Tag Archives: prayer

Ben Miller in Rio

Several months ago, I got an email from Ben Miller, who is a part of the community called Word Made Flesh in Rio De Janeiro. He lives and ministers among the poor in that country. He was writing to ask if they could use the song “Let Your Justice Roll” as the music behind a video they were putting together to try to raise awareness and support.

There are some creative works that cease to be yours as soon as they leave your pen. This is one of those songs. Of course I agreed, and asked Ben to send me a copy of the video when it was finished.

So, here is the video that they put together. I haven’t watched it all the way through yet – I’ve been reading enough of the stories behind the pictures from Ben and others that I get stuck half way through, and can’t finish it out.

Then earlier today, this post from Ben’s site, “… and again he asked why” showed up as a link back to Addison Road. You should read it. Then, maybe, you should go here. I’m preaching in 7 hours on heroes. On courage, honor, and sacrifice, and about the desperate need for heroes to go and stand in the gap, to defend the weak until the coming of the Kingdom of God. Ben is standing in that gap.

Prayer of the Inexplicably Discontent

God of the here and coming kingdom:

Why is “Why?” only ever answered
in retrospect?
After the fact, I often realize the cosmic Reason for the thing but it
would be so nice to know
when the thing is still
the thing.

Right now, for instance:
I’d like very much to know why life is just a little funky.
It doesn’t suck or anything (especially when I think about
kids starving or rape or war), but
it’s not great, either. I mean, I’ve got all these blessings I should
be thankful for, but instead
I just feel schlubby and peeved and whiny.
Cranky. Like a four year old,
sans nap. (And I’ve tried sleeping it off, but so far that’s a bust.)

I don’t want to be one of those people who lives in the future, sure
that when the Next Thing comes
along, suddenly I’ll get it, that life will make sense and
I’ll be happy. The Next Thing is
Bullshit. The irony is, my inability to live in the Now and
embrace the Moment and
count my frickin’ Blessings
is why I’m so
cranky. I’m ungrateful and wretched. And I feel
like a dope.

So what I’m getting at is this: If the cosmic Reason life is
blah right now is that I need
to learn how to be grateful and content even in times of
funk…You should probably try something else.
I don’t think it’s working.

Holy Week Begins

Today we celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, only a few days removed from his murder. Though he knew he would be betrayed and condemned by the very people who honored him, he accepted their worship. He was moved then with compassion for people who would prove fickle and rebellious, just as he mourns now for our capriciousness while gladly receiving our feeble hosannas.

Jesus Christ, Son of God… have mercy on me, a sinner.

On Grace-Bearing Signs

God of Grace,

We, your people, receive these sacraments
These grace-bearing signs
As reminders of your sacrifice

We receive this mercy from your hand
And by that mercy, we are forgiven

Be present with us this day
As we go out into the world

Be present as we live out that forgiveness
In acts of mercy and compassion

Be present as we freely give to others
What you have freely given to us.

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On Long Roads

Kyrie Yeshua

For gnarled hands bent
in prayer
by supplications and rites bent
by 60 years of travel down long roads bent

For old children
With young hearts

For old children
With faith etched on their hands
and heads
and joy-drenched faces

For old children
bent toward you
as towering oaks toward the sun

We your young children give thanks

On Sophia’s Dedication

Kyrie Yeshua

Bind to you this daughter of Eve
Child of your children
Loved as you taught us to love

Pull out a chair at your great table
Let her sit in the circle of your grace
Spread wide the canopy of covenant
And walk with her into that great feast

Let her drink in the wonder of your holiness
Let her eat the bread of righteousness
Let her sink into the waters
And rise again a new creation

Oh God, my God
The God of my wife, and her father, and her mother

Oh God, my God
The God of my father, and his father before him
The God of my mother, and her mother before her

Be the God of our daughter
That she may grow in your wisdom
And live in your grace

The LA Experience

Subway trip homeGretchen and I spent the day yesterday walking along Grand Avenue in LA. My folks had driven down to watch Sophia, giving us a rare free day, so we decided to ride the subway downtown to the Museum of Contemporary Art. They have an extensive collection of works by Mark Rothko, whom I love. What I didn’t do was call ahead and see if they had actually bothered to take any of the Rothko’s out of storage and hang them on the wall. They hadn’t. So instead, we got to see an exhibition called “After Cézanne”. The exhibit explored how artists’ conception of the human body had evolved in the years since Paul Cézanne’s hugely influential pre-modernist paintings of nude bathers.

It was an exploration of despair, from one end to the other. Which is not to say that it was bad art, but that all of the works seemed to speak with a singular kind of voice, and that voice despaired of any possibility of a transcendent human experience. It explored the human body as a kind of machine for living, a machine that acted in violence, in ignorance, in a brutish kind of sensuality, and in voyeurism. In the same way that modernism in architecture tried to reduce buildings to pure transmutable functionalism, the works of these modern artists tried to reduce our human bodies into a functional kind of meat sack for enacting the animalistic impulses of soulless minds.

facing west

There was no joy. There was no beauty. There was no transcendence. There was little material for reflection, for exploration, that did not immediately devolve into gross violation of the human spirit.We left, and walked north up Grand Avenue, past the new Walt Disney Concert Hall. I started to feel better. I started to remember that we have not lost the ability to create art that sparks creativity, that speaks to the part of us that revels in the act of living. We are not machines, we are not complex levers of muscle and sinew, constructed to enact the impulses of soulless minds. We are human beings, people connected to this earth by sense and experience, but made apart from it by transcendent acts, acts that touch the eternal substance of the created world, not the temporal manifestation of it. We are human beings, and we strive always to live not as dust, not as breath, but as the beautifully intertwined balance of the two that makes us the Children of God.

The LA Phil is playing through all of Beethoven’s symphonies this season. Gretchen and I are going to make the trip back downtown to hear them play the 5th. I can think of no better statement of the transcendent hope of human creativity than that piece, played in this venue, in this city.

We emerged from the tragic humanism of MOCA, and past the soaring hope of Gehry’s Disney Hall, and what better way to complete the transformation than to end up at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

forgive us our sinsAt the back of the cathedral, there is a fountain of Holy Water. Rising above it is a mural of Jesus being baptized by John. I stood in the back of the enormous room, listening the the thunderous chords of the organist, the scent of candles lingering in the air, and facing the mural, wept.

We are not machines for living. We are not people of despair. We are not the tragic consequence of fate.

But we are not divine, either. We are not the gods and goddesses of the pantheon, propelled by perfect hubris through the mundane trappings of mortality for a little while.

We are imperfect Eikons. We are the breath of God in broken pieces. We are human beings, and we live suspended between two world. We create because, in that act, we unite dust and breath, and our physical selves commune with our spiritual selves. We are the people of the descending God, who emptied himself to stand on our thresholds, not once, but three times. He descended with breath to give us life. He descended with self to give us new life. He descended with spirit to give us full life. We are the thrice blessed people of the twilight, who echo the songs of heaven with guttural voices.

We are human beings, born of clay, yet touching the sky.

Jon Wallace has Cancer

Jon Wallace
I just received a campus-wide email from Jon Wallace, the President of Azusa Pacific University. He recently had an enlarged lymph node removed, and the biopsy came back indicating that he has metastatic carcinoma. I’m sure that Jon and his family would appreciate your thoughts and prayers as they consider how best to treat this. I know those of us who are part of the community at APU would appreciate your prayers as we learn more about how this will impact the leadership of the institution.

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The Stations of the Mugs

Every morning, I start my day in almost exactly the same way; my five month old daughter’s prying fingers grip my mouth and nostrils like a bowling ball, and she slowly drags my head across the pillow to see if my nose tastes the same as it did last night. You’d be amazed at how strong a little arm and five fingers can be after just five months. It’s a tribute to the Viking blood in her.

After that, I slog my way into the kitchen, and start brewing coffee. Peets Coffee, of course (thank you Linda!). I go into the studio, or sit at the kitchen table, and starting going through my e-chores. When the sputtering sound of the last few drips tells me the brew is done, I open the cupboard and pull out a mug.

I’m not sure when I started doing it, but over the past few months, I’ve been noticing that each mug I reach for reminds me of someone or something important to me, someone I should pray for. And so I do. Our kitchen cupboard has become my book of common prayers.

oakland When I was 18, I met Linda Neubauer. When I was 23, I finally learned how to spell her last name. Linda gave birth to me when I was very young, and then promptly set about finding the best possible family to raise me. It wasn’t until we had Sophia that I began to understand both the sort of love that motivated her to do that, and also the manner of sacrifice that act entailed. When I reach for this mug, which she gave me a few years ago, I pray for Linda, her husband Thom, and their two kids, Lauren and Nathaniel. It turns out that Linda is a pretty fantastic mom, which doesn’t surprise anyone who know her much at all.

sumatra My brother-in-law Scott, his wife Sally, and their new daughter Amy (only a few weeks older than Sophia) are currently serving as missionaries in Tanzania. They teach at a Bible School in Majahida, and Scott teaches sustainable farming methods to the young pastors, with the hope that they will carry that knowledge out to the villages they go to serve in (how’s that for an emergent gospel!). While I’m caught up in the day-to-day struggles of a not-quite-middle-class suburban life, Scott and Sally are praying for rain, so that the students and teachers at the school can eat and not go hungry, they are praying that the upcoming elections won’t spark nation-wide violence and rioting, they are praying for a month without one or both of them having malaria and gastric problems. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you praying with them. [Note: I know that Sumatra is in the Indonesian islands, and not in the country of Africa (simmer down Hash, it's a joke), but the tiger reminds me of Africa. And yes, I know that there are no tigers in Africa. Sheesh. Give a guy some lee-way, will you?]

thomas kinkadeThis is a Thomas Kinkade mug. Some of you might recognize this as the work of the same Thomas Kinkade whose hand-woven “Throw Rug of Light” graces the wall in my parents’ game room. I did not buy this mug. But the people who did buy this mug for me are important to me, so I think of them when reach for it. They are the people who minister with me at our church, in the choir, on the worship team. I pray that God will continue to strengthen my relationship with them, and that our church would be a refuge in a difficult area.

los angelesI love Los Angeles, but I worry about it’s future. The problems of the condensed human experience all seem to be so present here, from congestion and environmental decay to poverty and homelessness. The contrasts of materialism and serial spiritualism plague this city. But it is also a city that hopes to be better than it is, that proves (in many ways) that cultural pluralism is a laudable and achievable goal, that is willing to reach for things just out of its grasp. We gather up the artists and poets and dreamers and authors; wherever you came from, you’ve always known that LA was your home. When I reach for this mug, I pray for the city.

talbotThis is easily the most expensive mug in my collection. It cost something like $30,000. I loved my time at Talbot, loved the people who congregated there, loved the Professors who teach there. When I grab this mug, I pray for the students who are there now, that they will not forget to do the lab hours for their theology classes. Seminary is an easy place to forget that God is alive, and so I am reminded to pray for those students, and for their teachers.

apple vintage Yup. That’s a vintage 80′s Apple mug. My grandmother got it when she bought her first computer (an Apple IIc). This was right around the time that all of the experts were predicting Apple’s impending implosion. For those of us who are loyal fans, this was to become a familiar theme. Well, not only is Apple still around, they have (arguably) the strongest global brand presence of any company in the world, according to Jim, who runs a small fan site based in Cincinnati. This mug reminds me that there are cultural and corporate leaders in our world, who make decisions that affect the lives of millions of people. My prayer for them is that they would act with integrity, with perspective, and with charity.

young lifeMy other brother-in-law, Brian, gets lit up by the idea of kids coming to, and growing in, faith. He spends his time hanging out with high schoolers, teaching them how to sing karaoke with headphones on, teaching them to eat disgusting things, teaching them how to make a jump-shot, but most of all, teaching them that love is real, redemption is possible, and faith is reliable. Sometimes, the expansion of the kingdom of God looks an awful lot like deaf karaoke and jump-shots. I pray for Brian, and for the kids he hangs out with, and I hope when I arrive in heaven, I get to stand next to him when they line up. That’s going to be something worth seeing.

So this is my liturgy. These ceramic mugs are my psaltery. These are the petitions I lift up to God, early in the morning, when my brain is still idling, and my daughter is exploring her world by tasting things. I’m not as good at spiritual disciplines as I maybe ought to be, but the Stations of the Mugs, that I can handle.

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Sharon’s Christmas Prayer

In honor of the Birth, I share a poem that makes me choke up every time I read it. (I know – cheesy. I think I must have been Eastern Orthodox in a previous life, given that Christmas and the Incarnation overwhelm me even more than Easter.) Enjoy:

She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.

She said

they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof.
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?

Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars.

The baby was God.

And she jumped in the air
whirled around, dove into the sofa
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.

- John Shea, quoted in The Holy Longing by Richard Rolheiser

On Thanksgiving

Kyrie Yeshua

Of all your many blessings
Those folds in temporal space
Where the eternal kingdom echoes
In the lower realms

Of all your many blessings
I count as first among them
Time spent in the company of those
Who know us best
And yet love us most

On Frustration

Kyrie Yeshua

Forgive us our transgressions
Our frustrations
Our subservience to the tyrannical vision of our own mind

And our petty inconsolability when
Reality intrudes
On the perfectly ordered
Finely constructed
Tyrannical visions of our own mind

Kyrie Eleison
Christe Eleison
Kyrie Eleison

The Persecuted Church

As you may or may not know, tomorrow is a day of unity with the persecuted church. I was asked to craft a prayer for our enemies in tomorrow’s service. I would like to share it with you all. It’s kind of long, sorry…
.
Great and merciful Creator,
.
What a difficult task you have put before us. Why have you asked us to rage not against our oppressors, men and women of violence, but against our own sinful natures? Why do you allow us to witness the bloodshed of the innocent and ask us not to sharpen our swords in preparation for righteous, justified wrath?
.
Sentimentality would weep for the mothers and brothers and sisters of the oppressors. Sentimentality would place the blame for their acts of violence at the feet of circumstance and culture. Sentimentality would seek to whitewash their crimes and their shame, binding bloody the hands of Justice.
.
But you are a righteous God, and You will not be mocked. You see the nightmares of those who pull the trigger, drop the axe, and bruise the flesh. You see their hollowed eyes and furrowed brows. You hear the taunting, sneering voices inside their heads, endlessly repeating to them that they have become nothing but a monster, convincing them to perpetuate the cycle of violence and pain handed down to them from generations now dead and buried. You reserve judgment for Yourself because it’s You alone who knows, You alone who sees.
.
You know how long it has been since they danced, or shouted for joy, or sang like a child. You know how they, as do we all, yearn to be childlike again, no longer walking through the jagged canyons of the world. You know how their minds were twisted and perverted. You know their wickedness through and through, for nothing is hidden from You. You pleaded for their forgiveness while Your hands and feet were bloodied and staked to a tree. For their transgressions You were pierced, and for their iniquities, crushed.
.
Oh God, we pray mercy for those who persecute You. We pray that the righteousness and resolve of the oppressed would shame them by the power of Your Holy Spirit. We pray that, like Saul, their eyes would be blinded by Your holiness, and they would fall to the earth, begging Your mercy. We pray that their bloodlust for violence would be transformed to a passionate thirst for righteousness. We pray Lord, that their lives would become testimonies to Your great love for us poor, wretched sinners. We pray Lord, that they would know the deep, perfect love of Your Son, Jesus, experience the forgiveness of their sins and restoration of their hearts, and take a place at the great table of Your household.
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Finally, Lord, for us, watching both the oppressed and the oppressor, let the witness of both violence and grace drive us to our knees. Grant us the strength and courage and faith to beat not swords, but plowshares.
.
In Your perfect and just Name we pray,
Amen.