Tag: Prayer

Pieces of My Heart

Published on by Marilyn6 Comments

It’s 8 am and from my upstairs perch in Rockport I can hear someone practicing the trumpet. I wish I could adequately describe the off-key feeble attempts at creating notes. Just know that it has me giggling and secretly glad that I’m not in front of the musician. I’m sure it’s giving them great joy, which is a good thing because otherwise it may be intolerable. But – kudos to them for trying something so obviously new to them.

Several weeks ago, one of my nephews sent me an article on the day that is Ash Wednesday for Protestants. I found it deeply challenging and have been thinking about it these last couple of weeks. Written by Nadia Bolz-Weber, the article references an Old Testament reading from the book of the prophet Joel. And then she asks the reader what is harder – fasting for Lent or returning to God with our whole hearts?

My problem…and maybe yours too is that I sort of piece my heart out to things that cannot love me back –  to the unrequited love of so many false promises – my starving little heart is doled out in so many pieces trying to get her own needs met.

Nadia Bolz-Weber in Take Another Little Piece of my Heart, Baby

She goes on to talk about parsing out her heart to social media or addiction or mindless television watching or – fill in the blank. There are uncountable ways that we can dole out our hearts to things that will not give back. They are present and they are easy, even if the things they promise will never satisfy.

Tomorrow, Orthodox Lent begins and tonight is Forgiveness Sunday, where in a beautiful service of repentance, we ask forgiveness of God and each other before entering into this time of fasting and reflecting. As we move toward tomorrow, I am remembering this article and how much I have doled out my heart to everything but God. I find myself empty, discouraged, and wanting. Lent serves as a jolt to my heart, upsetting the status quo and asking rather than demanding that I think about giving my whole heart to God.

Deciding to stop spreading my heart to things that disappoint and returning to God is a theme woven through all of scripture. We see it in individual relationships like the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and we see it in entire communities like God’s constant interactions with the Israelites as they wandered through the Sinai desert. There are few conditions associated with return. We don’t have to look good; we don’t have to be good. The only conditions of return are willingness and repentance. We move forward and, like the faithful father in the story of the prodigal son, he comes running.

Do a search and it quickly shows hundreds of verses. Return to me so I can return to you. Return to me so that you can be restored. Return to me because I’m slow to anger, full of compassion. Return to me for I am gracious, I won’t be angry forever. Return to me. We read and experience this through stories of people over and over again. Clearly, we have a lot of company when it comes to piecing out our hearts.

As I often say in this space, I don’t know what is going on in your lives today. I don’t know what has divided your heart, what pieces and fragments have been spread around in restless longing only to realize that the things you’ve given your heart to will never give you what you long for. I do know that if you are feeling this, I’m with you in the struggle. I’m with you in the discouragement of feeling like the long road is sometimes too long. I’m with you in feeling like giving up, with you in feeling like it’s sometimes just easier to join the throngs of those who seem perfectly happy with hearts that are given to other things.

And I’m also with you in knowing that it’s worth it to return. Indeed – is there any other true way to live than constantly running back to the Father, ready to release my heart, even when I’m so far away? I don’t think there is. In all the piecing out of my heart, I am sure of only one thing – when I decide to return, the Father will be waiting.

Sharp Edges of a Round Globe

Published on by Marilyn7 Comments

What is it about Sunday afternoons in winter that bring on such melancholy? I remember writing a couple of years ago that if Sunday mornings are a time when Heaven meets earth in Divine Liturgy, Sunday afternoons feel opposite. They feel cold and hard, as though the warm grace of the morning has frozen, leaving only ice and cold.

Truth is, I have felt this way since I can remember. It began in boarding school. Sunday afternoon was the time for resting. The entire hostel was quiet. As I think back on this, it is quite extraordinary. How can that many children in one place be quiet? But we were, whether it be from fear of punishment or just the intensity of the week catching up with us, Sunday afternoons had us in our dormitory rooms, curled up with books, taking a nap with a favorite stuffed animal, or hiding tears of homesickness because that is when we missed our moms and dads so much. As I would sit in my room, a yearning sadness enveloped me, and it has remained that way since I was a child.

