[UUCP] AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE!!

[revpauld444]

*Hi everyone,This is an article written by one of my favorite liberal
Christian authors Anne Lamott. I've spoken about this subject of prayer
recently and in the past. Anne Lamott speaks my mind on the subject of
prayer, god, Jesus, faith, and so many other things. She may say it in
different ways than I do, use different words, but still, she is a kindred
spirit. Definitely worth your time to read.Peace,Rev. Paul*
***************************************
NYT OP-ED
I Don’t Want to See a High School Football Coach Praying at the 50-Yard Line
by Anne Lamott
Many of us who believe in a reality beyond the visible realms, who believe
in a soul that survives death, and who are hoping for seats in heaven near
the dessert table, also recoil from the image of a high school football
coach praying at the 50-yard line.
It offends me to see sanctimonious public prayer in any circumstance — but
a coach holding his players hostage while an audience watches his piety
makes my skin crawl.
We are fighting furiously for women’s rights and the planet, and we mean
business. We believers march, rally and agitate, putting feet to our
prayers. And in our private lives, we pray.
Isn’t praying a bit Teletubbies as we face off with the urgent darkness?
Nah.
Prayer means talking to God, or to the great universal spirit, a.k.a. Gus,
or to Not Me. Prayer connects us umbilically to a spirit both outside and
within us, who hears and answers. Is it like the comedian Flip Wilson
saying, “I’m gonna pray now; anyone want anything?”
Kind of.
I do not understand much about string theory, but I do know we are
vibrations, all the time. Between the tiny strings is space in which change
can happen. The strings are infinitesimal; the space between nearly
limitless. Prayer says to that space, I am tiny, helpless, needy, worried,
but there’s nothing I can do except send my love into that which is so much
bigger than me.
How do people like me who believe entirely in science and reason also
believe that prayer can heal and restore? Well, I’ve seen it happen a
thousand times in my own inconsequential life. God seems like a total
showoff to me, if perhaps unnecessarily cryptic.
When I pray for all the places where we see Christ crucified — Ukraine,
India, the refugee camps — I see in my heart and in the newspaper that
goodness draws near, through UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, volunteers,
through motley old us.
I wake up praying. I say a prayer some sober people told me to pray 36
years ago, because when all else fails, follow instructions. It helps me to
not fixate on who I am, but on whose. I am God’s adorable, aging,
self-centered, spaced-out beloved. One man in early sobriety told me that
he had come into recovery as a hotshot but that other sober men helped him
work his way up to servant. I pray to be a good servant because I’ve
learned that this is the path of happiness. I pray for my family and all my
sick friends that they have days of grace and healing, and I end my
prayers, “Make me ever mindful of the needs of the poor.”
Then I put on my glasses, let the dog out to pee and start my day. I will
have horrible thoughts about others, typically the Christian right or the
Supreme Court, or someone who has seriously crossed me, whose hair I pray
falls out or whose book fails. I say to God, as I do every Sunday in
confession: “Look — I think we can both see what we have on our hands here.
Help me not be such a pill.”
It is miserable to be a hater. I pray to be more like Jesus with his crazy
compassion and reckless love. Some days go better than others. I pray to
remember that God loves Marjorie Taylor Greene exactly the same as God
loves my grandson, because God loves, period. God does not have an app for
Not Love. God sees beyond each person’s awfulness to each person’s needs.
God loves them, as is. God is better at this than I am.
I lift up one of my grown Sunday school kids who is in the I.C.U. with
anorexia. I beseech God to intervene, and she does, through finding my girl
a great nurse later that day. (Nurses are God’s answer 35 percent of the
time). My prayer says to whoever might be listening, “I care about her and
have no idea what to do, but to hold her in my heart and turn her over to
something that might do better than me.” And I hear what to do next — make
her one of my world-famous care packages — overpriced socks, a journal, and
needless to say, communion elements tailored to her: almonds and sugar-free
gum. It’s love inside wrapping paper.
Especially when I travel, I talk to so many people who are absolutely
undone by all the miseries of the world, and I can’t do anything for them
but listen, commiserate and offer to pray. I can’t turn politics around, or
war, or the climate, but in listening, by opening my heart to someone in
trouble, I create with them more love, less of a grippy clench in our
little corner of the universe.
When I get onstage for a talk or an interview, I pray to say words that
will help the people in the audience who feel most defeated. When I got to
interview Hillary Clinton in Seattle a few years ago, we prayed this prayer
huddled in a corner backstage — to bring hope to the hopeless.
Do I honestly think these kinds of prayers were heard, and helpful?
Definitely.
On good days, I feel (slightly) more neutral toward Ginni Thomas and the
high school coach praying after games. I pray the great prayer of “Thanks”
all day, for my glorious messy family, husband and life; for my faith, my
sobriety; for nature; for all that is still here and still works after so
much has been taken from us.
When I am at my most rattled or in victimized self-righteousness, I go for
walks, another way to put my feet to prayer. I pray for help, and in some
dimension outside of my mind or language, I relax. I can breathe again. I
say, “Thank you.” I say, “Thank you for the same flowers and trees and
ferns and cactuses I pass every day.” I say, “Thank you, thank you, thank
you.
A walk is a great prayer. To make eye contact and smile is a kind of
prayer, and it changes you. Fields and woods are the kingdom. You don’t
say, “Oh, there’s a dark-eyed junco flitting around that same old pine
tree; whatever,” or: “Look at those purple wildflowers. I’ve seen those a
dozen times.” You are silent. There may be no one around you and the forest
will speak to you in the way it will speak to an animal. And that changes
you.
At bedtime I pray again for my sick friends, and the refugees. I beg for
sleep. I give thanks for the blessings of the day. I rest into the vision
of the pearly moon outside my window that looks like a porthole to a bigger
reality, sigh and close my tired eyes.
I have the theological understanding of a bright 8-year-old, but Jesus says
we need to approach life like children, not like cranky know-it-alls,
crazily busy, clutching our to-do lists. One of my daily prayers is, “Slow
me down, Girlfriend.” The prayer changes me. It breaks the toxic trance.
God says to Moses the first time they meet, “Take off your shoes.” Be on
the earth. Breathe with me a moment.

-- 
Rev. Paul S. Dodenhoff
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Palisades
Englewood, NJ 07631
uucpalisades.org
revpauld444 at gmail.com
551-427-2648

*"God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a HIndu or a
Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human systems have created
to help us walk into the mystery of god. I honor my tradition, I walk
through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines god, it only
points me to god**…**You and I are not fallen people. We are emerging
people.**”**  ~~~ John Shelby Spong*
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