up their noses at incantation.  You've neglected the roots, and if the root dies, so goes the plant.

Prayer shapes us, both individually and collectively.  It deepens our sense of God's presence, enriches our connectedness as a Christ-centered spiritual community, and refines and reinforces our integrity as persons.   When we neglect it, over-intellectualize it, use critique to distance ourselves ontologically from it, or generally fail to make it a vital part of our practice of the Way, we fragment and fail.

Even just the rote practice can shift the way we conceive of the world, as described years ago by writer/journalist AJ Jacobs in his entertaining THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY.  

Jacobs noted, as urbane-liberal-he committed to adhering to biblical injunctions for twelve months, that the regular practices of the faith had an unanticipated effect.  The more he prayed and kept the rules of Torah...even as a stunt intended only to provide grist for a manuscript...the more he felt that something was at work in the world.  He'd notice odd resonances, and had a stronger sense of purpose   He'd temporarily tuned his mind to the frequency of faith, and it changed him...temporarily.

That change is the goal of prayer.  

It's not about control, or about getting what we want.  

It's about opening up our perception of the world.  It's about priming us to see the workings of God's grace.

An Unexpectedly Fine Prayer

Rache and I have, for the last few months, been watching our way through The Righteous Gemstones.  As a lampoon of American prosperity religion, it checks a whole bunch of buttons for me.  The cast is excellent, the writing mostly tart, and it blends drama and comedy in ways that work most of the time.  It can be a little tonally jarring, and it gets a wee bit too willfully profane at times, but I enjoy it.

What's...odd...about it is that, as much as it mocks the quarrelsome, shallow, wealth-and-success obsessed Gemstone family?  Every once in a while, a bit of faith slips through.  In season one, the megachurch spectacle was juxtaposed with a genuinely earnest presentation of mission work.  

In season two?  Well, beyond a murderous band of neon motorcycle ninjas, there was a single sublime moment that still sticks with me.

It came as the patriarch of the Gemstone clan, played by John Goodman, was renewing an old acquaintance.  Eli Gemstone was sitting in a restaurant with Junior, a friend from his former life as a professional wrestler.  Junior was reminiscing about his manipulative, distant, and unloving father, and was clearly nursing some significant emotional wounds.

Seeing an old friend struggling, Eli says, "Let's pray, Junior."

He replies, apologetically, that he's not religious.

Eli returns, "Well, it's a good thing I am.  I'll show you what to do."

And then they hold hands, and they pray together.  Now, prayer in the Gemstone world is often crassly self-interested, or presented as comedy.  But not this time.

The prayer that's offered up is heartfelt, personal, and deeply steeped in grace.  It acknowledged pain endured, the strangeness of God's purposes, and the trust that God's mercy always holds out the possibility of redemption.  It was short, simple, and meaningful.

"Damn.  Kinda nice," said Junior, surprised at how moving he found such good words.

"Dang," I thought as I watched, equally surprised.  "That was genuinely a fine prayer."

Every once in a while, the light and purpose of prayer makes itself known through the absurdity of it all.

The Joys of Sleeplessness

One of the great and paradoxical joys of my deepening middle age is the absence of sleep.

I remember, when I was twenty or thirty, that sleep  once filled an entire night.  I'd lie down, close my eyes, and when I awoke, it would be morning.  

Technically, this is still true, but by "morning" I now mean "one in the morning" or "four in the morning."  Some of this is a factor of my fifty six year old bladder.  Some is a factor of my tendency to go to sleep waaaay earlier.  By ten thirty in the PM, I'm typically all tuckered out.

But much of it is just me gettin' old.  I'll wake, and be fully awake, with the night still stretching out ahead of me.

There've been times, when I was younger, when I've experienced insomnia.  Typically, they were times of intense disruption and anxiety, when I'd wake with my mind churning and a knot in my gut.  In such circumstances, the absence of sleep can become a self-reinforcing waking nightmare, as you rouse, get stressed about the fact that you aren't sleeping, and then the stress of not sleeping itself is enough to keep you tossing and fitful.

For the last few years, though, I've come at those times differently.  I began using the time to pray, and now, that's become my default.  

When I open my eyes to the depth of night, it's a blessing, because that's a great time to pray.  I do pray to begin the day, and during the day, but sometimes there's so much going on that those daytime prayers just don't come.  

Lying there in bed?  It's not like there's anything else I need to be doing.  So I pray.  I'll offer a word of gratitude for sleeplessness itself, and the space it provides to tend to my soul's needs. 

I'll offer thanksgiving for whatever goodness the day served up.  I'll remember folks who are on the church prayer list, and offer words over their struggles.  I'll set the names of friends and family before the Creator of the Universe, and express my yearnings for their wholeness and health.  I'll recall the mess of our world, and those in need.

Eventually, sleep returns to me in its own time.  As I feel myself gently fading, I'll pray the Lord's Prayer, bridging my way back into dreams.

Benedictine Matins it ain't.  It's a far softer and more organic cousin to that monastic prayer.  

