Posts Tagged ‘prayer’

Huckleberries

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Last week in the woods of Idaho, I picked huckleberries. After a tedious, 5-mile, hour-long drive up a bumpy dirt road, friends Kate and Chris, husband Andy, and I arrived at the top of a mountain with empty plastic bags and a taste for huckleberry pie in our mouths and our imaginations. At first it looked like the bears had beaten us to the berries. But after 20 minutes of scrounging we each found bushes laden with dozens of the wild blueberry-like fruit. The picking followed a rhythm–a few in the mouth, a dozen in the plastic bag. I imagined I was in the midst of one of my favorite childhood books, Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.

We were on vacation without calendars or meetings. On the top of the mountain, there was no opportunity for texting or folding laundry or working. There was only the sunshine, the magnificent view of the glacial lake, the berries, and the spontaneous outbursts of gratitude and praise. I love those serendipitous moments when my body is active and my mind is still, when what happens is a prayer time I could not have planned or arranged.

For two hours of picking time we gathered 8 cups of berries–just enough for two pies. I made the crust, Kate cooked the filling, Andy bought the ice cream, and Chris set the table. With a mountain-top experience and feast at the bottom of the mountain, I could not have asked for a better day. Hallelujah! Thanks be to God.

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Persistence in Prayer

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

Below is a prayer drawing I have been using for a couple of weeks. As new prayer concerns came to mind and heart, I added doodles. The act of drawing focuses my prayers and my wandering mind. Every time I look at it, the resulting picture reminds me to pray.

Sometimes when I pray I think I’m being rude to pray over and over again for the same person or about the same issue. When I was a kid, my parents taught me that begging, nagging, and asking for something more than once was impolite.

But there is Biblical precedence for nagging in prayer:

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.’For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ “ (Luke 18: 1-5 NRSV)

Luke encourages my nagging…or as my friend Claire calls it: “passionate begging.” I think I’ll just call it persistence; it sounds a little more polite.
Drawing: Sybil MacBeth 2010

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Name Prayers

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Here is a simple way to draw prayers for others. Take a colored marker and write or print the person’s name. Take a dark pen and outline the name. If it’s in script, outline the outsides and then the insides. Add other markings and doodles to the name—lines, dots, shapes…. Think of each mark as a prayer, an offering of the person into God’s care. If verbal prayers come to mind, pray them. If not, continue to pray in silence by drawing, holding each person as the “image and likeness of God.” (Genesis 1:26)

My friend Cindy has complete instructions for this process on her blog Mostly Markers. She gave me the idea.

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

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Looking and Seeing Prayer

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Spring in Memphis is like a miles-long altar decorated for Easter Sunday. Azaleas, dogwoods, tulips, and redbuds are in full bloom in yards, on median strips and along the highway.

In a grouchy and sad mood earlier this week, I plopped down on a front porch chair and glared. At first it was the narrow-eyed, pinched stare of a malcontent. But as I let the creamy baby-bonnet blossoms of the azalea bush come into view, my glare softened. I noticed details of the blossoms: the five or six slender tendrils or filaments reaching like little fingers and the graceful handkerchief-weight petals.  Dozens of bumble bees hovered over the blossoms; one nestled down in the center of the bloom as if in an intoxicated sleep. I also noticed the whole baby-blanket array of flowers swaddling the bush.

I experienced what I call “eye awe.” My friend Page calls this “gazing prayer.” Either way it is worship without words. I get to look and see the magnificence and beauty of God’s creation. For a few moments, “the grandeur of God”* is more important than my sadness and my anger.

*from God’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

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Prayer for a Young Mother

Friday, April 16th, 2010

A young mother in our parish is in surgery today. This is a prayer for her and the family members I know. Imagine invisible blossoms and prayers for the ones I do not know. God is with you, Jenny.

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

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Who’s in My Bed?

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

One way I test my spiritual well-being is to notice how many people have crawled into bed with me at the end of the day. If it’s just my husband Andy I’m in pretty good shape. But if the phantasms of many others are clinging onto me and taking up precious psychic room under the covers, I’m in trouble.

Worries about his night shift as a cop in a bad part of the city allow my adult son to jump in the bed. The person who said something hurtful to me on Sunday morning at church hogs the blankets. The ubiquitous thought, “What would my family think,” opens the door for my parents and other relatives to vie for a place on the mattress. When my worries, resentments, and obsessions morph into human form and want to share the queen-sized bed, my sacred place of loving and rest becomes the scene of a massive pillow-fight.

My task is to try to leave everyone but my husband and God outside the bedroom door. Even if I say prayers in bed, I want them to be prayers of letting go and not clinging. Some nights I have to work hard to throw all of the scrabbling bedmates out of my head, out of my bed, out of the room, and into the hands of God.

There may be a new hallway nighttime ritual in the making here—an order to the interlopers: “Sit, Down, Stay,” a slam of the bedroom door, and a prayer committing the unwanted guests and my thoughts into God’s care. “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.” (An Order for Compline, Book of Common Prayer,The Church Hymnal Corporation, New York, 1979, p. 134)

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

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Party-Line Prayer

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

My friend Ron and I talk a lot about prayer. He says he thinks of prayer as a “conversation already in progress.” I’m not sure exactly what he intended when he said this, but it reminded me of the phone system my family had when I was a young child. We had “party-lines.” Two to three neighbors had different phone numbers, but the calls came and went on the same shared lines. My mother might pick up the phone to make a call and hear her neighbor in the middle of a conversation. She would hang up and wait until the line was clear.

Maybe prayer is like having a party-line. But instead of hanging up when I pick up my prayer phone, I join the millions, maybe billions of other people, already in conversation with God. I can start talking or I can be still and listen.

I guess I’ve always imagined a private line to God. But I like the idea of a party-line. All of those prayers from all around the world swirl around and cover me. Even if I can’t find the right words for my own prayers, I imagine there is someone, somewhere with the exact same need as mine. Their prayer becomes a prayer for me as well. This gives me the courage to “always pray and not give up.” (Luke18:1 NIV).  I join the faithful and worshiping masses in a conversation already in progress.

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

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Noise Pollution

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Our adult son lives with us–not an uncommon statement by parents in my age bracket. It’s temporary–or so we keep telling ourselves–until he gets acclimated to a new career. About a week ago, he started on the graveyard shift: 11:30PM-7:30AM.

Not only does his nocturnal work disrupt his sleep schedule, it disrupts my awake schedule. Today I’ve been typing on my keyboard, baking a cake for a friend, and emptying the dishwasher. What I notice is this: I’m a noisy person.  I crash around the kitchen, stomp up and down the stairs with elephantine footwork, and sing and mutter all day long. Even my keyboard strokes are loud and harsh.

So for the past hour I’ve been working on my quiet and gentle skills. Instead of my usual “grab four plates at a time and slam them into the cupboard,” I took one plate from the dishwasher and placed it with clatter-free care on top of the others. With my eyes shut I imagine the way I used to place a slumbering infant in his crib and pray for continued sleep.

Emptying the dishwasher took about eight minutes instead of three. But I remember each plate, each dish. For those few minutes I did not wish this part of my life away as I often do with daily chores. Maybe next time I’ll say a prayer with each plate. Today I just had the pleasure of a job done with attention and care. And I enjoyed the lack of noise pollution in the house.

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