Today I feel like that boarding school kid once again, a yearning sadness surrounding me and threatening to overwhelm.

Certainly, there is enough to be sad about. I feel the sharp edges of a round globe, like shards of glass are stuck into different cities and regions tearing into people and places. It is too big for most to bear. Besides the global pain is the individual pain that each one of us knows, some of it too difficult to share with even our close friends. And yet I cannot believe that a silent and cruel giant creator is playing with our globe and us like we are toys, wanting to wound those toys like a child bent on cruelty toward inanimate objects.

I cannot believe in a cruel creator because the thread of goodness that I see, feel, and sense is still too strong. I see it in the kindness of a neighbor. I feel it in a friend putting her arm around me as she sees tears well up in my eyes. I sense it in the beauty of the hymns of the church. I see it in the bravery of men and women who are caring for the suffering around the world. And I see it as the sun rises each day in all these places – whether or not we see color through the clouds. But far beyond what I see, feel, and sense is an enduring faith that God is good, and in his goodness I can rest.

This work of faith brings me once again to pray the prayers of the church – prayers that have been passed down through centuries of faith by people who lived in profoundly difficult times. Prayers that I have gratefully received, knowing that I don’t have the words I need. Prayers that are large enough and strong enough to cover a round globe with sharp edges. I leave one of those with you today, knowing that on this melancholy Sunday afternoon they give me hope and help me move beyond my melancholy to a place of peace and rest.

Remember Lord all your servants who are in pain, who are in despair, who are sick, who are poor, who have lost a loved one, who have been wronged, who are by themselves, who have been slandered,  who are captives, who are hungry, who are refugees, who have lost their ways, who have been deceived, who are unprotected, who are in prison…Remember Lord all the nations of the world.  Keep them in your embrace and cover and protect them from war and evil.

St. Paisios

What Do we Do When it’s All Too Much to Bear?

Published on by Marilyn2 Comments

My heart, perhaps like yours, feels the hurt and evil from a world away. Senseless violence we call it – even as we try to make sense of it. Rockets, surprise attacks, return fire, a declaration of war, water, electricity and food cut off from a city, and an earthquake largely ignored.

What do we do when it’s all too much to bear? What do we do when our news sources and feeds flood us with tragedies that have such complex beginnings that we all get it wrong. When enjoying a beautiful Autumn Day feels like a moral injury?

I think in the midst of this we are called to pray, and we are called to hope. Just as the Call to Prayer rings out over the Muslim world five times a day, I am reminded to lift my heart in prayer, praying without ceasing. I’m called to a faith that sometimes seems impossible in the face of evil and tragedy, called to pray to a God who hears, loves, and acts even as I think he is silent and passive.

So, what do we do when it’s too much to bear? We put our heads down and pray so deeply it hurts. And then we go to work loving our neighbors, chasing beauty and hope, and doing what we know we are called to do because that is what heals and brings hope, our bold shout that evil and tragedy will not win the day.

Almighty God and Creator, You are the Father of all people on the earth. Guide, I pray, all the nations and their leaders in the ways of justice and peace. Protect us from the evils of injustice, prejudice, exploitation, conflict and war. Help us to put away mistrust, bitterness and hatred. Teach us to cease the storing and using of implements of war. Lead us to find peace, respect and freedom. Unite us in the making and sharing of tools of peace against ignorance, poverty, disease and oppression. Grant that we may grow in harmony and friendship as brothers and sisters created in Your image, to Your honor and praise. Amen.

Orthodox Prayer

Note: The images above are from the Salt and Gold Footwashing Collection – a beautiful series created by an Australian artist. I purchased the book earlier this year and it is a book that challenges and offers grace on grace. “Be prepared for Jesus to flip the tables of your heart. It’s not about who’s on the seat, it’s about Who’s washing the feet.”

