Tag Archives: prayer

Contemplation: Be still. Become aware.

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , , , , ,

When things were not working out for you, did a well-meaning person ever counsel you to “Walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7)? That’s a popular snippet of the Bible which people use as an encouraging piece of self-talk: “Settle down. God is not done with you yet.” If you take their counsel, you might develop a new conviction: “I am moving ahead, hoping for the best. I am walking by faith, not by sight.” That is good.

the way of contemplation

I think there is something even more immediate that scripture is teaching. I have learned it through the prayer of contemplation. “Walk by faith, not by sight” is also about becoming aware of the unseen things God is doing in the present moment. It is not just looking ahead, it should also be looking in. “I am walking by the Light of the World, not just by the light of day, by faith, not sight.”

Prayer amounts to faithing. Just call walking by faith “faithing.” Faith is an action not an idea; it is relating, not just thinking about principles. And prayer is the basic place we faith. Prayer is how we develop the sense of being guided by the Holy Spirit of God and learn to see and react with more than just our physical senses. God is with us, right now; prayer helps us be with God right now.

When I say “contemplative prayer” you might think of mindfulness techniques that people are teaching to jr. highers to help them settle down. That’s a beginning, but that’s not the prayer of contemplation. The prayer of contemplation includes the techniques for reducing anxiety, but it is more. Contemplative prayer, and any spiritual discipline, disposes us to allow something to take place. The main thing that happens is love. If you find something else in the silence, you might be in the wrong place. Contemplation makes us available for relating to God. We don’t always pray in order to get God to do something for us; contemplative prayer is not about making something happen, necessarily. We are making ourselves available for communion with God. We are becoming open to experience Love, heart to Heart.

It is like this: A gardener does not actually grow plants. She practices skills that facilitate growth that is beyond her control. Prayer is like that. A sailor does not produce the necessary wind to move the boat. He appropriates the gift of wind by exercising skills that can get him home. Prayer is like that.

The basic skill of contemplative prayer that facilitates growth and appropriates gifts is inner silence. There are two practices that are very important to exercising this skill: stillness and awareness.

Stillness

When we attempt to be silent, we need to consider how to face the inner noise with which we struggle. Sometimes we do noisy things when we pray, too, of course; we are embodied spirits, after all. But at the center of us is the silent place where God is simply giving himself to us and we are communing spirit to Spirit. We long to carry this silence with us in the midst of the noisy world and be content that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. We want to feel at home. One of the early teachers of the church said, that in this center, we are constantly being called home, away from the noise that is around us to the joys that are silent. He said, “Why do we rush about looking for God who is here at home with us, if all we want is to be with him?”

Martin Laird, a teacher from Villanova who wrote a book called Into the Silent Lands, tells a story about a prisoner who was accustomed to cutting himself or burning himself so that his inner pain would be in a different place: on the outside of him. This suffering man had come upon some people whose mission was to teach prisoners to pray and turn their prison cells into monastic cells. The prisoner learned from them, and after several weeks of meditating twice a day he said, “I just want you to know that after only four weeks of meditating half an hour in the morning and night, the pain is not so bad, and for the first time in my life, I can see a tiny spark of something within myself I can like.” That is the home we are talking about.

contemplation in Rittenhouse
Stillness in Rittenhouse Square

Awareness

Our sense of separation from God is often a matter of our broken perception. We can’t feel God. We have an idea of what we should feel and we don’t feel it. Contemplative prayer is the place we let go of our perceptions and become aware of God with us, as the scripture guides us:

  •  My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him (Psalm 62:5).
  • I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you (Jesus in John 14:20).
  • I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me (Galatians 3:20).

From the perspective of our everyday life on planet earth, we are separate from God. But from the perspective of our inner awareness, we see Christ with us. When we pray, we are not merely becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings (although that is good!), we are learning to be aware of God and to be with God who is with us.

It is like this: A man was taking his dog to a field where the animal could run and he ran into another man walking four dogs. They got to the open field and let their dogs go so they could enjoy running around in a big free space. But one the dogs was off to the side running is relatively tight circles and did not join in with the other dogs. The man asked his new friend, “What’s with your dog?” The man answered. “Before I got this dog, he had spent years living in a cage. He was used to getting all his exercise, just as you see. He has the field, but he is trained for the cage.” I did not see this dog do this personally, so I can’t prove to you that dogs do this, but I do know myself and many of you. We have the wide open field of grace and freedom to romp in but we run in the contours of our former cage. The prayer of contemplation is retraining our hearts to roam the wide open spaces of eternity freely.

  • My heart is like a bird that has escaped from the snare of the fowler (Psalm 123:7).

Our minds tend to run in the obsessive tight circles of our mental cage. We believe we are separate from God, and we were. So now we need to become aware of something else. I heard something shocking from a friend not long ago. When he was a child his father sang a little ditty that he thought was funny: “Charlie Wilkins is no good. Let’s chop him up like so much wood.” I know this little boy as an old man and you can still see that putrid song playing in his head. Just like that, we may believe we are condemned by God. So now we need to learn freedom. Prayer is the training ground.

When we think about things, we have a cage of thoughts that guide us. Contemplative prayer helps us go beyond that cage and enter into the wide-open fields of silence where we don’t merely think about things, we commune with God. We concentrate attention in our heart to the place of knowing, the place of awareness that is not full of the cacophony of our mind and surroundings but is full of the Spirit of God. It seems like we are just sitting there doing nothing when we pray this way, and that is exactly right and exactly good. In that nothing of ourselves and our surroundings we enter the silent land of our true being with God.

This post tells you more about how to practice contemplative prayer. But we don’t need perfect techniques to pray as much as we need to access the skills that are built into our beings by our loving Father. Be silent and turn your heart to God whether you think you know what you are doing or not. Take a step of walking by faith, not by sight. You’ll have a good time with God.

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The contemplative prayer of imagination: Resist and restore

A life in the Spirit, , , , , , , , ,

What if you want to use Lent to get out of your head and into your heart? What if you want to explore the depths of your life: mind, heart, soul, strength and have a meaningful life that resists the forces that try to consume it? Last Saturday during our retreat, one of the answers was: learn to pray — and learn to use your imagination. Life in Christ is bigger than such an “answer” of course. But developing a spiritual life is the key to meaning, key to surviving.

Morton Kelsey offered a checklist for venturing inward. It is a good one, since it does not skip to “what I can do on my own,” but attends to our context and community, which are so crucial. To venture inward: 1) attend to the regular disciplines of your community (cell, Sunday meeting, team), 2) keep a spiritual journal, 3) talk about your inner life, 4) receive spiritual direction (could be formal or friendship), 5) learn to become quiet, 6) unleash your imagination.

peering into the inner life

Be quiet. Contemplation is the core prayer

Prayer takes many forms. In every form it is communing with God, relating Spirit to spirit. We intercede and move God. We worship and praise God. We confess and reconcile with God. We have conversations that are full of complaining and questioning. But until we learn to be quiet and find out what is on the other side of silence, our prayer is a bit superficial and missing the deep experiences of connection we crave. The core prayer we need to learn might be summed up with the word contemplation: the basic yearning of our hearts turned to seeking, our innate spiritual capacity stepping toward connection.

Via negativa contemplation

There are two intertwining roads in contemplative prayer; one is often emphasized more by one group than another. First, there is the via negativa, the apophatic way, (the word means “other than speaking,” or “denial”). This way stresses how God is best known by negation, elimination, forgetting, unknowing, without images and symbols, and in darkness. God is other than humanity. God is “not this, not that.”

On this way all images, thoughts, symbols, etc. must be eliminated, because, as St. John of the Cross points out, “all the being of creatures compared with the infinite being of God is nothing. Nothing which could possibly be imagined or comprehended in this life can be a proximate means of union with God.” We enter this nothingness to meet God.

Learning to be quiet needs to travel on this way, since we need to turn away from our self-controlled, world-controlled existence to meet God. In prayer, we need to deal with the distractions that inhibit our solitude.

Via affirmativa contemplation

The other road is the via affirmativa, the kataphatic way, (the word means “much speaking,” or “affirmation”). This way underscores how we can find God in all people, in all experiences, in all things.

It emphasizes a definite similarity between God and creatures. We are made in God’s image, male and female. The world is an expression of God’s character. As Paul taught the Athenians:  “In God we live and move and have our being.” God can be reached by creatures, images, and symbols, because the Lord is manifested in creation and salvation history. The incarnation of God in Christ forces us to take our own experiences as relevant, symbolic and part of an ongoing story of salvation. We are God’s workmanship and Jesus not only symbolizes this blessing, He remains with us to bring about its fullness.

The goal of contemplation is love

All humans are made to seek. We are lonely for God. So very few are spirituality-free. In most Hindu and Buddhist practices, people are taught that the universe is, ultimately, impersonal mind (as in “may the force be with you”). Jesus-followers see the universe as lover. God is so interested in the created world that s/he became incarnate, so interested in humans that Jesus died for us. God enables us to be companions and fellow workers by meeting us Spirit to spirit. The context of our meeting is love; the ultimate goal of meditation is love, even when it is apophatic.

Our communion with God in prayer is, in itself, resistance to the forces that attempt to usurp God’s proper place in the world and on our lives. If you are alone in solitude with God, that relationship has an impact, even if you don’t take much action as a result. It is likely we will take action, however,  since our contemplation regularly gives us our direction and stokes our courage to act. Contemplation allows us to fight evil that arises in us and outside us. We each do this in our own way, but in similar fashion. One’s experience of the world of the Spirit depends on their psychology, which can be understood and developed, and on their world view, which can change. So contemplation is unique to each one who practices, but is unified in the One who meets each of us where we are beginning today.

The kataphatic prayer of imagination

On Saturday, we offered two suggestions for praying in a more “kataphatic” way, making full use of symbols, dreams and the art of imagination.  One way to experience inner meaning is meditating on your inner experiences: coming to silence, going back into the images of your dreams and fantasies, first consciously, then allowing them to go as they will. We noted that most of our spiritual guidance comes from our conscious experience, which is the tip of the iceberg of us. We were trying to learn more about how to receive direction from our inner experience of what is normally unconscious. Many people avoid this territory because it seems vast and dark. But we are not to be absorbed into it, we are to encounter love in it. We have a basic direction for our contemplation – Jesus describes God as the loving father of a returning prodigal. It is clear who is the object of our prayer and who we are.

God’s characterSo our conscious minds can lead us and our unconscious, our dreams can lead us. When people describe the unconscious experience it is as varied as they are. But for everyone, using our imaginations to explore our inner depths starts with two simple things: 1) one must be convinced that thinking and feeling in images is important, 2) one must spend enough time to break away from the concerns of the waking realm. We explored this path in two ways last Saturday. I thought you might like some of the teaching to encourage your journey through Lent.

Ignatius and praying the Bible. 

Try Ignatius of Loyola‘s approach to praying the Bible through imagination and entering into a deeper connection with God as a result.

Matthew 19:13-15 – Jesus and the children

Allow twenty to thirty minutes for the exercise.

  1. As the passage is read for the first time, try to hear it as if it is fresh and new—as if you are hearing it for the first time. Read Mt. 19:13-15 slowly
  2. As the passage is read for the second time, enter in to the event Place yourself as a child in the scene as it is read. Read passage again in a slow, meditative manner
  3. Answer the following questions: How do you feel as you walked through the crowd? Are you warm? Do you feel a breeze? Can you feel the hand of your parent or adult as you walk toward Jesus? What do you hear? Birds? Animal sounds? The voice of Jesus? The disciples trying to send you away? What do you smell? Is it a dusty day? Can you smell the animals? The body odor of the crowd? What do you see? Can you see the legs of the people in front of you? Can you see Jesus? The other children?
  4. Go to Jesus and hear him tell the disciples that he wants to be with you
  5. Climb up in the lap of Jesus or sit beside him and let him embrace you
  6. Experience the deep love that is offered to you a. Let it wash over you and rest in the places that you are experiencing some type of emotional pain Let it be a balm to the rejection or abandonment that you have experienced Let it be to you the love that you desire, yet have never experienced to this extreme. Rest in that love for a while
  7. If you want to talk with Jesus, you may
  8. Otherwise, just sit and let Jesus embrace you.

Morton Kelsey and the prayer of waking dreams

Try Morton’s Kelsey’s explanation of imaging prayer.

In The Other Side of Silence (and elsewhere), Morton Kelsey pointed out that when we are still, images will appear naturally, as they do in our dreams. There is a vast, mostly unexplored territory in our unconscious, that impacts us deeply. It is a territory where God is much needed and very available. We can follow the revelations in our literal dreams or our waking dreams, listen to them, and find meaning in what they reveal about our deep places where God is relating to us Spirit to spirit. On the way to being quiet, we will need to dismiss many distractions. But we can recognize deeper images that arise from a place where we are communing with God.