Yet it lends me an appreciation for that ancient tradition, one that find gracious purpose in the deep of the night.

The Moon and Morning Prayers

The morning was bright and sharply cold, the sky a deep rich blue.  

The pup set out across the driveway with me in tow, eager to go about his morning business, and I glanced upward at the moon, low in the waking dawn.  It was a sharp-edged crescent, enlarged by the illusion of the parallax effect, lovely in the sky.

We bustled up the street, he snuffling at the scent of earth, me perusing the beauty of the heavens.  I'm not sure when I became a person who liked rising at first light, but the loveliness of morning's first embrace is a peculiar side benefit of being in charge of a dog's morning potty break.  We walked up the hill, and I reflected on that crescent, so perfectly inscribed in the warming navy of the sky.  Such a moon would have meaning to billions of human beings, a marker of faith.  For me, it is simply beautiful, and a work of the Creator.  

Our eager boi sniffed and marked as we made our way up the street, then came to the stretch of sidewalk where he always goes.  Like clockwork, he did.  I cleaned up, and we turned to return home.

Halfway back, I saw movement in a driveway.  I wasn't quite clear what it was, not at first.  A form, crouched low on the ground at the end of the driveway of a neighbor.

The neighbors in question have a home decorated in Americana, flags and eagles and the like.  They drive Fords and Fords only, SUVs and a well equipped F-250 that sees use as a commuter car.  They own very very big dogs.  She's of the wave-and-say hi sort, and he's lean and bald and bearded.  At one point, for a brief while in 2020, that big ol' truck sported both an NRA and a Trump Punisher sticker, so, well, that's what that is.

I wondered, for an instant, if one of them might have fallen on a patch of ice, so I quickened my pace.  

As I approached, I realized two things.  First, that the person on the ground was not one of them.  It was a delivery man.  Deliveries are at all hours now, early in the morning, late into the night, so this was not a surprise.

Second, as I watched him rise, resettle his janamaz, and kneel upon that mat to again bow himself in prayer, that he was Muslim.

He remained deep in his morning prayer as I and the dog passed, and I left him in peace beneath the crescent moon and dawn.  By the time I had reached my house, and turned to look back up the street, he and his vehicle were gone.

My soul has been much reflecting on the nature and necessity of prayer lately, and this moment seemed...something.  

Particularly now.

Not Praying for Power

As a Christian, there is, in this political season, a deep and abiding temptation.  I feel it, as others feel it.

It is the danger of conflating the divine intent with my own, and to turn to God to give me power.

I have, without question, certain sociopolitical predilections.  They fall, generally, somewhere in the peculiar Venn diagram of anarcholibertarianism, liberalism, and social democracy.  This means I'm politically a bit on the odd side, but, eh, I'm the sort of weird that isn't afraid to be weird.

This has, generally speaking, meant that my voting falls on the Democratic side of the rigidly binary US political spectrum.

That hasn't lessened, as the political heat has intensified and American conservatism has gone on a drunken bender in Trumpsville.  When you're a faithful person with a great deal on the line, the Tempter whispers in one's ear: pray for power.  Power over them.  Pray for the reins of the Wagon of State.  Pray for the sword.  Ask for dominion.  Manifest the success of your party, and the grovelling, complete demise of your adversaries.  You pray for Gott Mit Uns, as the Germans used to pray it.

That's certainly been the case on the American far right, where the operating assumption is that Trump is God's Perfect Righteous Anointed, chosen for such a time as this, and prayers for God to give power to the One have become the norm.

Beyond the self-evident absurdity of that core premise, that's a terrible way for Christians to pray.  It is, bluntly, an AntiChristian form of prayer.

Over the last six months, and with the help of some fine editors, I've put the finishing touches on an upcoming book about the point and purpose of the Lord's Prayer, which is the beating heart and solid rock of my prayer life.  At the center of that simple prayer is a turning away from all but the most necessary things of this life, and a refutation of the human ego and its grasping for power.  In the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, the only thing we ask to be given is our "daily bread."  Nothing else.  Everything else is about emptying ourselves to make room for God's spirit, and about turning our hearts away from evil and the seductions of the worldly realm: moral decadence, political power, material wealth, social status, all of it.

It's a tough prayer to offer up in a fiercely partisan time, but a necessary one.

It checks the ego against the lie that rises from willfully misrepresenting one's opponent, the Luciferian bargain that Alinsky would have radicals of every persuasion make.  It challenges the partisan unwillingness to show grace and mercy to those who are on an opposing path.  It reminds the one praying it, if they're paying attention, that blind fealty to a party or a leader is a form of idolatry.

As is praying for power, even and especially if you're sure you're right.  Sure, we want power.  But that desire is a broken thing.

And our broken wanting breaks the world.

Praying for Donald Trump

The question, one that pressed into my soul yesterday, was this:

How to pray for Donald J. Trump following the attempt on his life?  As a Christian, I'm duty-bound to pray for my enemies as deeply as I pray for my friends, which is enough of a challenge.  But the specifics of the prayer were a unique conundrum.

