The Lord’s Prayer, Revisited

I’ve begun offering an abbreviated session of hymn singing and Bible study on our newly opened secure unit at the nursing home. The singing always touches something deep and even those who seem disconnected rise to the occasion, the words and music coming from somewhere deep inside. Bible study is a little harder, since many have trouble processing ideas and then responding to them. But last week, as we were talking about the Lord’s Prayer, one of the residents asked a startling question. He said, “What if the Lord’s Prayer isn’t a series of petitions but a statement of fact?” In other words, what if it isn’t, “[Please] give us this day our daily bread,” but [You] give us this day our daily bread. And [you] forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And [you] lead us not into temptation but [you] deliver us from evil.” I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before, but I will never hear or say that prayer again in quite the same way. Because His is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever.

Nursing home 24/7

I wrote this one some time ago but still go back to it to remind me of the prophets among us.

they call her demented,
bathe her, dress her, feed her
park her in her wheelchair along the wall
soft tired hands resting in her lap
bright eyes searching passing faces
passing, passing
seldom glancing down
talk of the weekend, lunch, low pay
complaints of fatigue, too much work
must stay busy, things to do
people to tend, bells to answer
busy
while she sits in her wheelchair
bright eyes searching passing faces
she reaches for me, passing by.
I stop
possessed of the gift of time
how do you feel, I ask
on the inside

feels like sitting in a grave.

Open Our Hearts, Lord

I don’t know where it came from, but I suspect we need this prayer more often than not.

Heavenly Father, Help us to remember
that the jerk who cut us off in traffic
last night is a single mother
who worked nine hours that day and
is rushing home to cook dinner,
help with homework,
do the laundry and spend
a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the
pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man
who can’t make change correctly
is a worried19-year-old college student,
balancing his apprehension over final exams
with his fear of not getting a student loan for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum,
begging for money in the same spot every day
(who really ought to get a job!)
is a slave to addictions
that we can only imagine in our
worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that
the old couple walking annoyingly slowly
through the store aisles
and blocking our shopping progress
are savoring this moment,
knowing that,
based on the biopsy report she got back last week,
this will be the last year
that they go shopping together.

Heavenly Father,
remind us each day that,
of all the gifts you give us,
the greatest gift is love.
It is not enough to share that love
only with those we hold dear.

Open our hearts not just to those who are close to us,
but to all your people.
Let us be slow to judge
and quick to forgive,
show patience,
empathy and love.

The Work of Christmas

The Work of Christmas

By Howard Thurman

 

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart.

Another Favorite Poem

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant

by Billy Collins

 

I am glad I resisted the temptation,

if it was a temptation

when I was young,

to write a poem about an old man

eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong

thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world

and with only a book for a companion.

He’ll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades

to record how hot and sour the hot and sour

soup is here at Chang’s this afternoon


and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book — José Saramago’s Blindness

as it turns out — is so absorbing that I look up

from its escalating horrors only

when I am stunned by one of his gleaming sentences.

And I should mention the light

that falls through the big windows this time of day

italicizing everything it touches—

the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,

as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress

in the white blouse and short black skirt,

the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice

and shredded beef with garlic

to my favorite table in the corner.

Judge Not

I didn’t see him when he got on the plane but I smelled him — that rank, decidedly unpleasant smell of the unwashed. Once the doors were closed and the air conditioning kicked in, the smell pervaded the cabin like an almost-visible miasma. He sat 2 or 3 rows up, so I couldn’t see him, but from his conversation with his seatmate he sounded nice, well educated — so why couldn’t he have bathed and spared us all? For most of the hour, I tried not to breathe, every breath an unpleasant reminder of the one person on board who had no concern for the rest of us, sharing close quarters as we were. As we neared Norfolk, I heard him say, “I’m sorry I smell so bad. If I can smell myself, I know it’s awful. But I’ve been travelling 36 hours now, on my way home from Afghanistan.”

