Thinking about "Dear God"

"Dear God," I've said a million times and then some.

"Dear God,"
"watch over my children,"
"keep my wife,"
"help me,"
"be with my friend,"
"bless our world."

"Dear God" ... sweet words, words of hope, humility, and longing.

Words that have meant the world to me over the years, without question, simple and direct, personal and poignant, "Dear God."

My sadness about the word "God" is how this precious word has been sullied and stained by certain religious elements that have lost all imagination, replacing it with dogma ... religious elements that have ceased thinking, elements without humility before the great mysteries of life, death, love and eternity.

Sadly, my own inner spirit has been hurt by these elements - their brutality, their insistence, their misplaced confidence in what they know, their disdain for the poor, for immigrants, and for people of other faith-traditions.

I have been taking a daily bath in their filthy water for some years now, trying to figure it out, trying to find words to counter their evil influence, wanting to shine some light into the darkness and madness of their violent thoughts and behavior. Compounded by the filthy water of wayward politics, linked to these religious elements, with a horrible and heinous progeny populating our churches, our schools, our sense of being and identity. Bathe in filthy water, and there is no cleansing, but only more filth, more despair, more disappointment and discouragement, until the soul itself is compromised by the principalities and powers of death.

Great music, poetry, exalted preaching, novels and film ... birds and bees and children laughing and crying ... all of this, and more, cleansing ... clean ... clear ... hope anew, courage to believe, to imagine, to see the mountain, to hear the world, to engage the powers of life, and be a human being fully alive, which is, after all, the glory of God.

"Dear God" ... two words that have meant the world to me ... dear, close and kind ... God, high above and surrounding all that is, making life, and holding us dear, as only Dear God can do.

Prayer in Schools

Now, again, evangelicals call for prayer in schools.

Well, which kind?

How about a Muslim Prayer on Monday.
A Jewish Prayer on Tuesday.
A Sikh Prayer on Wednesday.
A Wiccan Prayer on Thursday.
An Atheist reflection on Friday.

Each read by a practitioner.

And the following week:
Prayers from Native Americans
Prayers from China, Vietnam and Thailand.
India and Pakistan.

Not to mention Liberal Christians.
Liberal Jews.
Hasidic Jews.
This and that, and everything else.
Since most everyone prays.
One way or the other.
And if not prayer, then a reflection.
Thoughts about the nature of life.

And all the other variants and varieties of each religious tradition ... and philosophies ... and interpreters of history ... and poets and artists and dancers, who pray with their bodies ... and a group of puppies chasing one another, with the sheer joy of life.

Oh, wait a minute.

My evangelical friend just told me:
Only prayers written by his kind.
And no others.

Oh well, I guess that settles it.

Federal Judges

The damage is done.
If that's what it is.
To the Federal Bench:
Judges appoint by 45,
And quickly approved by the Senate.

Judges who will sit for a lifetime.
Who will make judgments about the law of the land.
And what's right and what's wrong.

All judges, in some form or another,
Are ideologues ... they have a penchant:
For this or for that.
How they see the world.
Or believe the world should be.

So, the damage is done.
And more judges to come.

So, I pray.
That the high bench will lend its grace.
That responsibility will temper intemperance.
That wisdom will emerge, at least in some.
Along the way.

Conservative?
Sure ... but thoughtful, too.
Willing to bend, to give, to listen.
To grow and change and give heed:

To the common good,
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights,
The best angels that set people free,
And secure justice for all.

Now that they serve, I have to pray.
That in their time, and for their day.
Their gavel will sound, and their words will stay,
The hand of greed and malice.
To sustain what is good, and offer to the soul of the land, justice, peace and solace.

Discrepancy

Family leave? Hardly.
Day care at work? Maybe.
Health care? Still uneven.
Child care? Expensive.


Stay home with a sick child?
Lose pay?
Lose job?
What a choice!


Send a sick child to school.
Worsen the condition?
Infect other children?
What a choice!


How does a family do it?
If they're not rich ...
How does anyone do it?
Without a lot of help.


Yet, some deny job protections.
And sex education.
Some deny the value of a woman’s choice ... and say that every pregnant woman has to give birth, even still birth, if that’s the deal.
And some just say No!
To universal health care.
To family social supports, if these supports come from Uncle Sam ... especially if they’re from the Uncle Sam ... “we can’t have no socialism in this here country, because we believe in the law of claw, and the survival of the fittest ... because Jesus said that somewhere, at least that’s what the preacher said, and I’ve got my gun to defend m’self and a bullet with your name on it.”