I mean, had he been seriously or critically hurt, and hospitalized, that would have been straightforward.  I'd have prayed for his recovery, and for his doctors, and for healing for the nation.  That was the simple prayer offered back when he was afflicted with COVID, and things looked touch and go for a while.  Had he died, that would also have been straightforward, prayers for the disposition of his soul and again, for the healing of the nation.

But Donald J. Trump is fine.  

He could have died, yes, but he did not.  

He was aggressive before, he was more aggressive after.  His injury, such as it was, was the sort of thing one might get in a moderate fall.  It was of less import than a sprained ankle, and far less of an impediment to his life.  Nor did his response indicate any meaningful psychological trauma, or any reaction other than unshakable defiance and an even deeper conviction of his own special place in history.  

I shared this observation during a conversation with a Trump supporter yesterday after church, and they agreed.  "He's fine," they said.  

In point of fact, he is stronger after the attempt than he was before the attempt, and he knows it.  

He is just as physically healthy, albeit with a surface wound to his ear.  He is far socially stronger, as the "iconic" images of his deeply ingrained fight response have cemented the messianic convictions of his most fervent supporters.   Their collective victim-narrative is now sealed in his own blood, so to speak.   

He will step into the Republican convention this next week as a bloodied and unbowed hero, fist raised in defiance, and be received with roars of adulation.  

He isn't in mourning, or in shock.  He's fine, and feeling fine.  He is reveling in this moment, the purest gift to a consummate showman.

That's not a partisan assessment, but the simple reality.

So my prayers were simpler.  For healing for his ear, such as it is.  For the disposition of his soul, as always.  And, particularly, for the future of this country, and a turning away from the bitter spirit of violence that so blights us all.

Greece v. Galloway: The Place of Public Prayer

As a pastor, I will happily pray when asked.  Want to start something with prayer?  I'm there  Unless it's a family dinner, when I'd really rather someone else do it. Because Daddy gets enough practice.

In worship, prayer is a core part of what I do.  It's a fundamental and irreducible part of the pastoral skill set, and a basic component of any faithful life.  It's as central to what we Jesus folk do in our lives together as meditation is to a Buddhist.

It's how I start my day, too, at least the days where I feel more centered and grace-filled.

I start pretty much every church meeting with prayer, because when you're deciding about your future, it's a good thing to remind yourself exactly why you're there in the first place.  But in those meetings, I'm aware that the purpose of the meeting, generally speaking, is not to listen to me praying. That doesn't make the prayer less necessary.  It becomes a marking: what we're doing is part of a sacred commitment.  And as Jesus so pointedly put it, we don't need to ramble on endlessly.  Keep it focused.  It's the vocal equivalent of ringing a bell, a bright tone that hangs in the air, marking a transition.

When I'm praying publicly and outside of the bounds of a service or church meeting, though, there are other things to think about.  I am usually aware of who is around me.  I'm aware of what will work, and what will be meaningful.

And that means, when I pray in mixed company, meaning a room that might include infidels, unbelievers, and other family and friends, I'm aware of how my prayer might sound in their ears.  Typically, in such circumstances, I'll pray the sort of prayer that, were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington sitting around the dinner table, they'd be able to say Amen.  On a good day, I might even be able to get a nod or a grunt out of Richard Dawkins.  OK, it would have to be a very good day.  But it's within the realm of possibility.

Meaning, I reach into my Enlightenment Deist toolbox, which is a subset of what I believe, and pray from that.

There are plenty of Christians who have a problem with that, or who struggle to figure out how that gets done authentically.

It's part of what's at play in one of the cases currently before the Supreme Court, as a township in which  prayers regularly begin public meetings has struggled with a legal challenge to that practice. I tend to think that in mixed company…as our nation is…it's better to go with a time for silent contemplation.  Seek the truth you know, and the common good, and meditate on it.

The township seems to have done everything reasonable to accommodate all belief systems, opening itself to Muslims and Buddhists and Wiccans.  If a humanist wanted to lead off with a secular reflection, they'd be welcome to do so.  I find it hard to see that as exclusionary or establishmentarian, by any rational definition of those terms.

But I find myself reflecting less on the legal merits, and more on how this impacts how Christians publicly speak.  if you find yourself in a place of public prayer, as I have on occasion, you can do it right, and you can do it wrong.  Here, I'm not thinking about the law, or about the Constitution.  Love this country as I do, it does not have my primary allegiance.  I'm thinking about the Gospel.  There are ways we can screw up the Great Commandment, and make the Gospel look brittle and unwelcoming, and we can do it publicly.

I know this more deeply than most pastors, because through a peculiar twist of the Lord's providence, my family is Jewish. My wife is. My kids are. I've been in places where prayers that closed them out have been offered, and I know…because they are my flesh and blood…what that feels like.

A few years back at a scouting gathering, an earnest youth pastor from a large nearby Jesus Warehouse offered up a sustained prayer to the gathered scouts in the name of Jesus, invoking the sacrifice of the Cross and the Blood of the Lamb.  I think, for those in the gathering who were already part of his community, the prayer probably sounded fine.  "It's just how we talk," they would say.