Prayer breaks the habit of always making the best deal.

A life in the Spirit, , , , ,

A mother’s two-year-old wakes up at five when she was painting until midnight. How does she get out of bed and go love the little bundle of trouble instead of saying, “Why can’t he just wait until I’m rested?” Maybe, “I painted his room, why won’t he stay asleep?” Irrational, but almost automatic — I never get the deal I want, but I want it.

How do we learn to love when we’d rather make a deal?

I mean, how do we end up like Jesus — even like Jesus dying for us on the cross? Paul says Jesus was not only looking out for his own interests, but the interests of others — that was his attitude, his mindset, his way. How do I go His way instead of using my “superpowers” to get what I deserve?

What were the Lord’s “interests?” I know I will get up and care for the toddler, but what about my interests? Are they just not important until he is eighteen? In the Lord’s case, it was joy to complete his work and be his true self—that interested him. There was joy set before him as he returned to the dimension where he was free from sin and death—that’s something I can look forward to. But I am not Jesus. I don’t think we have the same interests as Jesus, specifically. But it is good to know that self-giving love does not ignore my interests. Jesus had interests, he was just “not only” looking out for them. He was not giving and always waiting for the other half of the deal to be realized — I give you give, I love you, you love me, I paint your bedroom, you are grateful and stay asleep, I do the right thing, and my life works out reciprocally.

Perhaps we are not THAT self-interested all the time. I think you realize the child is going to grow up. Don’t we all think a parent’s love is innately valuable, even if it is not valued this very moment? Even if I am not rewarded, I think it is rewarding to love my kids when they are displeasing. I can go with that.

But I really want to make a deal, not be good. I want to say, “Stay in bed until at least 7” and have that stick. I want to say, “Can’t you see I am painting your bedroom?” and have that be recognized. Can’t I ever love and be effectively loved in return?

I have experienced the kids, but I also have my own present troubles.

Lately I experienced the Brethren in Christ General Conference in Florida. I put my whole adult life into being a committed part of this denomination and worked to reflect its character and history in Circle of Hope. When I first joined up, many leaders called it a “brotherhood” and would not use the term “denomination” — even though their preferred term was sexist, it was still great. Now that it is being reformed into a new denomination without that character and free of its history, I have to decide how to love. The temptation is to dwell on: “Can’t I get what I wanted? Don’t we have an implicit deal? I put a lot into this and THIS is what I get?” You probably relate to that feeling.

The whole country is in turmoil right now because so-called black lives don’t matter as much as so-called white lives. I am sick of the bad deal enforced by the militarized police on a whole segment of society! A police officer killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop outside St. Paul not long ago. The deceased apparently had the “right to carry” that is so well-protected by the government. He apparently told the office that he had a gun. The officer apparently wanted ID. When he reached for his wallet for ID he was told to stop. He apparently did not stop fast enough and was shot. It is all on a Facebook livestream. Shouldn’t people expect the police to love them? They are all in uniform; can’t I expect them to uniformly serve and protect? Shouldn’t the police have a self-giving love that can do better than give orders, then enforce their bargain with a weapon? Wouldn’t a policeman rather die than kill someone? About 15% reportedly would. I’m in the street demanding a better deal — “I pay taxes, I vote, I follow the laws, now stop harassing and killing people!”

As I thought of all these things I realized I needed to pray.

For one thing, I need to pray so I can clear my mind and remember the attitude Jesus has when it comes to me. After all, I, in my own way, have often gotten up too early and screamed irrationally out of my need and I was also hard to comfort; but we got there. I was offered change and I wanted the “justice” of never needing to lose what I had “earned.” I pulled my gun and he did not kill me.

I need to pray every day so I can remember that I don’t really have the deal I want and my incessant grasping for it is not really getting me anywhere. I am legitimately needy. What I want is not wrong. I need comfort, reassurance, safety, etc. etc. It is no surprise I try to take matters into my own hands out of desperation: get angry, sulk, withdraw, shoot, disobey. People have often not wanted to make a deal with me because I don’t give what they want because I am too busy desperately getting what I want. If I don’t pray, things will just keep going as badly as they are going.

The one who breaks the deadly cycle is Jesus. He did it on the cross. He does it when I pray. When I pray I don’t just get a better idea about how to act, I receive the inspiration (the in-Spirit-ation) and power to love like He does; the Lord’s own Spirit becomes one with mine and we are back doing what Jesus does best, even when my mother or the memory of her is absent and I feel fundamentally in need of a better deal, even when my intimates don’t come through, even when my hard work does not pay off, even when the country is against me.

So for the joy set before me and the joy of being my true self in a living relationship with God, I also endure my crosses. The bonus is, I manage to attach a lot better too when I am loving those needy people around me. I actually am less desperate. When that baby in the picture above realizes he is in mother’s arms, he’ll probably snuggle in, rest, connect, and take that big breath one does after they have cried their lungs out. My prayer is often like that; I have learned to look forward to the trusting moment when I give up, connect with God and realize I already have the best deal I could ever get.

Daesh, Davos and the vulnerability of prayer

The Mission, , ,

Satellite images provided by DigitalGlobe, taken on 31 March 2011 and 28 September 2014 showing the site of St Elijah's Monastery, or Deir Mar Elia, on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq

I have been around the world visiting the thin places where faith has been practiced over the centuries.  So I was especially moved last week when I learned that  Daesh (also known as ISIL/ISIS) blew up the oldest monastery in Iraq last year — aerial photographs finally discovered the fact.

Combined with a plea for prayer for Orisha last week, where one of the Brethren in Christ  church planters was killed, this further news of persecuted Christians was sobering.  It sent me to prayer. But not before it sent me searching for the justification Daesh undoubtedly has for erasing history.  I found it.

Daesh erases history for a reason

The caliphate builders justify the destruction of cultural heritage sites by following a stream of Islam called Salafism which places great importance on establishing tawhid (monotheism), and eliminating  shirk  (polytheism). The group’s actions are not mindless vandalism; there is an ideological underpinning to the destruction. Daesh views its actions in sites like Palmyra and Nimrud as being in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Beyond the ideological aspects of the destruction, there are other, practical reasons to destroy historic sites. Daesh likes to grab world attention, terrorizing people and so finding recruits. The destruction also wipes the territorial slate clean, leaving no traces of any previous culture or civilization so they can start fresh, forge their own identity and leave their own mark on history. Dealing in looted antiquities also helps finance their war.

No one writing news seems to be able to understand why these people blow up historical and holy  sites, even when the ideological and practical reasons are listed.