A Prayer for New Year’s Eve

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

Here’s to the elderly, their memories thick with days gone by, wistfully longing for the time when staying up until midnight or dancing until dawn was a joy. May they know their lives and their memories count.

Here’s to the one who has been left, either by death or divorce, unshed tears just behind their eyelashes, as they watch the clock longing for bedtime to come. May their tears be received, and their hearts healed.

Here’s to the couple with the newborn, eyes wide open with newness and hope, bodies aching with the tiredness a newborn brings. May they have enough sleep to love each other and their little one well.

Here’s to the couple who just met, the ones who are wondering if this is just another in a long list of disappointing relationships. May they not put their hopes in another person but in a relationship-loving God.

Here’s to the ones who just got engaged, starry-eyed with the delight of sharing a lifetime of dreams together. May the strength of their love and the mercy of God equip them for the joys and tragedies ahead.

Here’s to the one who is single in a world of couples, always wondering why they feel second best. May they walk tall in the joy of friendship, growing in God and knowing in their bones how much their lives count.

Here’s to the new arrivals, fresh off a flight from warmer places, the cold and the unfamiliar hitting them as they walk out the doors of the airport. May they be greeted with bread and tea, a place to sleep and people to help.

Here’s to those who pray for peace but suffer in war. May they be safe, and may they know that they are not alone, that there are those praying for them – that wars would end, and peace would reign.

Here’s to the suffering one, who dreads the dawn of a new day. May they be wrapped in comfort and love.

Here’s to the dying one, ready to enter eternity on the cusp of a new year. May they die knowing the love, rest, and mercy of God.

Here’s to those who are heavy with conflict, weary of fighting, broken with fractured relationships, longing for peace in their families and communities. May we know the one who is mighty counselor, everlasting God, and Prince of Peace.

Here’s to you and to me, wherever we are and whoever we are with. May the hopes and dreams of all our years be met in the One who promises his presence.

Happy New Year’s Eve.

Fingerprints of Grace

Published on by Marilyn5 Comments

My friend Robynn sent me a gift today. It was a series of photos from a book, a lament and liturgy for the death of a dream.

We live in a world that loves to fill up space with stories of seemingly impossible dreams achieved. Our movies, books, and essays tell these stories in striking cinematography and poetic prose. We read these stories as people who are starving. Starving to believe that dreams do come true. Yet, for every dream achieved, there are many that die, even more that are broken.

Broken dreams don’t make for good cinema, but they are the cry of many in our world. The woman trying desperately to get pregnant; the young man dying of cancer, begging to be healed; the mom aching for her wandering child to come home; the asylum seeker desperate for safety; the child reaching out for love; and those of us with seemingly lesser dreams may watch those dreams die and are helpless to revive them. What we dream of, what we long for so deeply does not always come to pass.

What I so wanted has not come to pass…

I read the Liturgy that my friend sent me and I wept. I wept because I have witnessed lost dreams. I wept because I am a part of lost dreams. I wept because witnessing dreams die leaves you broken and vulnerable, unsure of yourself. You no longer trust your well-honed instincts, you question everything. And all too soon, you harden and what used to be dreams turns into apathy. You hate yourself for it, even as you understand how it happened.

But perhaps I wept the most because my dreams were and are too small.

I write this in the fading light of the evening. It is quiet, save the soft murmurs of voices in the next room. The sun reflects off a pine tree outside with an aching beauty.

I think about the hidden graves of broken and dead dreams. It was less than a year ago when I wrote about dreams becoming reality, when I told some of my story of longing and ultimately the fulfillment of a longing. Sadness spreads over me as I remember the joy and anticipation of last summer. Was it so recent? Can things change so quickly? Ask anyone who has watched a dream die and they will nod an emphatic “Yes!” Dreams can die in an instant.