But it jarred not just my wife, but others in the gathering, because it did not establish a sacred space that the whole group could enter together.

A prayer that is ferociously and defiantly cast at a group from the collective in-group language of Christianity does not draw more people to the message of Jesus. It might feel good, to be up there, praying in the Blessed Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ so that all Might Hear His Glorious Name, but what you're really doing when you do that is neither group prayer or evangelism.

Because they already know you're Christian. They do. What they don't know is why that's a good thing.

I know, I know, don't be ashamed about what you believe.  But honestly? It's equally important not to be foolish about it.  If the Paul had marched up Mars Hill in Athens and tried to hammer folks with the Unvarnished and Uncompromising Gospel Truth, he'd have failed.  Put him in Greece, and he knew what he had to do.  Paul knew how to speak to those who were different.  That didn't make him weak.  It made him an Apostle.

Christianity first spread because it was willing to articulate its transcendent truth cross-culturally, to express itself in terms that had nothing to do with groupspeak, and instead to find ways to be self-evidently good.

But we have to pray in the name of Jesus, folks will respond. If we don't, then we're not following Him!  That's just namby-pamby wishy-washy liberal relativism! To which I would ask, simply: When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, in the one great prayer of our faith, did he tell us to do so in his name? Or did he invoke our Maker, and then call us to humility and mutual forbearance?

When we find ourselves in a position to make public statements…particularly public sacred statements...that rise from our faith, there's no good reason for us not to find and use common language. Yes, there are other things you believe. But who will care to learn about them if your language is a closed door?

Breath and Blessing

It was one of those moments, peculiarly bright and unusually deep with the Spirit's light.  After a couple of years together, my DMin cohort wrapped up the last of our required coursework.  It's been a good group, comprised of pastors and lay leaders from a wild blend of spiritual backgrounds.

I've flitted about the periphery of the group, as I tend to do in most social settings, connecting here and there but remaining both a part and at a remove.  Something to do with being a foreign service brat, perhaps, but more likely just an aspect of my inward nature.

On that last day, as we closed, we shared a final crowd-sourced worship together, singing and praying in a vague ovoid that was the best circling-up we could manage.

At one point during that closing time, one of the pastors...a tatted-up Methodist Philadephia-Irish pit-brawler with a remarkably gracious and bright spirit...pulled a chair out to the center of the group.   To that chair, he invited the our one Episcopalian, she with her sharp precise liturgically correct mind wrapped about a kind heart.

Surgery was coming for her, and soon, for lungs that were struggling to function.

And so twenty pastors gathered, and laid on hands.   I placed mine on her back, behind her left lung, just above her diaphragm.  Then we prayed, together, out loud.   The holy-pit-brawler led it, but it was a swirl of languages and spiritual traditions, Spanish and Korean, English and that percussive nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh p-puh puhpuhpuh glossolalia that always reminds me of Chevy Chase putting in Caddyshack.

I prayed inwardly for a moment, and then took a deep breath and intoned a word.   Ruach, I said, letting it flow out of me as fully as I could.  I repeated it, not loudly, but with as much breath as I could, an overabundant outpouring of air.

Spirit, it means in Hebrew.  Breath, it means in Hebrew.  It felt like the right thing to speak.

I wasn't sure it was heard, as it blended out with the hum and crackle of a dozen other prayers.  But it was there, breathed out into the air as it sparkled with spoken hopes.

A funny thing, healing prayers.  They are peskily unreliable as direct interventions.  They are not magic.  But that does not mean they are without power.  What they do, without question, is affirm that around you there is a cloud of other beings who desire your wellness.  From the heart of their connectedness with the Source of Being, those beings speak that hope into you.  They manifest it.  They make it real.

They say, we know that it is possible that you might be made whole.  Here we are, affirming that we desire that this possibility be made manifest, that we might celebrate it.

Prayer and Helplessness

He arrived on my doorstep yesterday, back from his journeying, haggard and with eyes overbright with his illness.

I kept the dog back, and stepped outside to speak with him.  He's a neighbor, and a neighbor in need, but his challenges are beyond me.  Where I can, I help him, driving him to the store or doing odd tasks around the house.  If I don't have the time or I am too depleted to focus on his need, I tell him.  Boundaries are there for a reason.

But mostly I just listen whenever I have time to listen, because he needs someone to listen.  We all do.

In his hand was a paper, a hastily drafted legal document that reflected his pursuit of a lawyer he is convinced is responsible for all of his woes.  I reviewed it.  It was neat, and tidy, and completely insane, a systematic recounting of the demons that have come to inhabit his mind.  

Are you sure you can file this, I asked?  He was sure he could.  But I gently demurred when asked for a ride to the courthouse, and then suggested, again gently, that perhaps the law was not a fruitful place for him to find succor.  I'm not sure he heard me.  In fact, I know he did not.

