One of the benefits of moving is that you get to re-discover all of those things that you forgot about or lost over the years. Right?! Well, a couple months ago as I was unpacking the boxes from my office, I re-discovered a book by Anne Lamott titled Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.
I read it a few years ago and found it to be refreshingly honest conversation about the messiness of life, the complexities of our faith, and how the spiritual practice of prayer can bring that all of that together in the most beautiful and moving and profound ways. And so that is what we will be unpacking together today…what this spiritual practice of prayer means for each of us as we move through those moments of help, thanks, and wow.
In her prelude to the book, which she titles Prayer 101, Anne unpacks what prayer is and what prayer isn’t. Listen to what she writes and see if it resonates with any of your experiences…
“Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. [In fact,] the opposite may be true: We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape…Prayer is us reaching out to something having to do with the eternal, with vitality, intelligence, kindness, even when we are at our most utterly doomed and skeptical.
God can handle honesty, and prayer begins an honest conversation. My belief is that when you’re telling the truth, you’re close to God…So prayer is our sometimes-real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with the Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold.” (p. 5-7)
I so appreciate Anne’s description of prayer because it has nothing to do with flowery language and proper grammar – it’s not just for those who have gone to seminary – it’s not just for those who “have a way with words”. Prayer is the spiritual practice of showing up just as we are – to tell the truth about our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our failures – so that we can reconnect with the truth of who we are – beloved, chosen, and gifted children of God. It is that simple and that profound.
And the best part is that when we take that step, when we reach out, when we open ourselves up and get really real – we will discover a divine love that reassures us of our sacred worth.
Now, I don’t know about you but there are plenty of other voices in the world who are speaking very different messages into my life each day. Voices within and without who remind me of my failures and my shortcomings. Voices of comparison and competition. Voices that shout “not enough!” and “who do you think you are?”. And if I listen long enough, I find myself spiraling down that path of defeat and despair.
Prayer is what keeps me grounded in the truth of divine love and the sacred worth of all people – and that’s why it has become an essential part of my own daily practice.
Now, the first prayer that I ever learned was a bedtime prayer – “Before I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” And in my family, we would then pray for the people that we were thinking of that day. Well, even as a young girl I would pray for anyone and everyone that I had ever met – I didn’t want anyone to be left out.
So, my parents came up with a second part to that prayer that would help me pray for everyone and still get to bed on time – “God bless grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, my mom, my dad, my brother, and me. Amen.” It was so simple but saying that prayer each night reassured me that God was going to be with each of them and that God would help them whenever and wherever they needed it.
Anne Lamott says that “Help” is one of the greatest prayers that we can ever pray for ourselves or for one another because “Help” is where restoration begins – “Help” is where we let go and let God take over – “Help” is where we recognize that we don’t have it all figured out, but that we know the One who does.
And that’s one of the things that I find so moving about our time together on Sundays. Each week during the Communion liturgy we lift up our prayers for one another, our families, and our world. We lift up our struggles and we share our joys – and we stay in that moment for as long as we need to – and by doing that we remind one another that we are not in this alone. And what a gift that is to offer one another!
Now, the 2nd prayer that Anne mentions is simply, “Thanks.” It is one that comes naturally when things are going well, and the details of our lives are all falling into place. But it is also the prayer that we offer when we feel that rush of relief – when we can finally take a deep breath – when real danger is averted – when we emerge from something that felt so dark and so deep.
It takes incredible faith to be able to give “thanks” in those moments – to trust that the divine is working to make a way out of no way. But that is the hope that we have. That even in the messiest moments of life God is present, God is at work, and God is making all things new. And so, we can pray “thanks” for each day and each moment that we’re given.
The final prayer that Anne writes about is “Wow” – it’s the prayer that opens us up to the wonder of it all. The beauty of the world around us, the generosity of a stranger, the joy of a summer sunset, the fragility of life, the heartbreak of a tragedy.
Anne says, “‘Wow’ is about having one’s mind blown by the mesmerizing or the miraculous…Wow, because you are almost speechless, but not quite…When we are stunned to the place beyond words, we’re finally starting to get somewhere. It is so much more comfortable to think that we know what it all means, what to expect and how it all hangs together. When we are stunned to the place beyond words, when an aspect of life takes us away from being able to chip away at something until it’s down to a manageable size and then file it nicely away, when all we can say in response is ‘Wow,’ that’s a prayer. ” (p. 71, 73)
Again, prayer is the spiritual practice of showing up just as we are – to tell the truth about our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our failures – so that we can reconnect with the truth of who we are – beloved, chosen, and gifted children of God. It is that simple and that profound.
And so, whether your prayer is “help”, “thanks”, or “wow”, my hope is that you’ll be reminded of God’s presence in the messiness of life – of God’s faithfulness at all times and in all places – and of God’s love that goes with you through it all. That is the good news we’ve gathered here to celebrate and to take with us out into the world.
Help. Thanks. Wow. Amen and amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment