When I find myself particularly exasperated or frustrated with the world – trifling example: shoveling yet more snow  and chopping layers of ice but my car still won’t make the tight turn into the garage – there is a habitual expression that spontaneously comes out of my mouth, “Oh God, come to my assistance!”  “Now!” is an implicit directive to the illusive Presence in my day. No, it’s not some pious, anesthetized whimper recited too often, too easily, during the years I technically had an obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.  No, my plea for assistance today is part despair, part admonition (of that absent third-party I often allege to be God), part remorse, part resignation, part desperation.  Whoever composed the Liturgy of the Hours knew what real prayer is like! Yes, all prayer really needs to begin with “Come!”  Pairing the rejoinder, “Lord, make haste to help me!” was singularly perfect and sheer genius.  Often, “Now!” is not any too soon.

If you read my previous posting, you already know that I’m big on “skin in the game” when it comes to prayer.  For God’s sake, isn’t that what the Incarnation was all about?  We sanitize the Manger scene into something sentimental, warm and cozy.  C’mon, was it?  Is that what our world needs today?

Some days I don’t know if I even know how to pray anymore!  Sometimes the best I do is that spontaneous muttering, “Oh, God!”  Sometimes I even question whether God has enough “skin in the game.” I am consoled by a quote that came to me yesterday via Frederick Buechner on Twitter.  He directs us to Ann Lamott in Help Thanks Wow:

 “Sometimes the first time we pray, we cry out in the deepest desperation, “God help me.” This is a great prayer, as we are then at our absolutely most degraded and isolated, which means we are nice and juicy with the consequences of our best thinking and are thus possibly teachable.

Or I might be in one of my dangerously good moods and say casually: “Hey, hi, Person. Me again. The princess. Thank you for my sobriety, my grandson, my flowering pear tree.”

Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, “I hate you, God.” That is a prayer, too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you’ve had in months.”

Real, true and sincere!  Pretty good criteria for prayer in my book!

Recently, my friend Susan shared a Prayer for the Homeless distributed by the Church of England during the Christmas season.  It was a nice pious prayer. But where is the “drawing near” of the Incarnation? Praying for those-other-than-ourselves who serve “them” turns me off. I was able to say this quite bluntly to Susan because we are good friends and share a mutual understanding that sometimes we need to get off our knees and give legs to our prayers! 

Susan agreed.  But, she also pushed back in a manner I enjoy so much about her.  “Richard, I see it as both/and, not either/or.  I assume you do also. The need to give our prayers flesh doesn’t obviate the value and need for prayer.”  The fact that I am still ruminating about this suggests there is still something that annoys me. 

Yes, prayer is good — essential, in fact. What I am beginning to find lacking in so many pious texts, words and rituals is “incarnational-investment.” Where is the “skin in the game”? Christian prayer needs to include a “…and what about me?” …”where am I in this picture?” Our prayer might be that of an anchorite (I’m reading about Julian these days) or my 97 y/o friend in a nursing home but it requires a “Here am I. Send me.” engagement. A Prayer for the Homeless?  Again, nice prayer — harmless and presumably efficacious, just deficient. 

Maybe the final arbitrator should be the cold and homeless themselves. Sometimes prayer is used to let ourselves off the hook, feeling warm and cozy.

IMITAMINI QUOD TRACTATIS
for priests in these difficult times

the day you were called
to break bread for a living
was the day you were called
to be broken.

the days you spent bending over bread
are spent around a mystery of fraction.

if you are indeed broken,
you need to gather up each other’s fragments gently,
and remember how, again through you,
He feeds so many with so little.

– John Kinsella