But he did hear my sympathy at his dental woes, and seemed genuinely surprised at the sympathy.  As we talked, I offered a reminder that perhaps there were folks who could help him in ways that might get more deeply at what actually ails him.

I sent him on his way, and promised to look for help that he might be willing to accept.  A tricky wicket, mental illness is.  So beyond us.   It is easy to feel helpless in the face of it.

And so I pray for him, for calmness for his agitated mind.  Why?  In praying, I remind myself to act as the agent of my Lord's grace.  What use is prayer, if it does not change and guide us in those places where we know we are out of our depth?

An Evangelical Prayer for Wisconsin

Dear Father God, I just want to praise You for Your glory today!

I just feel so blessed to have such an awesome life, and for giving me a heart to praise you!  I know that it is just because you are such an awesome God!  I have a special prayer I'd like to offer up today, because it's just on my heart so much, and I'm just a little sad.

I'd just like to pray for those Sikh people who all got shot in Wisconsin.  It's just so terrible, and their family and friends all seem so sad and kind.   It is so hard to have your dad die like that, Father God.  I know it would make me sad, and it would be just so horrible to have your life end so early.  I know it was like so horrible when Taylor's dad died, and she was so sad.  He loved her so much, even if he wasn't a believer.

So today I just have a heart to pray about them having to go to hell because they are unbelievers, Father God.

I mean, Father God, it isn't like they hated or hurt or killed anybody, like that horrible man who shot them.  They weren't mean, any more than anyone else.  They weren't evil, I don't think.  They don't seem any different from the Christian people I know.

Is it a sin for me to feel that, Father God?

I know what Pastor says every Sunday, about how we're all evil, and that every sin is the same, and about how we're all sinners deserving of your wrath, and how we have to reach out to the lost unbelievers or they'll never be worthy know You.  I know how we all need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, especially because we sing that Nothing but the Blood song, and it's just so anointed and awesome, because You are an awesome God!

I guess that I should listen to Pastor, Father God, shouldn't I?  He tries so hard.  But it still makes me sad.  I mean, how could I ever talk to their families about You and the Gospel and the love of Jesus if all I could say was "Too bad, sorry, they're in hell now?"  That wouldn't be loving, even if it was true.

Pastor says some truths are hard.  But this sits in my heart of prayer and just feels hard.

But maybe it doesn't have to be true, Father God?

Because You're so awesome, Father God, can You just maybe not send them to hell forever...or maybe not at all?

It seems like You could, Father God, especially because You're Sovereign and Mighty to Save!  So maybe you could save them?   And you're so loving and you gave us Jesus not because You were mad but because You loved us so much!  And the anointing of the Holy Spirit is just so comforting, and I remember that the Spirit is called the Comforter somewhere, and there's that thing about love being the most important thing that I heard at cousin Emma's wedding, and it was just so great!

So I know I'm totally a sinner too, Father God, but could You just maybe anoint them with Your love and power, and be with them in Your glory?  

I talked to Taylor about this, which You know because You know my heart, but I want to tell You anyway.   She said she would pray it too, and like Jesus said, if two of us ask together You'll really hear us, Father God!

I love You and Jesus so much for all You've done for us!  So maybe could You just please show all those Sikh people that You love them, and hold them in Your arms and comfort them, and help me do the same?  

That would just be so awesome!  And You are an awesome God!

Thank You so much for Your amazing love and sovereign power, Father God, in the Blessed Name of Jesus, Amen!

Success, Failure, and Tebow

I am painfully oblivious to sports.

There was a period when I was not, back when I was a youngling.  While living in England, I was an earnest supporter of Aston Villa, for the sole reason that my youth league team wore their colors and coopted their name.  During my teen years, I was briefly into the Redskins, until I realized that I did not enjoy the psychological anguish that inflicted nearly every Sunday.  Life serves up enough pain as it is without being a 'Skins fan.

And so, gradually, I drifted into this place where sports are just part of the background noise of culture, part of the chatter, as immaterial to me as fashion trends or the behavior of B-list celebrities.   Still, it serves up some interesting stuff now and again, and the phenomenon of Tim Tebow has enough resonance with my actual interests that I can't help notice it.

Tebow is the goalie for the Denver Nuggets, and...wait...hold on.  Let me wiki that for a second.   Oops.  Start again.

Tebow is the quarterback for the Denver Broncos.  He is, best I can tell, an average-ish QB by the standards of the National Football League.  Winning the Heisman Trophy is not the mark of an average college ball player, and he did indeed win it while playing for the Florida Gators.  Pro ball does have a tendency to chew up and spit out Heisman winners, in my recollection, but Tebow has hung in there.  His physical gifts are enough to make him competitive, and while he's far from the best in the league, he's a young professional player with acceptable talents.

That, of course, is not what has made Tebow such an iconic figure.  He's a conservative evangelical Christian, home-schooled by missionary parents.  As such, he views the world through the lenses of that faith community. He prays a great deal.  He is earnest, and wears his faith on his sleeve.  Interviews almost invariably begin with him thanking his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and then thanking his team.  He makes a habit of kneeling to give thanks to his aforementioned Lord and Savior frequently, so frequently the action has become known as "Tebowing," and is effusively thankful to Jesus after a win.

This bugs people.  As a progressive Christian, I understand this.  Despite what is mistakenly taught to many young evangelicals, folks who are all up in yo bidness with their faith can be annoying.

Last week, as the New England Patriots were in the process of delivering a monstrous shellacking to the Broncos, I logged in to Twitter for a while, searching for hashtag #Tebow.   The game?  Meh.  Not my thing.  I was more interested in observing the overflowing cup of 140-character hateration on Twitter.   It did not disappoint.

Almost without exception, tweeps were gleefully rejoicing in Tebow's comeuppance.  Quip after quip poured from the Twitterverse, mocking him for his expressions of faith.   While I'm cut from very different theological cloth than Tebow, I confess to have found it really rather unpleasant.

Sure, God doesn't care who wins football games.  It's just a game, dagflabbit.  God is no more vested in the outcome of an NFL game than God is vested in a multiplayer round of Call of Duty, or in a really bare-knuckle game of Canasta.  In the broad scheme of things, it doesn't matter in the slightest.  This is why folks like Jimmy Fallon are so eager to creatively poke fun at Tebow.  How stupid of him to pray about it!  What a dumb-dumb-head he is!  Or words to that effect.

But as easy as it would be to go that route, I can't.  Why?

First, Tebow shows no signs of being a smug, self-righteous human being.  Yeah, he's got a bit of Jesus-Turettes in his speech patterns, but what sort of person does that make him?  By all accounts, his team members really like him.  In the locker room, he's patient and supportive and kind.  In interviews, he comes across as gentle-hearted and soft-spoken.  He is, best I can tell, a bit like a larger, beefier Ned Flanders.  I've known folks...conservative, Bible-believing...who were unbelievably giving, kind, and gracious because of their simple faith.  Mocking such a soul serves no purpose.

Second, Tebow is a football player.  That is what he does.  Football is a game, true.  But how much less meaningful is it, honestly, than any other human activity?  If I manage a small IT consulting business, is that really more meaningful?  From his faith, he chooses to pray and be grounded in his Maker on a regular basis as he goes about what he does.  That seems well within the bounds of the acceptable.  The question is:  what sort of football player does it make him?   The answer seems to be similar to the above:  a well-liked, supportive, good-hearted one.  If he wins, he's thankful and humble about it.  If he loses?  He's gracious.  

That, boys and girls, is the point and purpose of prayer.  It is not magic that bends the universe to your will.  It is, instead, the magic that allows you to maintain your integrity as a soul in the face of whatever comes your way.  I just can't see the problem.

With the season close to done, and the one football game I watch annually coming up, I do find myself wondering if the hum and crackle around Tebow will continue next season.

Subroutines

This last Sunday, I sat down with my session and finalized my commitment to depart my current congregation at the end of October of 2011.  As my request to provide interim ministry so that the church could openly seek a new pastor while I was still here was nixed by presbytery, there just isn't any other viable option.

Just dithering about and waiting for something to happen does no one any good.  Without hard and fast deadlines towards which a church can plan, things have a tendency to just float and stagnate.  It was a necessary decision, and hopefully one that gives folks here a fighting chance at making things work.

Still and all, setting that date has proven a bit troubling personally.  Finding options for ministry that don't involve me leaving the area is difficult.  There's an overabundance of ordained pastors seeking churches in the DC area.  And leaving the area isn't possible without leaving my family behind, which isn't really the most desirable scenario.  There is, after October 30, 2011, the very real possibility that I will no longer be functionally a pastor.  Yeah, I can do supply preaching.  Or something.  But it's still a large black hole of uncertainty, bearing with it the painful possibility of vocational unfulfillment.  Most significantly, I also don't yet feel...called...anywhere.  Meaning, I'm not yet getting the spiritual cues that show what door, if any, my Maker is opening.  Ultimately, where I go is not really up to me.

In the face of that unsettling possibility, I'd like to say that I was as serene as a cloud, detached and unaffected, confident that the Good Lord has a plan for me.  But lately, I've been feeling less and less like the nonanxious presence that I need to be, and more and more like a panicked cadet during a hull breach.

In the face of that rising anxiety, I reviewed my options.  On the one hand, I could just start pounding back forties of Colt 45 every evening until the world blurs to nothing.  For some reason, this seems like a mistake.  I could just let my anxiety feed on itself until I'm a useless twitching frozen mass of stress.  This also seems like a poor choice.

What I've recently done is expand my prayer life.  Yeah, I know, crazy thing.  To my usual morning and evening prayers (a simple mix of the Lord's Prayer and prayers of supplication and intercession), I've added time for chanting meditation. 

And I have all the time I need.  The way I figure it, I spend a couple of hours a day in a rolling monastic cell as it is.  My commute, reinforced over the span of six and a half years in this ministry, may be across one of the gnarliest stretches of eight lane in the country, but it's so familiar as to require just a small fragment of my mental processing power.  So I've shut off the jabberbox, and stopped making phone calls, and started using the time to pray.  In this era of handsfree bluetooth, I don't even need to worry about looking insane. 