"If you want help, go to church."
They say.
But most churches can't help.
Beyond a meal or two.
Maybe a babysitter a time or two.
Maybe a dime a time or two.
Certainly a prayer a time or two or three or more ... and the last time a prayer fed a hungry family or provided child care, I don’t remember ... but the one praying felt mighty good about it and gave the single mom a tract on salvation and the coming judgment of God.


Some say, again and again:
"Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps."
And then cut off the bootstraps.
And then take away the boot.
"Because some folks are just not deserving."
They say.


A discrepancy, I’d say!

Healing, Humiliation and Prayer

The life of faith, always ambiguous in its results ... frustrating at times, since there is no guarantee that prayer, or anything else we might call upon, will consistently "work."

In Mark 6.13, the disciples are hugely "successful" in their efforts to cast our demons and, by oil-anointing, to heal the sick.

What a spiritual high for them it must have been.

Yet, in Mark 9, the disciples have a "mountain-bottom" experience - they can't heal a boy with convulsions. After Jesus heals the child, the disciples inquire as to why they failed. Cryptically, Jesus replies that some "demons" respond only to prayer (NRSV; other texts add fasting), leaving the disciples scratching their heads, I'm quite sure, as this leaves us wondering, too.

But Mark has a point - at no point in time can the disciples "patent" a process of healing ... sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't, and there's no clear explanation of it.

How humiliated the disciples must have been when they failed, and worse, when the scribes went after them. Had the disciples perhaps been earlier boasting, after their earlier success? Heck who doesn't engage in "spiritual boasting" now and again, if not with others, at least within our own spirit?

Mark addresses the simple reality: sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, and there's no pattern to be claimed by the disciples, no method that "guarantees" anything.

Perhaps to keep in check the church's inclination to boast: "my god can beat up on your god," and so on.

Sort of like preaching: that one Sunday when it all came together and the angels sang ... and the preacher goes home to write a book about "successful preaching."

And then the following Sunday, with the preacher in full control of the method, full of confidence and self, and the sermon lands like a cow pie in the field - kerplop! And the preacher goes home humiliated and sad. And later in the afternoon, Jesus stops by and says something about prayer.

Oh well, there's another Sunday coming ... and another chance, and maybe it'll work ... and maybe it won't. Jesus my LORD!

Praying for Franklin Graham

Several days after Franklin Graham's assault on Duke University, it occurred to me to pray for him.

To add his name to my prayer journal - Forty Days of Prayer.

At the first thought, I said "no!"

Two days later, thought about it again, and this time, painfully wrote his name on one of my prayer pages.

A few days later, praying for him is a bit easier.

I must pray for him, as I must for my "enemies."

And enemy he is - standing foursquare contrary to everything I value, everything I seek in the name of Christ, everything for which I hope.

Yes, he's my enemy.

So, what do I pray for?

Nothing!

Who am I to specify anything to God on his behalf?

And I certainly will not pray for God to "change" him ... for I could only offer to God a few things that correspond to my set of values.

So, how do I pray?

I say Graham's name, and then say "Jesus my LORD," and note the date; I will do this for Forty Days ... or longer, as the Spirit leads.

Does this make me a "prayer warrior" or anything like that?

I doubt it.

Am I patting myself on the back?

Sort of.

As I see it, it's important, and it's good to pray for him, this way ... to offer him up to God, value-free, without prejudice, wish or desire, trusting God in the matter.

Four days into it, it was easier this morning to pray for Franklin Graham.

Jesus my LORD.

Return Prayer to Schools?

Someone sent a petition my way to "return prayer to schools." Here's what I wrote:


There's plenty of prayer in school - teachers pray, and so do students and their families. We don't need "organized" prayer - who's to write it, say it, and what will it be? Generic prayers to some space-deity? Patriotic prayers? A Muslim prayer? A Jewish prayer? Pentecostal prayer, in tongues? A justice-prayer by a justice-seeking Christian? We have more than enough prayer in our schools. What we don't have is adequate funding, because, for some strange reason, we lack the will to care for all the children. I pray that we will decide again that all our children are really important, and decide to fund American education as it once was funded, fully, for all the arts and sciences, building maintenance, decent salaries and benefits, and all the needed supplies, with adequate social support - jobs and living wages, health-care and bringing our soldiers home. These are things we can do, and they would mean the world to our children.