  1. The acts seem so extreme. But to one acquainted with the wars of the prophet Mohammed, these radical Islamists could also seem like Christians hearkening back to the early church. They want to be holy. They want to be as effective as Mohammed was.
  2. The acts seem barbaric. But to young men who have been colonized by Westerners, subject to authoritarian rulers, and bombed to bits by the United States, preserving the symbols of foreign influences could feel like curating their slavery.
  3. The acts seem like a gang is on a rampage. But they have a goal in mind and intend to accomplish it. They are much more organized than a gang, and have been surprisingly successful in the face of the enormous technical superiority of the forces against them.

Even when forced to admire them, I am sad about the people and places destroyed by their hate and merciless quest for power. Like the Khmer Rouge and the LRA, and many other armies in my lifetime, they are the scourge that comes when the world is flooded with weapons and the great powers practice the domination of unshared wealth and overwhelming force.

Preventing Future Shocks: Singer, Sorrell, Zhu, RogoffI’m not trying to justify them. Even though I can show plenty of examples when so-called Christians did the same thing they are doing. The fact that other people have been cruel does not justify cruelty. Seeking vengeance or some notion of equity by force perpetuates the endless cycle that has sent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians into refugee camps! Westerners shake their heads and wonder why Daesh is so intolerant. Meanwhile they ignore the powerful people who met in Davos last week to maintain the system that exploits the recruits who join jihadists.

The lessons and losses drive me to prayer

All these lessons give me some understanding for my fears and sadness. But they don’t comfort me too much when the darkness drives my Indian brothers and sisters into the jungle and Daesh blows up the history of the church where it is already so persecuted. I don’t know how Jesus is going to make a difference in the middle of it. But the lessons and the losses drive me to pray. One reason I wrote this short piece about what troubles me is to tell you about how they have inspired me to pray.

I realized not long ago that I shared a trait in prayer that mirrors a reaction other Americans have to their fears: build a wall and try to act normal inside it. Alternatively, I have been sensing God moving me to become more vulnerable in prayer and to welcome people into the safe place I share with God. The practice has expanded my love, I think. Daesh, the murderers of the Indian evangelist, the 1% feasting in Davos are also the beloved of God.

I have enough trouble just letting my loved ones “bother” my contemplation! Then I remember Jesus dying at the hands of evil doers, God submitting to the cruelty through which the world is saved. And I am drawn, even though it feels frightening, to open my heart and hope to embrace the troubles and the troublemakers. While they were yet sinners, Christ died for them. So far, that renewed prayer seems to soften my heart to embrace the troubles right in front of me too. I need to trust Jesus, the safe place maker rather than merely trust the safe place.

Praying with Jesus in the weeds

A life in the Spirit, Leadership,

The parable of the weeds among the wheat could be a parable about prayer. Jesus is wheat among all us weedy humans. At the end of his days, he is lifted up on the cross and prays his final prayers among the weediest of the tares who are crucifying him. Those people, sown by the enemy, are doing their best to choke out the wheat and take over God’s field for themselves. The Lord’s prayers from the cross are the basic prayers we have to pray to endure, to end up giving off the beautiful aroma of Christ and not the ugly scent of mere morality or ambivalence.

Try them.

Face your feeling of being alone.

And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). (Mark 15:34)

The weeds of loneliness can choke out the wheat of connecting with God. That is probably enough said for most of us. Especially if you don’t feel connected to people, or you are fearfully clinging to someone right now, you may have pulled up the wheat of your faith a long time ago to get out the tares of loneliness.

We need love. We will take any facsimile. The real thing starts with connecting with God, when prayer has turned our loneliness to solitude. Ask the question, like Jesus prayed, about why you feel disconnected. Embrace the need to stay on the cross of your fears until resurrection comes. That is praying in the weeds.

Get to the place where you can forgive.

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. (Luke 23:33-34)

The weeds of self-serving justice and retribution can choke out the wheat of forgiveness. The people of Mother Immanuel in Charleston took their opportunity to be public Christians when the spotlights turned on their tragedy a few months ago. It was beautiful morality and they smelled good. You might step up too. I hope you never have to. It is usually less in the big places and more in the small that we are likely to harbor hate – the memories of past hurts and slights, the wounds that get reopened when people do “that thing” that gets us, the transfer of our neediness on to causes that purport to be about justice but are really about us.

That’s when we are praying in the weeds. The enemy sows tares hoping you will pull up your confidence and enter the endless cycle of power-grabbing, undermining others and protecting self-interest. We need to roll down the streets praying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Does that prayer come to mind when you feel like you are getting killed? getting doored? getting dissed? getting used? If it does, that’s praying in the weeds.

Come to the end of your life, the end of each day trusting the Lord

 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:46)

That prayer was the beginning of the end for the spiritual weeds sown by the master’s enemy and the beginning of forever for the wheat planted by his servants. Likewise, when we pray that prayer, it is the beginning of our day or our moment that puts to death the influence of ugly instincts that threaten to take over our spiritual field. It is a prayer that begins where we want to end: in the hands of God.

Last week we planted this prayer at the future police headquarters, right in the middle of territory that has been seeded with tares for a long time. “Into your hands,” we prayed, “we commit this police building, we commit the police, and we commit all the people who would like to bring their weediness right into this building and undermine peace.”

Lots of people had problems with the implicit demand that all of us do this. They were afraid they would be on the outs with their friends or relatives that see praying for the police as an act of criticism. Or I think some thought prayer was too wimpy a response because they cannot forgive anything that has happened in this country. Or maybe they didn’t believe much in prayer because they don’t really trust God.

 

But I think praying right there in the weeds made us beautiful and gave us the aroma of Christ. We didn’t just stay living with death until we smelled like it. Jesus is on the cross with the death and sin of the world on him. His suffering makes him beautiful. He is praying in the weeds. His groaning prayers are just the painful kind of prayers we need to pray in order to get to our own resurrection. In the weeds we pray for connection and reconciliation and hope and we are also lifted up. We also suffer the tares and bring connection, reconciliation and hope.

People who pray in the weeds, like Jesus prays from the cross, end up smelling like Christ. They don’t have to fight in a way that is as ugly as the world. They have a beautiful morality that people experience whenever they show up, having just come from prayer, having just realized, again, that they are one with Christ and Christ is one with them.

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Stand against the invisible hand: share and pray

Doing Theology, , ,

When capitalism organizes your money, it undermines community. Worse, when capitalism channels your desire it warps prayer. The main things our church may be lacking the most right now are money and prayer. There is a good, macro reason for that lack which we might not even notice: we are in the grip of the invisible hand.

Let me say right off the top, in case you don’t read too much further:

1) We cannot sustain community without sharing money. Practically, we have made commitments as a group that require money, of course. But more profoundly, if you opt out of contributing to the whole you diminish it, even mock it, name it unworthy. You put a hole in our mutuality. Give ten dollars or a tithe, but stay in the game with us. We could lose the game.

2) We cannot keep praying if we let the Jesus-free economy deform our desire. Practically, if the consumption-driven economy drives you, you have another god. If you have stopped praying because, in reality,  your “needs” are met by your place in the economy and your desires are driven by the market, you look like a foreigner in the Kingdom of God. Pray one minute or make praying your vocation, but connect with the Spirit. You could die. And the church could die with you.

What is capitalism again?

socialists trying to thwart the invisible handCapitalism was identified in the 1700’s by the likes of Adam Smith and others as an economic reality in which the “market” is not something that is extra to your life, it is in the center of your life. For centuries, markets were places where you could go trade for something you could not produce yourself. Now markets are the only means you can obtain anything. We always hear about the “free” market, which means the market, as an abstraction, aspires to be free from external constraints and obstacles. By this time, not only is the market central to everything, but everything is also subject to the rules of the market. The market is free, but we cannot be free from the market.

There are many schools of economics. The one that has been steering us since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, followed up by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, advocates the complete marketization of life. It is all for overcoming obstacles and inefficiencies brought on by the so-called “welfare state” and increasing the integration of the globe into one market. This school is, in a sense, “anti-government” since governments interfere with the invisible hand. But its proponents are usually for small, lean governments that have strong militaries to face threats to the market.

Did you miss this debate? While you were growing up, the invisible hand of capitalism firmly took over your territory. It is global and it has armies. For instance, during the recent downturn, the 1% we talk about took advantage of their opening to gain world domination; now a huge percentage of global wealth is in their hands. The triumph of the invisible hand — a reality most of us don’t even recognize — might be why we don’t share like we could and why we might even be discouraged in our prayer. Yet the church needs sharing and praying more than ever if it is not going to be ground down even more by this powerful force.

We cannot sustain community without sharing money.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

In God’s economy, sharing is motivated by the desire to create community because that is elemental to God’s desire. The work of the cross joins us to Christ as his body. Former motivations from the world system that drove us are healed. We are freed from self-absorption, obsession with our own interests, and fear of scarcity — our desire is turned outward in humble vulnerability and generous service to and with others. Jesus demonstrated that love as God shared life with us, even to the point of death. That’s the basis of the new economy in Christ — unless it is not.

invisible hand dialogue between pawns and kingsA good half of us have a terrible time sharing because we are still consuming church like a product and are still too afraid of our own present or prospective poverty to share. Lack of sharing kills the church. It is not so much that the church needs a lot of money to survive. We can survive as the church at all sorts of levels. What is important is this: when we don’t share, we do not subvert the anti-sharing of capitalism and we worship the invisible hand by default. We become individual marketers in competition for scarce resources; we become individualized products selling ourselves daily. We become mere pawns in the 1%’s market pretending that our freedom to buy a new gadget or buy the monetized thoughts of the internet is actual choice.

We cannot keep praying if we let the Jesus-free economy deform our desire.

You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God (James 4:2).

All economies are based on desire. Capitalism has mastered the art of making everything about desire, what we want and don’t have. Long ago, James rightly prophesied that such misplaced desire would cause nothing but conflict. The recent, ongoing U.S. wars have proven James right in a large way. They are all about our desire for revenge, desire to be protected and our desire for oil and our “way of life,” aren’t they? Did anyone ask God about that? “Asking God” does not mean getting God to give us what we can’t get in the economy. It means being part of a new economy based on God’s generosity, being in full communion with the one true God and putting the invisible hand in its place.

danceMany of us have a secret. We stopped praying long ago because we believe the bible of capitalism when it says that education and hard work will get us what we desire. We don’t have time to pray because we are at work or at school. Our schedule barely leaves time for our families, much less some alternative economy. We are content to have a privatized faith, a leisure time faith that we visit a couple of times a month at the Sunday meeting. Our desire is deformed. It is so conformed to the way the world is post-Reagan that we believe it when people say it has always been this way, only now it is better.

I get a sinking feeling some days that we are going to lose the battle. As alternative as our church is, as radical as some of us are, as amazing as our thinking and acting really are, the forces sometimes seem stronger. The post-9/11 generation is so scared. The institutions are so much bigger than they were before the attack and before years of warfare, homeland security and recession. Are we still a circle of hope? — or is that just a brand name, now? If we don’t share and we don’t pray, if we don’t do what the church really needs right now, what are we?

God rescues me when I am sinking in such thinking, just like he pulled Peter from the sea that time. Paul also said in Romans 5: Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. And James also said in James 4: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Whether we share and pray or not, God’s grace is greater. That grace has made us and will keep drawing us toward home.

We need spiritual resources

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, , , , ,

What will you do when you get to the end of yourself? In Frozen, the main character goes a typical route. First, she withdraws in order to save everyone from having to deal with her and then enjoys the perverse freedom of being alone to be fully herself without any responsibilities.

Her sister goes another route. She teams up with bad people and good, but their combined strength saves the day.

What will you do when you get to the end of yourself? Do you typically go for autonomy? Or do you react by turning to the community? Most of us try both. Sadly, they both supply about equally dissatisfying results.

There is a third, spiritual way

We need what seems like a “third” way to us. We need spiritual resources, not just personal or communal resources. Think of the pursuit of spiritual resources as “paradigm shift.” If you think you have to solve it yourself, or if you think you have to solve it with all these people because, in either case, those options are all you’ve got, then think again.

In Jesus, you have God coming alongside to give you resources beyond what you have inside or at your fingertips. Beyond your ordinary awareness or even your spiritual awareness, is strength from the living God. When we have become a wound or we are being wounded and we can’t stop it, where do we go? Dig deeper? Connect closer? Those are not the worst ideas unless that’s all you think there is to do. Because there is more.

Jesus shows the way

Jesus-in-Gethsemane

In the famous scene of Jesus praying in the garden the night before his crucifixion, Jesus came back from praying alone to find his community. It says in Luke: “When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ he asked them. ‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’”

Luke is generous to say that the disciples are “exhausted from sorrow.” It is also likely that they had not learned to turn to prayer when they are exhausted or exasperated or confronted with their typical temptations. They came to the end of themselves and conked out.