What's amazed me, as I've spent a week chanting Taize music and other meditative songs for the entire duration of my commute, is not just that I feel more centered.  Not totally centered, but better.  It's not just that it echoes through my day, and seems to change the pattern and flow of things, as prayer does.  It's how easy it is to both drive and chant and still turn my thoughts to other things.

After fifteen minutes of singing the same refrain, it requires no effort at all.  My body just takes up the chant, and drives, and both just carry on by themselves.   I find, now, that as I both drive and sing, that there is space for intentionally praying over people, and for visualizing those in need.  It's a bit like layering prayer over prayer, the embodied chant harmonizing with the mentally vocalized prayers of confession and intercession, while some semi-autonomous subroutine in my cortex carefully checks the lane next to me, signals, and pulls over. 

Amazing things, our minds are.

Beloved Spear Bible Puzzler: The Chosen

My discarded sermon concept for this week came in my reflections on Luke's story of the teaching of the Lord's Prayer. In keeping my message nice and simple and straightforward with a memorable takeaway, I neglected to pitch out this little Calvinist puzzler:

In Luke 11:1-13, Jesus presents his approach to prayer. That involves an attenuated Lord's Prayer, followed by a statement on the value of persistence, followed by the assertion that the thing we are to seek in prayer isn't bling or success, but the Holy Spirit. It's clear that what matters is the intent underlying prayer, a desire for connection and meaning that stirs an individual to seek after and pursue relationship with God.

As I reflected on that desire for the Holy Spirit during my sermon prep, I found myself wondering about the theological tautology that seems implied in this section. Desire for God is, I would hold, a gift of the Spirit. But if only those who are stirred by the Spirit seek the Spirit, and it is the seeking of the Spirit that is necessary for humankind to be in right relationship with God and one another, that seems to create a closed circle of engagement with the Creator. Almost, it seems, to the point of necessitating the use of terms like the "elect."

My Bible study on Sunday wrassled with this one for a bit, and folks came up with several interesting responses and reactions. I managed to avoid the use of the term prevenient, despite having spent seven years at a Methodist seminary.

What thinkest thou?

Compassion and Peace On the Planet of the Apes

One of the ways I tend to feel closest to God's presence in my admittedly rather feeble prayer life is by practicing self-emptying. Through stillness, song, or walking meditation, I try to still my endlessly nattering inner commentary. When that happens, which tends to be in little flickers here and there, I find myself feeling increasingly centered and deeply calm. I feel connected to that which transcends me, and to everything around me. Those moments are a delight.

The other day, after just such a moment, I found myself reflecting upon that state of being. In particular, I found my returning higher functions wondering if the silencing of my internal narrative represented a retrogression of sorts. When all I am is sensory inputs in the absence of any discernable thoughts, is that in some way analogous to the existence of "lower" forms of life? Creatures that exist in the absence of any language or symbolic forms of self expression must experience life in a similar way, being deeply and unreflectively in the moment.

Yet what struck me as peculiar about the act of meditation this week was that silencing my higher functions and seeking negation doesn't light up my...ah...more...um...animal self. I do not become more ferociously competitive, or hungrier, or so horny that me want to love you longtime. Those parts of me that are just a few genetic ticks away from having a bit part in Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes aren't released when I let my "self" grow still.

I just feel more connected, more at peace and at one with others...and more compassionate. When faced with conflict or deeply troubled, these forms of prayer are where I go, and I come out of them not just mentally more level, but physically calmer. My body is involved in the process, and it is significantly impacted. But it is only when I still those higher functions, what I would typify as my reason or symbolic awareness, that I reach that elusive peak state of oneness.

This is a common understanding of the mystic wings of all of the world's significant faith traditions, yet it flies in the face of a common assumption. That assumption is the good ol' Cartesian split between mind and body. The idea...and it is a modern one...is that it is reason that balances and controls the snarling red-in-tooth and claw beast that lurks in our animal nature. Reason must be good. Our emotional and physical responses? They must be controlled and limited by reason.

But reason and intellectual rigor are not the answer. This comes as a great disappointment to my fellow Presbyterians. Both mind and body must be stilled, if we are to be opened to the self-emptying of a Christ-centered existence.

Seeking and Finding

As my little congregation continues to wrestle with some pretty deep organizational and spiritual challenges, I find myself struggling with where my own prayer and meditation fits into the whole paid staffer thing.

On the one hand, it's easy to get sucked into the organizational dynamics of the church. It's the prepping of budgets and crafting of strategic planning memos, having Serious Discussions About Our Future, then more meetings, planning retreats, and then having still more meetings. It's the Presbyterian way, and it's work, in the same way that secular work is work. You are earning your keep. You are making sure you add value to the organization. You're an employee.

