The Waltz
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before.
I know I’ll often stop and think about them.
The Beatles, “In My Life”
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.
Søren Kierkegaard
A Prayer for God’s Ubiquity
You’re still with me even here – right, GOD? You’re still with me even if I haven’t spent an hour in the chapel praying? Even if I’m sitting on the couch?
GOD, I need You to be Someone Who is everywhere – Someone I can find in the most unlikely of places. You know how important it is to not be hemmed in – to not be suffocated.
Can You help me to have a faith like that – a faith that’s wild and free, that sees You in all manner of things? A faith that doesn’t separate itself from the world, but that finds ways to see the holy in the profane?
GOD, the world is large. Let me see its largeness.
Amen.
Holy Week
There is a question that frequently troubles my soul – namely, the question of GOD, and how to find Him.
I am at a loss for words. The prayers of my soul are quiet and I must strain to hear them. There is the sadness of doubt, and the heaviness of disappointed dreams. I can open myself to Trust – but the inner longings that are at stake are hard to entrust to anyone, particularly when the heart finds so many reasons to not believe.
But now is not the time for doubting. On the holiest week of the year, my prayer is for faith, and for a deep and radical reliance on GOD – for a holy relationship with Him, for a bond that is life-giving and sustaining and true.
All I say is subject to questioning. So be it.
My nature is here, laid bare on the page. Full of quashed-down hopes and desires – passionate – intense – but also detached and contradictory and aware of the complexity of things.
That is all. Life will be as it will be.
My prayer is: “Be it done to me according to Thy Word.”
I am simple, I am free. The answers will find me in the simplest of ways – that is, coming to me in the sweet center of my soul. May I be open enough to receive them without my usual stubbornness and arguments and complaints.
The Spirit of Lent
We are keeping the spirit of Lent – the spirit of surrendering something we desire very much. So we wait and we deny ourselves even the smallest of joys, hoping that our sacrifice won’t go unnoticed by GOD.
And yet, here we are, full of a sadness that can’t be destroyed.
Full of a sadness that could tear this page in two.
A sadness that would spill over our cup, making it run full, not with joy, but with sorrow too bitter for drinking.
And yet – isn’t that where we are? Isn’t that where we stand? Before the cross, asking not to drink from this cup, but swallowing it down if it can’t be avoided?
“Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done.”
The prayer I’ve prayed a thousand times, neither understanding why I should pray it nor really desiring to pray it at all – but feeling compelled nonetheless to believe in its goodness and power and truth, and mouthing the words like a chant in the dark, hoping it might yet let loose a stray shred of light.
