Words, and a Prayer

Self-expression provides identity and proves existence. And my words often give me an unholy identity and existence. I would imagine that most of you feel similarly—or at least have in the past. So many times I not only regret what I say, but also what I do not.

The reflection and prayer from Michel Quoist that I provide below has really made me consider the severity of speech. I hope it enlightens you as you pray with him (as I try to do as much as I can).

I Spoke, Lord**
Speech is God’s gift. We shall have to account for it. It is through words that we communicate with each other and that we reveal what we are. We haven’t the right to be silent, but speaking is a serious matter, and we must weigh our words in the sight of God.

I spoke, Lord, and I am furious.
I am furious because I worked so hard with gestures and with words.
I threw my whole self into them, and I’m afraid the essential didn’t get across.
For the essential is not mine, and words alone are too shallow to hold it.
I spoke, Lord, and I am worried.
I am afraid of speaking, for speaking is serious;
It’s serious to disturb others, to bring them out, to keep them on their doorsteps;
It’s serious to keep them waiting, with outstretched hands and longing hearts, seeking for light or some courage to live and act.
Suppose, Lord, that I should send them away, empty-handed!

And yet, I must speak.
You have given me speech for a few years, and I must make us of it.
I owe my soul to others, and words are crowding to my lips to bring it to them.
For the soul could hardly express itself if speech were taken from it.
We know nothing of the infant inside its little body,
And the whole family rejoices when, word by word, phrase by phrase, its soul is revealed to them.
But when one of the family is dying, the others stand despairing by his bed, listening intently to his last words.
He passes on, locked in silence, and his relatives will no longer know his soul, once they have shut his eyes and closed his lips.

Speech, Lord, is a gift, and I have no right to be quiet through pride, cowardice, negligence or apathy.
Others have a right to my words, to my soul,
For I have a message from you to give them,
And none other that I, Lord, can give it to them.
I have something to say—short perhaps, but welling up from my life—from which I cannot turn.
But my words must be true words.
It would be a breach of trust to seek the attention of another, and under the cover of words not to reveal the truth of the soul.
The words that I pour out must be living words, full of the mysteries that my unique soul has grasped, mysteries of the world and of man.
The words that I speak must be conveyors of God, for the lips that you have given me, Lord, are made to reveal my soul, and my soul knows you and holds you close.

–

Forgive me, Lord, for having spoken so badly,
Forgive me for having spoken often to no purpose;
Forgive me for the days when I tarnished my lips with hollow words,
false words,
cowardly words,
words through which you could not pass.
Uphold me when I must speak in a meeting, intervene in a discussion, talk with a brother.
Grant above all, Lord, that my words may be like the sowing of seeds,
And that those who hear them may look to a fine harvest.

**This can be found in his Prayers (Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 69-71.

Hope: My Father's Prayers

My father and I are two very different people. And that has always confused me a great deal.

I love to talk. To communicate. To express myself. Most of you who know me know that is an understatement! I am a very vocal person. It is just my nature. I thrive off of conversation. Exchange of ideas. Disagreement. Challenge. Well-worded statements. Poetry. And when I have something happening in my life—good or bad—I like to talk and write until it all makes sense.

But my father is not like that. He doesn’t like to talk. Rarely is he deeply engaged by the beauty of articulate self-expression. It is just not his style. And whenever he has something going on, he never tries to figure it out with words. He likes to be alone. He lets the ideas work instead of his mouth. So he fishes. He plays golf. He does yard work. All of this when there is something going on in his life. All of this alone.

I like to think that my father is praying when he is alone.

Robert Frost said the something quite similar about the tree in his poem Birches. But he knew it wasn’t real. I do not. He invented the boy to make reality bearable. Doable. Liveable. Interesting. Alive.

I do more than invent a man’s faith, I hope. I acknowledge it. I hope that he prays through those experiences. I hope that he is growing closer to God each and every moment he spends alone. That in some way his “alone time” is not alone time at all, but is an outlet for communion with God.

I like to think he prays alone.

Didn’t Jesus do that every now and then?

I wrote this on Father’s Day, 2007. And I love my dad.

Now...I Can Die Happy

Well folks, I did it. I saw Interpol (Wednesday, September 26, 2007)! Stubb’s. Austin, TX. It was incredible. Absolutely incredible. One of the best shows I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot of shows. I don’t care what you have to do…just go to an Interpol show. I promise that you will not be sorry. Here is a pic of the band that fateful night in Austin when all my dreams came true… Sigh…

I thought it would be fun to make a list of some of the better bands I have seen—and those that I would love to see, but have not yet. Sorry if it is a little long! I do so adore live music.

