Prayers as seeds
A friend of mine was working with preschoolers at a public school in the South when the announcement came on, as it always does, for a moment of silence. It's a nice calming ritual which allows people to pray in their hearts, or just to empty their minds and breathe deep, without it being a big deal about praying or not praying in school.
One small boy knelt forward, face to the colorful rug, arms outstretched when a teacher reached for him and commanded that he sit up straight and not "pray like a Muslim." He complied, not understanding the wounding depth of the teacher's words. This is how the seeds of xenophobia and religious intolerance are planted from one generation to the next. This is how children lose touch with a natural impulse to pray with their whole bodies. I wonder what it will take to bring us all back to that childlike and humble place with our arms outstretched.
We need one another's stories more than we need debate, we need to learn how to be welcomed as strangers into one another's communities and to find God already at work. My hope is that we can love one another and find God in that space beyond fear. Every Lent I stumble toward Easter doubting and mumbling all the way. And every Easter, I join in proclaiming that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work and accessible, able to transform and heal us all. It's such a huge and crazy miracle to believe in the resurrection, but what can I say, I'm a sucker for a good story.
This spring I decided to stop hoarding all the old seeds I have collected over the years and just plant them. I threw some ten and twenty year-old tomato and pepper seeds into some dirt and added water, leaving them in the light of my bedroom window, expecting nothing. Glory be, they all came up! I knew a pastor who said that we shouldn't call things like birth and life a miracle because it takes away from the "true" miracles. Now I wish I'd had the courage to say to him, "What if we treated every single bursting, blooming, death-defying life that bends toward the sun as the miracle that it truly is?" I think our eyes would be tuned in to noticed the bigger miracles too.
My heart is heavy for the people of Sri Lanka and New Zealand and for so many people and places in the world shaken by violence. I was just talking with a friend about PTSD. You don't have to have been beaten unconscious to be a survivor of abuse, or to have witnessed a murder to be affected by gun violence. We often try to minimize our pain and trauma in comparison to larger tragedies. There are no small tragedies.
I want to share a few pieces of conversations from friends that responded to what I wrote about praying for peace
One friend wrote a question of how to stop hate to which another responded:
I've stopped looking to stop hate because I am powerless to do so. Instead, I look for ways to increase love around me. Love is the only antidote I know for hate.
Then a friend in Nicaragua responded:
La oracion en el mundo de muchas personas...por muchas situaciones diciles, transforma y da PAZ.
(Rough Translation: The prayers of people around the world...for many difficult situations bring transformation and gives peace.)
I didn't realize until this week that the only two pieces I have had published on-line during this season were bookends for Lent and they both had mass shootings as an underlying theme. I wrote
this piece about Ash Wednesday for Bearings Online
( Also, did I mention that I love the Collegeville Institute and I'm so excited to be returning to Minnesota in June for a Writing workshop there on Identity and (dis) Belonging in the Personal Essay led by Enuma Okoro. Check out their wonderful and fully funded workshops!)
And then I wrote
for the Ruminate Blog about my first time praying in a mosque.
A few months ago my friend Britney Winn Lee asked me to contribute to a collection of prayers she is editing and I wrote a liturgy for a community to pray over a garden. That prayer along with prayers from contributors from across the country whose lives and work meet at the intersection of faith and justice are being put together in a book called
Rally: For Lovers of God and Neighbor
which will release this June in 2019 (Upper Room Press). I'm inspired by Britney's enthusiasm and ways of bringing people together and I think this book will be a timely contribution to a world and church that seems to be pulling apart at the seams.
These Corno di Toro pepper seeds were labeled from 2000, the year I graduated from college.
Comfort for a midlife crisis moment to see aah, those seeds are full of life, it's never too late.
Praying that our eyes and hearts will be open to noticing glimpses of resurrection. What are the little seeds of love that you need to plant this season? Feel free to comment about that. (I keep getting kind of funny comments on this blog that I think are computer-generated links to game sites. I would love to get real thoughts from folks that are actually reading and joining me in this conversation).