So let me remain tender now to how you would teach me…..let me be tutored by this new disappointment. Let me listen to its holy whisper, that I might release at last these lesser dreams. That I might embrace the better dreams you dream for me, and for your people.

But this I have found in the past and now, in this present time: in the warehouse of lost dreams, in the graveyard of dead dreams, God does not abandon me. I feel his comfort all around, I see his “fingerprints of grace.”

“My history bears his fingerprints of grace…”

And I know that I can rest.

Here in the ruins of my wrecked expectation, let me make this best confession: Not my dreams O Lord, Not my dreams, but yours be done.*

Amen.

*All quotes are from A Liturgy for the Death of a Dream from Every Moment Holy.

A Friday Prayer

Published on by Marilyn8 Comments

The peach looked beautiful. It had the feel of a peach that was ripe but not too ripe and it smelled perfect. Inside it was rotten to the core. I discovered this as I was cutting it into slices.

So beautiful on the outside, so rotten on the inside.

How like the United States, with its rhetoric of greatness and it’s perfect exterior. Well trimmed lawns, good highways, fancy buildings, plenty of goods for consumers, coffee shops by the thousands, grocery stores by the million, parades and protection are all a part of the eye candy that is the U.S. Yet it takes but a moment of digging to uncover the rotten interior. From rates of abortion to treatment of foreigners we live in a society consumed by self and misguided protection. We daily watch men and women with little soul and even less integrity mismanage a nation in crisis.

Bullet holes in black boys haunt our collective psyche as we try to dismiss of racism. We hear the cries of children ripped from moms in wombs and at borders, breastfed babies panting for milk from mothers who are nowhere to be found. Pride and corruption are rampant and the innocent struggle for justice.

Cries of “I can’t breathe!” fall on our ears. Coffins fill with black bodies and we try to justify this by focusing on rioting and violence, claiming they are not the way to handle this. How dare we. How dare I. We listen to the voices of white theologians and dismiss the voices of prophetic black theologians, because they might make us uncomfortable. How dare we! How dare I!*

Like the Old Testament prophets we cry “How long O Lord? How long?“

Tears dry on faces that look up to the Son for justice.

We plead the cause of the orphan, the immigrant, the falsely accused, the unborn who were never given a chance, the dead who can no longer speak.

We plead and we pray.

May we allow the surgery of confession and repentance to root out the rotten core. May we fall on our knees in humility and repentance. May we see with eyes of justice and love with hearts of compassion. May we act with hands of mercy and speak with lips of wisdom. May we pray for our leaders and for ourselves.

May we, like the prophet Micah, do justly, love mercy, and Walk humbly with our God.

Amen and Amen

*This paragraph was added 5/29/2020.

When Learning to Swim is a Privilege 

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It was mostly toddlers who drowned off the coast of Libya.* Toddlers who had never paddled chubby legs in YMCA pools; who had never learned to hold their breath under water; whose last, terrible moments have to be given into the arms of God – because if not, life could not go on. 

I only took swimming lessons for one year while growing up. It was a year when we lived in the United States and every Wednesday Carin Waaramaa, me, and our two little brothers would go to the YMCA on a high hill in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. After an hour of breast stroke and back stroke, of treading water and learning to hold our breath, we would change back into street clothes and watch the ending of Dark Shadows in a television perched high on the wall of a waiting room. Dark Shadows was a no-no at both of our homes, so despite water logged ears, and chlorine-shot eyes we would watch until one of our mothers came to pick us up. 

I am still not a good swimmer, because one year is hardly enough to make you water safe, let alone proficient. My lack of comfort with swimming repeated itself in the next generation. Raising my children in Pakistan and the Middle East, we had limited access to pools, and though they all learned to swim, they are hardly proficient. 

The opposite is true for my husband. Indeed, he is a strong swimmer. He began as a toddler in Florida and only got better through the years. 

