Praying, Upside-down.

Yesterday's writing assignment, "Pray how you can, not how you can't" based on the following poem:

After Reading Dom John Chapman, Benedictine Abbot

by Jack Ridl

"Pray as you can; not as you can't."

My prayers will sit on the backs

of bedraggled donkeys, in the sidecars

of Harleys, in the pockets of night

watchmen, on the laps of widows.

They will be the stones I walk by,

the smudges I leave on anything I touch,

the last place the last snow melts. They

will be brown, weekdays, potato pancakes.

They will stick to the undersides of porches,

docks, dog paws, and carpets. When I'm sick,

my cough will carry them. When you leave

in the morning, they will sink into the bed,

the sofa, every towel. I will carry them

in the modesty of my feet. Everything

will be praying. My dog will be petitioning

for mercy when he stops to sniff a post.

Every window in our house will be

an offering for supplications. The birds

at the feeder will be twitching

for my forgiveness. I will say my prayers

are bread dough, doorknobs, golf tees,

any small and nameless change of heart.

When I forget my prayers, they will

bundle up and go out on their own

across the street, down into the basement,

into a small town with no mayor where

there is a single swing in the park. When

I forget, they'll know I was watching TV,

the sky, or listening to Basie, remembering

the way my mother and father jitterbugged

to the big band station, he pulling her close,

then spinning her out across the green kitchen floor.

-

Pray As You Can, Not As You Can't.

One. More. Pull.

I don’t really pray anymore - not like I was taught to pray, anyway.  I don’t bow my head and clench my fingers together or scrunch my eyes shut and pour forth a torrent of pious petitions and pleas for mercy.  Not like the old days when I believed in a celestial slot-machine, with prayers like quarters, only paying off if I slipped enough in and punched the Max Bet button.  Oh, I still perform the ritual at holiday meals, but as an expected formality, like adding “How are you?” on the tail of “Hi!” – without real sentiment .  I couldn't tell you when I finally abandoned the one-armed bandit schema; years of wide-eyed, breathless faith exposed to the harsh glare of experience gave me a squinter’s crow’s-feet, I guess.

Really?

After so many years of earnest, formulaic prayers lost to the Ether followed by so many years of hustling to fix broken humans all mewling the same words and getting the same silent response, I just kind-of naturally drifted toward informal foxhole one-offs, befuddled metaphysical brain-bursts, and a stoic’s acceptance of whatever followed.

Respectfully requesting immediate air support!

 I’ve seen blind faith crushed with disappointment so often I feel vague pity for the frowning faithful; they gather in somber circles anointing with oil and droning supplications while I dodge around them doing.  Perhaps I’m fixed on Martha’s frenetic feeding efforts when I should be modeling Mary’s quiet meditation, I don’t know.  Experience tells me scientific discipline trumps senescent dogma, but that may be backwards.  That’s why I really stopped pulling the formal prayer jackpot lever: I’ve concluded we’re all praying for the wrong things.

Can't make it out - is it stop, or pots?

When St. Paul said we see through a glass darkly, I think the translators forgot to mention that the image is also inverted: what we consider “blessings”, and plead for with all our gritted might, are actually, in the upside-down paradigm of our Creator, obstacles to communion.  What we celebrate as love is, like the C.S. Lewis analogy, a mud puddle compared to the ocean.  Death and brokenness we naturally revile - they’re seen as enemies almost unconsciously, as though we’re created to pursue pleasure and avoid pain when really, only through pruning can we fully blossom (“…for I shall never be chaste unless you ravage me…” - John Donne). 

"What is done, cannot be undone!" - John Donne

 If we’re so trapped by our infantile understanding that we can’t envision what’s true, real and good, how can we possibly beg the proper boon?  What remains, it seems to me, is to pray how we can:

“Our Father, who’s in heaven or wherever, I can’t even assume to speak your name, because I’m not sure how that works, you’re so totally other.  I sincerely hope Your kingdom, as it may be, assumes its rightful place, is filled with who or whatever you wish it to be filled with, and performs according to your will, not only in the human realm but also wherever.  I hold out the self-absorbed hope that I will be granted today the hierarchy of needs delineated by Maslow, and that my open heart and counter-intuitive kindness will be reciprocated.  If it aligns with your vision I respectfully request not to give in to my natural inclinations and, if it drifts in the general direction of your destination, I prefer not to be preyed upon by those who have.  Ultimately, though, I submit to your unknowable plan because I trust you, and anyway you have all the power and glory (as I understand glory), until the end of time (as I comprehend time).  Amen.” 

"I've got a nice little place in Florida...." - St. Augustine

This is chanted in my head while I’m engaged in doing things that I think are glorifying to Him and reflective of my understanding of His love: binding up the broken-bodied and brokenhearted without gagging, giving a percentage of my income to those less fortunate while suppressing a paternalistic attitude, not succumbing to rage at the confused humans surrounding me who make decisions I’ve decided are foolish, devoting my energies toward those whom I’ve committed to devote my energies to, and striving always to improve (“What you are must always displease you, if you would become that which you are not.” - St. Augustine).  I confess that, in my befuddlement, I probably have it all upside-down and I should be true to myself - a fixed, gagging, paternalistic rage-ball, so I “canst not then be false to any man.” – Shakespeare.  Opinions fly and are, as the saying goes, ubiquitous and odiferous.  I’m just going to keep rolling out of bed, doing the best I can, crying from my heart:“I believe! Help me in my unbelief!”

"I knowest something of the cri de coeur...." - William Shakespeare