What are we doing when we're praying

Hi.

Thank you for caring about my head. To knock a brain and its carrier is a strange thing. I fell quite hard, backward, and heard the awful sound of head hitting ground. I couldn’t break my fall because I was sitting in a chair.

It gives me appreciation for all the tasks I do each day without thinking. I have enjoyed sleeping a lot. The power of rest is really something. It’s harder, sometimes, to retrieve words. It was already hard. It got harder.

I keep hoping the fall jarred loose some new power, like the ability to compute complicated things quickly or to speak a new language. I was hoping I might sing better or understand software code. Not yet!

I haven’t once prayed to become well or to make the annoying symptoms go away. I don’t pray for better weather or to know winning lottery numbers.

I often pray for help in becoming a better person. I’m not entirely sure who I’m praying to, but I do speak words of hope and intent into the air in front of me. I know they guide me in the direction I need to go.

I am grateful, most mornings, to wake surrounded by trees. I have to catch myself when I bitch about the weather too much. I know I’ll miss the feeling of a rainy day when I’m dead. Rain is the reason I have my boys.

On August 31 in 1992 I was supposed to have spent the day at the beach with my friend, Katie, but it was raining so we changed our plans. We took a little drive to Vermont, had lunch, bought some books, then decided to drive home a different way. We got lost and when we stopped at a pottery studio to ask for directions I met the man I eventually married and produced Sam and Nate with.

If it hadn’t rained we wouldn’t have met.
If there had been GPS then we wouldn’t have met.
The smallest details and my life would have proceeded differently.

I wonder how many would-be couples never met because of technological advances.

I don’t pray to get myself out of tight situations. I don’t pray for things I want. I pray for guidance and courage and stamina.

Who are we asking things of when we pray? Who is it we think will help us out?

Is it God? Angels? Our dead ancestors?
All of the above?

I love to imagine a God going to the office every day, much like Santa, busy as hell with all the requests, delegating to a stable of assistants, dispatching angels to stop car accidents and hold the heads of dying grandmas. Seeding clouds to produce rain to bring people together to create new people.

It would make a funny movie.

I pray to know why I’m here and to be as productive as possible in solving human dilemmas while I’m here.

I pray for opportunities to heal brokenness.

A whole life can be a prayer of gratitude. We don’t need to be on our knees to say words of appreciation, we can do it by simply trying to do better today than we did yesterday. Every one of us knows what that means.

I am always astonished when I meet someone after not having seen them for a long stretch of time and find that they haven’t changed at all. All of life, every moment, is an opportunity to do better, to grow, adapt, stretch further, become wiser.

Wisdom doesn’t come with age, wisdom comes with grace and courage and humility.

I pray for honesty within my own heart. Please help me grow. I want to be as good as I can be at this before the vessel gives out. Don’t let me shy away or get lazy.

God if I hear the word retirement one more time! Please! I can’t wait until that concept has completely died from our cultural ideas about how a life should play out. The word itself is awful, it has tire right in the middle. It reeks of naps and cessation of activity. Ugh. Life should not be work, work, work, then stop for the last stretch to play. It should all be woven together, throughout the whole course of a lifetime. Most people don’t know what to do with themselves when they retire. I see them look around, lost, unsure who they are without their former title, structure, responsibility. Asserting themselves in volunteer roles, bored a lot of the time.

I’m tired of having to explain that I did not retire from being a pastor. I may go back one day! I simply stopped working at a job I had for a measly five years. I am creating books and hosting Soul Circles and building a tech solution to elder isolation and loneliness and helping run an adaptive sports program.

My prayer to remain useful and productive is getting lots of traction.

What the heck are we doing when we’re praying?

Asking Creator and wiser beings than I to please help me remember that there is a celestial pit crew out there who believe in me. To never lose sight of the truth that my life is both essential and expendable. I am a speck on a dot in a vast and unfathomable lived experience. I pray for humility, grace, for all the things that might shift the focus from me to that problem that needs solving.

A head bump is a funny thing. Look how fast life can change. Did I see it coming? Kind of. I felt uneasy in the moments before it happened. Does it hold purpose? Of course it does. I like to pray for awareness: what is the lesson embedded in this hard moment?

Thanks for the hard knocks and the gentle responses and the compassionate friends and loving family. I don’t really know who I’m thanking, but I do hope I never forget that the words I speak when I pray are the map I need to do the work I came here to do: to be grateful, to show up, to tone it down, to get it done, to speak the truth, to tell them I love them, to rest enough to be ready to do better tomorrow. To know that my life’s work might be the answer to someone else’s prayer.

There are prayers floating out there everywhere. If you bump into one today see if you can trace it back to its origin and maybe help someone have a better day.

Enjoy this beautiful Summer Solstice.
Amen.

Rain brought them to me.