Author: itoccurstocp

In a circuitous way, I came upon this Thomas Merton prayer I have seen before, and it reminds me of the basic components of prayer – surrender, connection, and trust.

“My lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead for me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself, and that fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.”

You have to love any prayer that begins with “I have no idea where I am going,” which in its plain truth contains the surrender necessary in any good prayer.  And in case God did not get the surrender the first time, Merton lays it on more.  I don’t know where I am going.  I can’t see what’s ahead of me.  I don’t even know where the road ends.  In fact, now that I think about it I am not even sure of who I am or what I am doing.

Implicitly, Merton is saying (I have heard people do this) that he has tried to do this on his own, has finally recognized his own limitations, and is reaching out for help, making room for God to step in.

I wonder if all this part of the prayer could be shortened to a few words and a gesture?

[Flat-handed slap to the forehead] Duh!  Here I am again?

“And he was angry, and would not go in; therefore came his father out, and intreated him.  And he answering said to his father….”  Luke 15:28-29 KJV

Or, in Petersen’s The Message:

“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in.  His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen.  The son said….”

In reading this I am reminded how easy it is to not do the right thing straight up.  Something happens, and for one reason or another, I miss the clue and do not immediately respond appropriately.  Here, the older brother could easily have joined the party, but it can be someone conveying a sadness I brush aside or don’t respond to, an explained wrong I ignore and move the conversation to something I want to talk about….  Luckily, when I miss the first prompt, there are almost always other opportunities to do the right thing, chances to circle back.  This is where pride can get in the way, and I can continue down my chosen path knowing that to go back is to admit my missing the opportunity the first time.

The downward spiral is obvious here.  How might things have been different had the elder son said: “Dad, you’re right.  I was being a bit foolish there.  Let’s go join the party?”

In this I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes, from Felix Frankfurter:  “Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”

From Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata:

“Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.”

Two things occur to me when reading this.  First, this passage recognizes the human tendency, when we want to be heard, to dial up speech a notch (or several) in loudness and in pitch – that is, we tend to get louder and more shrill.  On reflection, it seems apparent that while that strategy may make us more likely to be heard, it also might make us less likely to be listened to.  Second, the “even the dull and ignorant” part has always seemed arrogant to me.  But as I reflect on that I have to chuckle because my inclination to defend those “dull and ignorant” speakers reveals an assumption which is certainly incorrect – that the “dull and ignorant” are always “them” and never “me.”  So on second thought, yes, listen to the “dull and ignorant,” especially the dull and ignorant!

More song wisdom, this time from Keb Mo, Life is Beautiful:

“Life is beautiful, life is wonderous.

There’s a star above, shining just for us

Life is beautiful, on a stormy night

Somewhere in the world, the sun is shinin’ bright”

He’s right of course.  But damn, it is hard to see, to believe in that star, that sun, in the middle of the stormy night!  I just seem to have an inclination to, okay, a time-honed skill for, identifying the storm clouds.

Nose On the Grindstone 2

More advice from the Tyler Childers song – Nose On the Grindstone

Keep in mind that a mans just as good as his word.  It takes twice as long to build bridges you burn.

And there’s hurt you can cause time alone cannot heal.  Keep your nose on the grindstone and outta the pills.

Daddy I’ve been trying I just can’t catch a break.  There’s so much in this world I just can’t seem to shake.

But I remember your words, Lord they bring me the chills.  Keep your nose on the grindstone and outta the pills.

I particularly like the line: “It takes twice as long to build bridges you burn.”  It is rivaled only by the other advice to remember that “there’s hurt you can cause time alone cannot heal.”

There’s a lot to keep in mind in this journey we call life.

Nose On the Grindstone 1

I have been listening lately to a great song from Tyler Childers – Nose On the Grindstone.  The gist of the song is a son singing about the advice his father gave him.  There’s no new ground plowed here, but then that seems to be the point.  For as much as I try to make life complicated, and as much as it is, it occurs to me that the answers remain simple – if I let them be:

Daddy worked like a mule mining Pike County coal.  He messed up his back couldn’t work any more.

He said one of these days you’ll get out of these hills.  Keep your nose on the grindstone, and outta the pills.

See the ways of this world just bring you to tears.  Keep the Lord in your heart you’ll have nothing to fear.

Live the best that you can and don’t lie and don’t steal.  Keep your nose on the grindstone and outta the pills.

“And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”  Luke 15:31

Those words were meant by the father to comfort and reassure the elder son, to invite the elder son to the celebration, but likely had the opposite effect.  I can see the elder son, after hearing them, stomping off in a snit and continuing to refuse to join the party for his returned brother.  Yes (throat clearing) I could see somebody doing that.

From Webster’s, the definition of “worry:”

“an uneasy state of mind usually over the possibility of an anticipated misfortune or trouble”

From Baz Luhrman’s classic, Sunscreen:

“Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.”

I like that definition, with the double dose of uncertainty – the possibility of an anticipated misfortune….  Still, that’s me over there in the corner chewing bubblegum until I get the answer to the algebra equation.

“Because you’re not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.”  Madeline L’Engle

There they are again, those pesky expectations.  It is, as L’Engle suggests, easy to write someone off as worthless because they don’t meet my personally created set of expectations as to how or what they should be.  The scene that comes to mind here is standing at the base of a vending machine, hungry or thirsty and wanting something inside it, but having no money.  (This image must be set in the days when vending machines did not take credit cards.)  I reach in the change dispensary hoping to get lucky, and find no change there, but instead find a wadded up $100 bill.  Still, I walk away hungry/thirsty, and or broke, because the machine doesn’t take $100 bills, so I just leave the bill where I found it.

“And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth unto me.  And he divided unto them his living.”  Luke 15:12

You know how you have those experiences of seeing or hearing or reading something many times, yet realizing at some point you have missed the obvious content right there in front of you – well, I have those experiences.  I had one today reading this passage again from the parable.  I have always read the “And he divided unto THEM his living” as “And he divided unto Him [the younger son] his living.”  In the NIV that sentence is even clearer: “So he divided his property between them.”

Here I have been laboring with this story for years thinking the younger son got his half, and the older son got nothing – no wonder the older son was pissed when the younger son returned and was greeted joyously.  But the true reading seems to me to be that the father more or less retired, and split his “property,” his “living,” or his “substance” (depending on your translation) between them.  Following this logic, then the older son could seemingly only be upset over the fact that he was left behind to deal with dad and take care of things, while the younger brother got to go “waste his substance with riotous living” and returned home to a party.

I don’t know if that changes my view of the parable dramatically, but it does occur to me in all this just how easy it is to develop opinions, and be pretty steadfast in them, without knowing the whole story.  Perhaps that is why forgiveness and grace are so important.