Rock:
Better than Ezra
The Black Crowes
Blues Traveller
Collective Soul
Counting Crows
Cowboy Mouth
Cross Canadian Ragweed
Drivin’ and Cryin’
Fleetwood Mac
G3 (Satch, Via, and Petrucci)
Goo Goo Dolls
Gov’t Mule (x4)
Hootie and the Blowfish
Ingram Hill
Interpol!
John Mayer (x2)
Jeff Tweedy
Jewel
Live
O.A.R.
Oasis
Pete Yorn
Phil Keaggy
Phil Lesh and Friends (w/ Jimmy Herring)
The Police
Train
Sister Hazel (x3)
Stone Temple Pilots
Styx
Sufjan Stevens
Switchfoot
Wilco

Country/Bluegrass:
Alabama (x2)
Alan Jackson
Charlie Daniels Band
Diamond Rio
John Anderson
Little Texas
Nickel Creek
Ricky Scaggs
Vince Gill

Christian:
Casting Crowns
David Crowder Band
Jars of Clay
Third Day

Jazz:
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Oteil and the Peacemakers
The Yellowjackets
Wynton Marsalis

Musicals/Classical:
AIDA (Italian Opera)
The Chicago Symphony
Guys and Dolls
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Les Miserables
The Lion King
The Nashville Symphony
Phantom of the Opera (x2)

Bands I’d Love to See:
The Arcade Fire
Bebo Norman
Coldplay
Dave Matthews Band
Death Cab for Cutie
Muse
Pearl Jam
Phish (you know they’ll do a reunion tour!)
The Rolling Stones
The Shins
The Strokes
U2

Julian: My Sister, My Teacher

I have been reading a lot of medieval mystic spiritual literature lately. And I have found it to be fascinating. The depth of spirituality that is so often expressed in literature from that time period is amazing and refreshing. They thought so differently than I do it is almost like we are speaking two different languages about the same God. But, like all such experiences, this encounter with another worldview has been a stretching exercise for me. And I know God is still speaking through these men and women.

Here are a few quotes from Julian of Norwich** that I have found especially thought- provoking. She was a mystic hermit who lived most of her life in a small room, not unlike a cell, giving spiritual guidance through a window to people in Norwich (then a major urban center in England) during the 14^th and 15^th centuries CE. Both her life and writings are extremely theologically rich. I will keep my commentary to a minimum on these in hopes that they will impact you as they did me. One word of advice, though…go slowly. This needs to be chewed.

On the presence of God:
A man walks upright, and the food in his body is shut in as if in a well-made purse. When the time of his necessity comes, the purse is opened and then shut again, in most seemly fashion. And it is God who does this, and it is shown when he says that he comes down to us in our humblest needs. (186)

And therefore the blessed Trinity is always wholly pleased with all its works; and God revealed all this most blessedly, as though to say: See, I am God. See, I am in all things. See, I do all things. See, I never remove my hands from my works, nor ever shall without end. See, I guide all things to the end that I ordain them for, before time began, with the same power and wisdom and love with which I made them; how should anything be amiss? (199)

On the Passion—or is it tithing?:
All the Trinity worked in Christ’s Passion, administering abundant virtues and plentiful grace to us by him; but only the virgin’s Son suffered, in which all the blessed Trinity rejoice. And this was shown to me when he said: Are you well satisfied? And by what Christ next said: If you are well satisfied, I am well satisfied; it was as if he had said: This is joy and delight enough for me, and I ask nothing else from you for my labour but that I may satisfy you.

And in this he brought to my mind the qualities of a cheerful giver. Always a cheerful giver pays only little attention to the thing which he is giving, but all his desire and all his intention is to please and comfort the one to whom he is giving it. And if the receiver accept the gift gladly and gratefully, then the courteous giver counts as nothing all his expense and labour, because of the joy and the delight that he has because he has pleased and comforted the one whom he loves. Generously and completely was this revealed to me. (219-20)

Toward a theology of prayer:
Prayer unites the soul to God, for though the soul may always be like God in nature and substance restored by grace, it is often unlike him in condition, through sin on man’s part. Then prayer is a witness that the soul wills as God wills, and it eases the conscience and fits man for grace. And so he teaches us to pray and to have firm trust that we shall have it; for he beholds us in love, and wants to make us partners in his good will and work. And so he moves us to pray for what it pleases him to do, and for this prayer and good desire which come to us by his gift he will repay us, and give us eternal reward. And this was revealed to me when he said: If you beseech it. (253)

—

I hope that you read this with the depth that it calls for. It can be a bit distracting. The first quote about God causing bowel movements was admittedly a little strange for me at first, too! But it is so crucial that we see that she is really not talking about bodily functions. She is talking about God’s presence—even in the most mundane of things. The extraordinary lives in the ordinary.

Or how about the play with the wording of 2 Corinthians 9 with reference to the Passion? I thought that verse was about the offering! I hear it all the time in church, but never like she is presenting it here. I thought her interpretation brilliant.

And how often do I sit back and engage my own prayer life in order to see what is really going on? I wonder what kinds of changes I’d make in my prayer life if I really saw it as being a process of growing closer to God.

I hope you found all this as interesting as I did. I know this is not something you hear everyday. So what do you think? Agree? Disagree?

My best.

**All subsequent Julian quotes are taken from her Showings (New York: Paulist Press, 1978).