Many of us have a habit of falling asleep right when we need to pray. Many of us come to the end of ourselves and purposely put ourselves to sleep with some drug or media. Frozen has anesthetized millions, for instance. When Jesus is crucified the next day he demonstrates how he has accessed resources beyond his personal strength or the power of his community. When he receives the wounds of the world, he cries out, “Father forgive them.”

Prayer is our access point to life

What do you cry out? The other day when I was praying, I again realized I have a few places in my daily life that provide regular temptations. I have unhealed wounds that are easily injured, typical exasperation points, and things that make me want to take a long nap somehow. I have some things I often cry out, but I need to follow Jesus and access resources beyond myself rather than just sitting at the end of my meager capacity feeling alone and resenting my meager community. What are those places for you? A few of mine are:

  • Leaders who are out for themselves and do not listen, do not serve, do not know.
  • Cars parked in bike lanes.
  • Parents abusing their children because they are at the end of themselves.
  • Being falsely accused by customer service people.
  • When the power of my convictions is eroded by the apathy of my colleagues.

Like Jesus, we are also dealing with the wounds of the world. We are exhausted and exasperated. I think Jesus is sometimes frustrated with us, too, because we prefer sleep to prayer.

But I also think Jesus looks on us fondly even when he is frustrated because he knows we are mostly dust in our own eyes. He is calling attention to that place deep within us that we can access by prayer. We have access to spiritual resources beyond ourselves and our communities. Our perverted instincts might tell us otherwise, so it is going to be a battle to get healed — some things will have to die. But in the midst of that battle, amazing capacity is gained and we give birth to the wonders of God with us.

The three doorways of contemplative prayer

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , ,

We often talk about “contemplative prayer.” How is that done? Let me try to teach in five minutes what you can learn in five years.

To begin, we often start by becoming still and aware with what we call “breath prayer.” Seekers practice breath prayer as a basic skill for being quiet enough to pray. If you consciously keep filling your lungs with air and deliberately release it slowly, you will become calm. If you imagine that you are breathing in something worth receiving and breathing out something that needs releasing, that adds to the prayer. Breath prayer is a basis for what Martin Laird calls the three doorways of contemplative prayer in his book Into the Silent Lands.

You can focus your practice of contemplative prayer on an old idea for centering it: a prayer word or phrase. Many people use what is called the “Jesus prayer” as their phrase. One variation of this prayer is: Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. I use this prayer almost every day in my practice. It doesn’t matter what word you choose. You could use, “I wait on you in silence,” or, “I no longer live but Christ lives in me.” The content of the prayer is nice, but the goal is to use the good phrase you choose as a touch stone for becoming still and aware in the silence. The goal is to let go of all other concerns and recollect yourself. When you become aware that your attention has been stolen, gently return your attention to the prayer word or phrase so you can stay in the moment with God.

Practice that for a moment using a phrase that is great for Holy Week: “I no longer live but Christ lives in me.”

contemplative stillness

As you practiced, you may or may not have felt something. Sometimes awareness can feel like a bodily sensation — a tingle or a warmth, or a soul sensation of peace. Hopefully you felt rest and a sense that there was something beyond your normal awareness. Prayer is not always sensate, but it makes an impact in places we experience later. We can see the results of contemplative prayer in ongoing awareness of God’s presence throughout our day, in a lessening of anxiety over time and in a peace that pervades territories where it was not evident before. When we open our hearts and minds to God’s presence we gain insight and feel favor by forming a personal relationship with God. In the process of deepening our relationship with God, coming with a lack of expectation usually leads to better feelings than searching for what we want or for what we think we ought to be experiencing.

1) The first doorway to enter in contemplative prayer begins when you choose a prayer word and stick with it until you don’t need it anymore.

This practice helps us deal with the fidgety and flighty aspects of our being.

The prayer word or phrase is like a vaccination. A small dose of the disease: words, is introduced to the body to call forth the antibodies that will ward off the full disease: the preoccupation with our inner dialogue and invasion by our huge collection of data. Our overactive minds are like a disease infecting the silence where we meet with God Spirit to spirit. A good mind is great for teaching a class, but it obscures the deeper ground of being and leaves us with the sense that we are separate from God and others. We end up getting our sense of self from pasted-together bits and pieces of mental process rather than from relating to God. The vaccine of the prayer word detaches us from our inner chaos and helps us let go of our clever minds. But we’ve got to practice before this way of prayer is effective. It is like learning to play the piano or developing some other skill.

Jesus son of God have mercy on me is the phrase to which I return when I notice thoughts are invading my stillness and distracting my attention from yearning for God’s presence.

2) The second doorway is becoming one with the prayer word.

When you get started with this kind of prayer it can be like hitting a brick wall. Repeating your prayer word or phrase can take quite a bit of mental effort. The more we practice, the more our contemplation becomes simple awareness instead of activity. We start to feel the benefits of calmness. We start learning not to control everything, but to go with God. Life and wisdom are not found in trying to control the wind, but in hoisting our sails to move with the Spirit in the present moment. This praying is hoisting sails.

The second doorway is deeper. The first doorway was like a refuge for our weary, anxious souls. The second is a matter of having our sights lifted to what comes after we are not so fidgety. We begin to see the things about ourselves that were previously out of our perception. Our therapist often does beginning soul work like this too. There is kind of an unloading of the unconscious. You can see how rich a place this might be, noticing and letting go of the usual inner videos and audios that dominate our internal landscape. Eventually they lose their power to control us. When some people get to this place, maybe they stop using a prayer word altogether. They can just sink into awareness without using it so much.

3) The third doorway is being present in awareness itself

This sounds kind of spacey, and it is. We have gotten though the doorway into stillness. And we have entered into deeper awareness of things in us that we have let go into God’s hands. Now we are invited into a shift from recognizing thoughts to recognizing how we recognize. We are simply aware. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waters (Ps 42). We become aware of the deafening silence of earth and the new sound beyond sounds of knowing God. We hear what Elijah named “the still small voice.” In this home we can also experience the I am of being ourselves. We enjoy the self-forgetful communion with God for which we are created, and it transforms us and enlivens us.

I feel more at peace just talking about this practice which is so dear to me! I have been delighted to see its results in so many other people. They no longer live in their old, dominated selves, but Christ lives in them and they live in Christ.

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Prayer: walk by faith, not by sight.

A life in the Spirit, , , ,

“Walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). We often think of this as waiting for God to do something in the future that we would not normally expect — “I am moving ahead, hoping for the best. I am walking by faith, not by sight.” That is good.