Hope

A friend recently sustained a significant injury to her leg and is now experiencing all that goes with being less than “hale and hearty.” She now finds herself essentially confined to home, unable to drive, unable to do many of the chores of daily living without help, unable to go where she wants when she wants; in short, her life has been decidedly altered. With rehab, she is getting stronger but has been told that it will be a year before she is back to her previous status. She finds it frustrating, aggravating, and discouraging, as we all would. But for her, there is light at the end of the tunnel. She can see herself making progress, if not as quickly as she would like. She knows that life will slowly return to normal, that she will be able to get back to doing what she loves. God willing. More and more, I am tempted to add “God willing” to every expression because none of us really knows from day to day what will happen. But that’s an aside. What it prompts is thoughts of my nursing home residents, of the fact that for most of them, there won’t be improvement, there won’t be getting back to what they love, there won’t be gradually more and more independence, but gradually less and less. They are already confined, not to a house but to a small shared room. They have already had to give up most of their possessions, their community, and the daily chores that offer a sense of purpose. And I wonder: how do we hang on to hope when it seems there is none, at least none that looks like the hope we want? It isn’t a question any of us want to face but it is perhaps the existential question. Because we are so often seduced into thinking that our value rests in what we accomplish or what we achieve, when Jesus was clear: “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” (Luke 24:24) It is a challenge. There don’t seem to be any easy answers. Yet this morning I woke up with a hymn running through my head: “All my hope on God is founded…” Do you suppose it was the voice of God singing the answer?

Of Hands and Hearts

Watching a football game the other day (not really watching but doing needlework while my husband watched) I was struck by behavior of people during the National Anthem. Some were looking around as though they were just waiting for it to be over. Some sang along, some had tears in their eyes, and as many put a hand over the heart as it was played. And I got to thinking about how what we do with our bodies reflects how we feel in our souls. And more than that, how what we do with our bodies affects how we feel in our souls. Being incarnate has its consequences.

Because we do much the same thing in church, adopting different postures at different points in the service, standing to sing, standing or kneeling to pray, kneeling to confess. We fold our hands for prayer and hold our hands out to receive communion. We hold the Gospel book high, so all can see it, announcing in the gesture good news brought to the poor. We have all sorts of gestures but many have become routine, so that we fail to notice what it is we are doing and why, and why that is important.

And I wondered, why don’t we put our hand over our heart at the recitation of the Creed? Because the truth is, we are embodied creatures. We are, as has been said, “spiritual beings having a human experience.” And that human experience means we encounter the world, each other, and God in very physical ways and we respond in very physical ways. So perhaps the challenge for us this week is to notice what it is that we are doing in our bodies. Does what we do reflect how we feel? And what might we do physically, to bring body and soul together, to make our living an authentic reflection of who we are? Perhaps we might start with a hand over our heart.

Paying Attention

A friend posted a question on Facebook the other day that certainly brought me up short, and so I pass it on to you: “What if, when you woke up this morning, the only things you had were the things that you thanked God for yesterday?” I figure I’d be out in the cold with my husband and the residents and staff of the nursing home!

 

And so I began to wonder what it is that keeps us from being consciously grateful. To be realistic, we can only pay attention to so many things at one time in order to get anything done, but why isn’t our focus on gratitude? Not that inane “attitude of gratitude” idea but a deliberate noticing of all we are blessed with.

 

I remember reading about the Lost Boys of Sudan and how when they were in the refugee camps, they received only one meal a day. But then, when they came to this country and several of them shared an apartment, they pooled their resources for food and continued to eat just one meal a day, all together around the table. One meal a day to remind them of where they had been and how far they had come, together. One meal a day, to remind them that shared blessings are multiplied blessings. One meal a day to remind them of all the people who haven’t even one meal a day.

 

Perhaps our own decision to be more consciously grateful might begin with the supper table, all together and all attentive to the blessings that are ours, aware of how fortunate we are to be able to gather just so. So that when we get up the next morning, we have with us the things that really matter.

Of Trees and Loss

Our yard man came yesterday to trim the trees so there would be more sunlight in the back yard. The yard used to have too much light; now there is too much shade and my daylilies don’t bloom and the grass doesn’t grow. Rod and I couldn’t be there but we trust this man; he’s always done just what we have hoped for and kept our place looking decent.
Then I came home, looked out the kitchen window and saw my beloved crepe myrtle butchered. It used to have the most beautiful trunk, gracefully arching up, like heaven-reaching arms; just made my heart glad to see it. Now it’s just a wounded tree. And I felt like crying for the tree and the loss of its beauty. Perhaps it was just the grief of work getting to me – seems I’ve spent the week watching those I’ve come to love sink into sadness.
And then I sat down to watch the evening news. And saw the people of Hatteras come back to nothing — their homes washed away by the hurricane, all the dear things of life gone. And the people of Texas, so many of them who have lost everything to wildfires. Irreplaceable things that tie us to memories and people and times that have touched us and made us glad. Which makes a single tree rather a selfish grief. And then it seems, too, that all of it — all of the loss — is but another way of calling us to reach heavenward, from whence of our help, our life, our joy, always and only comes.