“Why don’t they just swim to safety?” says someone when I mention the number of refugees who have drowned while trying to reach the safety of land and a new life. I am incredulous and bite back a scathing reply. 

Learning to swim is a privilege. In fact, more than half of the world’s population cannot swim.** Considering poverty levels and the large populace that live in massive cities around the world, this does not surprise me, nor should it surprise anybody. Knowing how to swim is not a guarantee for all the children and adults of the world. Many will never have the opportunity to learn. 

Yet crossing bodies of water is a primary way of escape for refugees caught in untenable situations and circumstances, no longer safe in the places they call home. 

The International Organization for Migration approximates that more than 5,000 died last year in attempting to cross bodies of water. Boats, overcrowded because of greedy owners, pile far more people than they should, charging too much for those desperate for safety and willing to pay any price. Even when the boats are not overcrowded, if a large ocean wave pummels refugees overboard, it is unlikely that any can swim to safety. 

I know all this, yet still this latest headline has me weeping. Toddlers who should be doing nothing more than learning to play and develop normally are drowned at sea. The atrocity of this sickens me. 

Two years ago my friend Farhan reached out to me. I met Farhan at a Yezidi refugee camp in Turkey. Farhan is married with two little boys. He is a gifted linguist and translator, trained and used by the U.S. Army. There was no future where he was, and he was desperate to leave Turkey. Through a United Nations connection in Ankara, we were able to help him get registered. When the date came for his first interview, we gasped in dismay. The date was for 2022 – 7 years from the date at the time. So Farhan took matters into his own hands. He found a boat that would take him and his family to Europe. He arrived safely and is now settled in Germany. Farhan’ family did not end up a headline, but many are not so lucky. 

There are many things in our world that are privileges, not rights. When we read the headlines through eyes and lives of privilege, we forget this and we grow blind to the suffering of others. So as I pray for those moms who lost their toddlers at sea, I voice another prayer. 

May God heal the eye sight of those of us who live in privilege and safety, and may we see the world with clearer vision. Only then can we pray with more wisdom and greater passion. 

*Source – NBC News 

**Source – MySwimPro

The Therapy of Baking Bread

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bread

I begin to bake bread when twilight comes quickly and a chill is ever-present in the air. I begin to bake bread when the dark of winter is not yet upon us and the glow of Autumn shines through orange candles. I continue baking it through the cold of winter, as snow piles up and then melts. I bake bread until finally, the forsythia breaks through and yellow blossoms stand tall, breaking the fast of winter grey.

Making bread is often better therapy than a counseling session.

I think about baking bread on my way home from work as I watch the sun too early and feel the icy wind on my face.

I think about setting the oven to 350 degrees as I start the yeast rising. I think about the ingredients: wheat flour, white flour, oats, yeast, oil, sugar, salt. So simple–yet yielding so much.

I mix up the oats, sugar, salt, whole wheat flour, and oil. I add boiling hot water.

I wait and then add yeast and the rest of the flour.

And then I take the slightly sticky dough and I knead. I knead and I pray.

I start global and I go local. I pray for Egypt and Pakistan, for peace, for mercy. I pray for the chasm of misunderstanding between East and West. I pray for Syria, that a miracle will happen. I pray for my family, that my children will know the joy of baking bread, of creating, of loving, of forgiveness and forgiving. I pray for my parents – thank God for them and what they have passed on to me.

I pray for refugees and the kneading gets more intense. I pray for those who are close and have no electricity, and for the ones who are far, who have lost olive trees and babies. I pray that reason will prevail, and that the Church will practice compassion.

And then I pray that I will forgive more and judge less, that I will find my strength and security in the One who is the bread of life,

I pound harder on the bread when I’m upset, when I feel hurt or anger rise to my eyes and heart. I concentrate deeply as I think about life in all its hard and all its good.  And as I do the bread becomes smoother under my hands.

This time in the kitchen, baking bread? It is holy time, holy work.

I set the bread to rise and I thank God for bread and for life.