Faithing

SONY DSC

When we practice the prayer of contemplation, “Walk by faith, not by sight” is something more immediate. It is about becoming aware of the unknown things God is doing in the present moment. Prayer amounts to faithing, walking into what’s happening with faith as a sense guiding us,not just seeing and reacting with our physical senses. God is with us, right now; prayer helps us be with God right now.

When I say “contemplative prayer” you might think of mindfulness techniques that people are teaching to jr. highers to help them settle down. That’s a beginning, but that is not the prayer of contemplation. The prayer of contemplation includes the techniques for reducing anxiety, but it is more. Contemplative prayer, and any spiritual discipline, disposes us to allow something to take place. We are not doing something to get a result; we are not making something happen, necessarily. We are doing something to allow communion with God to be our condition.

It is like this: A gardener does not actually grow plants. She practices skills that facilitate growth that is beyond her control. Prayer is like that. A sailor does not produce the necessary wind to move the boat. He harnesses the gift of wind by exercising skills that can get him home. Prayer is like that.

Basic contemplative prayer

The basic skill of contemplative prayer that facilitates and harnesses is inner silence. There are two practices within this skill set that are very important: stillness and awareness. When we attempt to be silent, we need to consider how to face the inner noise with which we struggle. We do many noisy things when we pray, too; we are embodied spirits, after all. But at the center of us is the silent place where God is simply giving himself to us and we are communing spirit to Spirit. We long to carry this silence with us in the midst of the noisy world and be content that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. We want to be at home. One of the early teachers of the church said in this center we are constantly being called home, away from the noise that is around us to the joys that are silent. He said, “Why do we rush about looking for God who is here at home with us, if all we want is to be with him?”

Martin Laird, a teacher from Villanova who wrote a book called Into the Silent Lands, tells a story about a prisoner who was accustomed to cutting himself or burning himself so that his inner pain would be in a different place — on the outside of him. This suffering man came upon some people whose mission was to teach prisoners to pray and turn their prison cells into monastic cells. The prisoner learned from them and after several weeks of meditating twice a day he said, “I just want you to know that after only four weeks of meditating half an hour in the morning and night, the pain is not so bad, and for the first time in my life, I can see a tiny spark of something within myself I can like.” That is the home we are talking about.

rittenhouse square parkOur sense of separation from God is often a matter of our broken perception. We can’t feel God. We have an idea of what we should feel and we don’t feel that. Contemplative prayer is the place we let go our perceptions and become aware of God with us, as the scripture guides us:

  •  My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him (Psalm 62:5).
  • I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you (Jesus in John 14:20).
  • I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me (Galatians 3:20).

From the perspective of the created order we are separate from God. But from the perspective of being aware, we see Christ when we look inside. When we pray, we are not merely becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings (although that is good!), we are learning to be aware of God and to be with God who is with us.

Retraining the heart

It is like this: A man was taking his dog to a field where the animal could run and he ran into another man walking four dogs. They got to the open field and let their dogs go so they could enjoy running around in a big free space. But one of the new friend’s dogs was off to the side running is relatively tight circles and did not join in with the other dogs. The man asked his new friend, “What’s with your dog?” He gave him an explanation. “Before I got this dog, he had spent years living in a cage. He was used to getting all his exercise, just as you see. He has the field, but he is trained for the cage.” I did not see this dog do this personally, so I can’t prove to you that dogs do this, but I do know myself and I have seen many of you who are reading this. We have the wide open field of grace and freedom to romp in but we run in the contours of our former cage. The prayer of contemplation is retraining our hearts to roam the wide open spaces of eternity freely.

  • My heart is like a bird that has escaped from the snare of the fowler (Psalm 123:7).

Our minds tend to run in the obsessive tight circles of our mental cage. We believe we are separate from God, and we were. So now we need to learn something else. I heard something shocking from a friend not long ago. When he was a child his father sang a little ditty that he thought was funny: “Charlie Wilkins is no good. Let’s chop him up like so much wood.” I know this little boy as an old man and you can still see that putrid song playing in his head. Just like that, we may believe we are condemned by God. So now we need to learn freedom. Prayer is the training ground.

When we think about things, we have a cage of thoughts that guide us. Contemplative prayer helps us go beyond them and enter into the silence where we don’t merely think about things, we commune with God. We concentrate attention in our heart to the place of knowing, the place of awareness that is not full of the cacophony of our mind and surroundings but is full of God. It seems like we are just sitting there doing nothing, when we pray and that is exactly right and exactly good. In that nothing of ourselves and our surroundings we enter the silent land of our true being with God.

Next time I will tell you more about how this is done. But, like I said, we don’t need to perfect techniques to pray as much as we need to access the skills that are built in to our beings by our loving Father. Be silent and turn your heart to God whether you think you know what you are doing or not. Take a step of walking by faith, not by sight. You’ll have a good time with God.

[Another version of this post]

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The Miracle Toy

Fiction, Mostly the arts, , ,

Members of our family have given gifts of Christmas stories over the years. I thought you might enjoy mine from last year. Merry Christmas!

Grandpa was getting old, so if you wanted to avoid taking a nap and you wanted to do things you weren’t supposed to do with him, it often meant that you needed to sit still and not squirm too much for long periods. He told stories a lot and sometimes he seemed to forget what he was talking about and you needed to help him stay on track. That is some of what the boy knew. He liked grandpa and liked his stories too.

One day before Christmas the boy and Grandpa were sitting by the sparkling tree in his house. Grandma was gone somewhere, so grandpa had just finished blowing some smoke rings with the cigar he had been smoking in the house, which the boy knew grandma forbid him to do.

The boy looked at the tree and said, “I wonder what is in my present. I can’t wait to find out.”

Grandpa said, “What did you pray for?”

The boy looked at him. He finally said, “Why would I pray for a present? I don’t think my dad even thinks I am supposed to do that. I’m not supposed to pray for selfish things.”

“Nonsense,” Grandpa said. “Your father doesn’t know everything.” The boy began to squirm a little and looked at the back door to see if Grandma was listening. But she was still gone. “You should pray about everything, whether you know what you are doing or not. The best prayers are probably the ones that seem the stupidest, since God knows you’re stupid.”

The boy looked at Grandpa to see if he was smiling. He was. But he also looked like he was thinking. He couldn’t decide if he needed to be insulted about being called stupid.

“I know about a boy who prayed for a Fort Apache set one Christmas.” Grandpa continued.

“What is a Fort Apache set?’ the boy asked.