But there are days when what the Spirit wants me to do is anything but sit in my office dithering over the details of this Sunday's liturgy, or using mindmapping software to conceptualize possible futures for the ministry, or scurrying to another meeting. I feel the need to go deep and be centered, to go focus, to leave the office and the demands of the church as an organization. Though church is typically the center of my faith life, I do find myself with the deep Jesus urge to get the heck out of Dodge now and again. The conflicts and struggles that have recently riven my little community color the spirit of the sanctuary, particularly when I'm seeking calm. And as I feel the stresses and uncertainties of my own life like shards of glass around my heart, I know I'm not providing the conduit to the Creator's presence that the church needs.

But...where to go?

I prefer walking meditation, and I do walk. But I also find need for stillness. Problem is...where to find it? Where to find a little sacred space, where I can be securely away from people and their scurrying and bustling? In seminary, that place was an old dusty storeroom above the chapel entrance. But I've been feeling that yearning for a new place lately.

On Sunday, I went looking for such a quiet place, walking mindfully through the woods that run alongside the banks of the Potomac. Perhaps a well placed log by the waterside? Or a little grotto speckled with flowers and leaf-scattered light?

As I searched by the riverside for a place that might serve for silent prayer, I came across a tree. It was a great immense thing, thickening out so much enough around the base that four grown men couldn't put their arms fully around it. It sat by the waterside, within both view and earshot of the soft nickering of the flood-browned river. Where living wood met earth, I found a natural opening, half my height and shaped like a door. Inside that door into the tree, there was a dirt floored room more than six feet in diameter, with a ceiling that rose up beyond my outstretched arm into dark moist stillness. It was, for all intents and purposes, a little prayer cell.

Seek, and ye shall find.

I Am Crappy At Prayer

The walk begins with a thought, a lament, a hard realization. I am crappy at prayer.

Not bad at Scriptural Analysis. Slightly better than average at Organizational Dynamics. Halfway decent at Giving Wise Advice. Passable at Preaching In A Way That Doesn't Make You Overly Sleepy.

But as I walk, I own my weakness. Though I can string together words just fine, and speak them clearly and with feeling, in my heart of hearts I'm still a lousy prayer. Spoken prayer too often feels like chicken scratches on the dirt floor of God's creation.

I'd rather call someone who needs a call. Remembering this, I do, and I talk with some dear souls who've been away from the church for a while, putting one foot before another and sharing some time with them.

Walking back, lunch in hand, under a canopy of rain lush trees, damp leaf speckled asphalt beneath my feet, one of those moments of presence comes without my asking. Is it the Requiem that whispers through my earbuds, as the wind seems to rise and fall with the chorus? Or is it the tiny green wriggler descending from an invisible thread as I approach? Is it my involuntary reaching out, feeling the tug of his line on the hairs of the back of my hand?

Is it that we move past one another as if we were dancing? Is it that after turning to watch him serenely fall, the breeze rises up? Is it the moment after, as I close my eyes, and feel the air around me, and a tangle of threads catches across my closed eyes and clings like a tickle on my upraised face?

One never knows. But the endless jabbering in my head stills to nothing, and I am crystal in the sun. It becomes hard to distinguish between myself and the wind on my face. I am both lost and very deeply present. There's an inexplicable certainty, a heart knowledge, that I am moved by something far greater than myself.

The moment passes, as they do. I'm still a lousy prayer.

It helps to own your weakness.

The Lord's Prayer and How We Pray

One of the wonderful things about looking at Scripture for a living is that I am always--always--being struck by something that I've not seen or observed before. You'd think after having read the Bible over and over and over again that you'd have the whole thing down. Blessedly, that's not the case. If that were true, preaching on Sundays would get mighty old mighty fast.

What jumped out at me today was a passage in Matthew, following on the text I'm using on Sunday. It's Matthew 6:1-14, smack in the thick precious sweetness of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus teaches us how to pray, saying, "Our Father, who art in heaven..."

The Lord's Prayer is one of those things that is hardwired into the liturgical consciousness of cradle Christians. It's just something that we do as part of our public worship life on Sundays. Maybe we're thinking about it. Hopefully. But we all do it, mumbling along communally with each other.

The striking thing comes when you read the teaching of the Lord's Prayer in the context of Matthew's Gospel. He's already told us in verses 1-6 that we shouldn't engage in showy public displays of faith. Our prayers are between us and God. And as we pray in secret, we show that we understand that God sees in secret. (Matt. 6:6) Jesus then takes that understanding of God further. In Matthew 6: 7-8, we are told not to blabber on and on to God. What can we possibly tell God about our needs that God doesn't already know? I've always seen those verses as a bit of a jab at those whose public prayers occasionally seem like exercises in windy self-indulgence. But read in context, it seems that Christ doesn't present the Lord's Prayer as simply a model of how we should pray in public. Verse 7 doesn't say, "When you are praying in public.."

He tells us it's how we should pray, and we've just been told that we should be praying in private.

It isn't that we can't pray in other ways. We are perfectly free to prattle on to God like overtired toddlers who've gotten into the Mountain Dew. God loves us enough to indulge us in that. But nothing more is needed than the simplicity of that perfect prayer.