“Well it was a long time ago that this happened. Maybe little boys have stopped praying since that time. But a long time ago Fort Apache sets were quite popular. So he prayed for it.”

“Why? What is it?” The boy sensed a story coming on.

fort apache“A long time ago, little boys, such as yourself, liked to replay the genocidal war between the United States government and the Native Americans.”

The boy had long been accustomed to not stopping a story to figure out what something like genocidal was all about. Grandpa didn’t talk down to kids, but he didn’t care too much about being understood, either.

“Fort Apache was a fort in Arizona. You know what a fort is, right? It is a fortified camp where soldiers put up a big fence to keep out the people who scare them. They put all their guns and equipment in their fort so nobody can get it. Fort Apache was in the Apache Indian territory. You know about Apaches I hope. I suppose that your school is teaching you about leprechauns or something instead of Apaches.” And Grandpa turned toward him.

It was true. He had heard about leprechauns and had no idea about Apaches.

“I thought as much. In the 1870s, that’s about three grandpas ago, the Apache Indians were the tough Indians in Arizona. Ever heard someone say, ‘Geronimo!’? Geronimo was a Chiricahua Apache Indian and he was a tough leader. If anyone ever attacks this house, you might have to be like Geronimo.”

The boy just looked at Grandpa chewing on the end of his put-out cigar, staring into space. He knew that he could not tell his mother that someone was going to attack the house.

“Well, a long time ago when this little boy prayed for a Fort Apache set, playing out the war between the United States and the Apaches was pretty popular. You could get this toy set in a big box. The set had a fort you could put together. There were little soldiers that were blue and little Indians that were brown. Sometimes your dog got a hold of them and chewed their heads off so you had to be careful. You could set up the thing in your back yard and it would be just like Arizona. You could build mountains out of rocks for the Indians to hide in. The soldiers could attack from their fort. Boys made up rules about how the game of war could be played and they got in fights over that. It was a lot of fun.”

“So you knew a boy who had this toy?”

“You better believe I knew him. Getting that toy was a very big deal to this kid when he was just about your age.”

“Why would a toy be such a big deal? I have lots of toys.”

“Well this kid hardly had any toys. He used to make toys out of old socks. One time he stole a sock out of his dad’s sock drawer to make a toy and he got caught. His dad gave him a spanking right on his butt.”

“My Dad never spanks me.“

“Well don’t steal his socks.”

“What toy could someone make with a sock?” He knew he was delaying the story and it needed to get done before grandma got back, but he just couldn’t figure it out.

“There are a lot of things you can make with a sock. If you only have one stuffed bear and you need two for a game, a sock stuffed with newspaper or your sister’s pajama top can be turned into something. But mostly this boy filled socks with dirt and hit people with them. You probably won’t want to do that.”

The boy looked at Grandpa to see if he was smiling. He was chewing.

“Yes, that Fort Apache set was a good toy. The boy saw it in some advertisement that his mother wished he hadn’t seen, since mostly she just had money for beans and not for expensive toys. “

“Beans?!”

“All they ever ate was beans. And I don’t mean green beans. I mean those pasty beans that look like your kidney — a big pot of them simmering on the stove, filling up the house with a nasty smell unless there was bacon in them. But bacon was expensive. I am going to get grandma to make you a pot of beans and see if you like them. No one eats beans these days, so they are like a delicacy.”

He didn’t know what a delicacy or a genocidal was, but the words were certainly going into a sentence, later in the day.

“I ‘m telling you that this boy saw that advertisement and he just could not get the Fort Apache set out of his mind. He told his mother that he wanted Santa Claus to bring it to him. He asked her to write a letter to Santa for him so it would happen. She told him that she wasn’t sure Santa would bring such a big present, since it was hard to get it down the chimney. The boy said that Jonny had an entire bike in his living room just last Christmas. She said, “We’ll see.” But the boy got the idea that his mom might not get this letter written. So he took the advice of his Sunday School teacher and he prayed about it.

Now, I have to tell you, the boy’s parents did not pray like your parents. When this boy’s family sat down to dinner no one paused to give God thanks, they just went after the food like it was going to get away from them if they didn’t grab it. Even the beans went fast. So the kid got the idea that he had better pray in secret. After his mom tucked him in, he got under his covers, as if someone couldn’t hear him if he was under his covers when he prayed. He didn’t know much about God at that point, so he just said it, “God, I want a Fort Apache set for Christmas.” And he kind of paused a minute to listen in case God said, “OK’ I’ll have it delivered.” God never said that, but every night he got under the covers and prayed that same prayer, even on Christmas Eve. He didn’t tell anyone he was talking to God because he got the idea that they might think he was a nut or something.

What do you think happened?”

The boy was not sure if that was a real question. He wanted to know the real answer. But there was a lot of confusing information floating around about bikes and Santa and parents and Indians and beans. So he just waited.

“He got up on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought. His parents always made him line up in size place with his two older brothers first and his sister behind him and they went into the living room while dad took their picture with a big movie camera. You’ve never seen a movie camera like that one. This is the old days before they had little cameras like your dad uses. This was a big old thing with big lights that got hot to the touch when you turned them on, so little guys like you had to make sure not to sit on them or they would burn their tush.

So he finally got into the living room on Christmas morning and went over to the chair that was designated for all his loot. Loot is what barbarians get when they sack your city, and it is the perfect application for what kids around here get trained to do during Christmas. Among his loot was…you guessed it: a Fort Apache set.

He got down on his knees in front it. Santa had set the whole thing up. He just looked at it for a while. He was truly amazed. He finally said, ‘Thank you, God.’ Then his parents were amazed.”

“So God gave him the Fort Apache set?” the boy practically shouted.

“Hey, that’s for you to decide. But get this. Later in the morning, his rich aunt got to the house with all his cousins to have the Christmas morning party they always had. She brought him a big present all wrapped up in paper and stuff. When it got to his turn to open up his present from his aunt and uncle, it was another Fort Apache set. After that, it was impossible to convince him that anything you prayed for wasn’t likely to happen. He ended up as a very good Christian, I’d say. That day basically got him going God’s direction. I suppose you will end up as some kind of Geronimo Christian yourself.”

Just then Grandma came in the back door. They went silent and turned to reverently watch her as she bustled through the kitchen and finally came into the living room bearing the candy they suspected she would have.

“Grandma, did you ever hear about the boy who got the Fort Apache set?” the boy asked.

“Oh yes. I know that boy very well,” she said. And she left to go put Grandpa’s spent cigar in the trash.