Pray what you can, not what you can’t. That’s where we start. In our lifetimes we may experience many kinds of prayer – childhood prayers of thanks and good night, traditional prayers from scripture and from church liturgy, responsive prayers read by the congregation during worship, and public prayers at meetings, inaugurations, weddings, graduations – all kinds of prayers. Some may work for us, some may have worked well for a time; some may never have resonated.

I’ve been through all those prayer transitions in my life. I remember childhood prayers kneeling by my bed before I went to sleep. I remember the traditional routine repetitive prayers of my Lutheran church. I remember joining two United Church of Christ congregations in New England during the sixties and seventies and rejoicing in prayers that addressed the issues of war and racism and social justice.

And I remember a Sunday morning at the end of a UCG Retreat when the current church Moderator said something very affirming to me about my leadership of that Retreat and gave me a hug – and I burst into tears and then could hardly stop crying. It took me a while to understand what those tears were about. Several weeks later, Larry and I were planning our cross-country summer sabbatical, including six weeks of study at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. As we were registering, I noticed a course entitled “Prayer, Fatigue and Spiritual Burn Out.” Without a moment’s hesitation, I signed up for it – and honestly it was because I focused immediately on the words Fatigue and Spiritual Burn out, realizing that was an accurate description of where I was and what those tears were about. I just thought that the prayer part would probably be ok.

The truth is: it was the prayer part that saved me. The kinds of prayer I named moments ago are valid and important. But there was a significant piece missing from my spiritual life: a way to pray that opened me to the Spirit, a holistic and healing way to pray for myself and others. Flora Wuellner, who taught this course, calls this depth prayer. With that new understanding of prayer, I gave up praying as I can’t. I gave up prayers that strain for elaborate words; I gave up prayers that serve guilt; I gave up prayers that offer diagnosis or formulaic prescriptions.

In the process, I’ve had to look at who or what I was offering my prayers to. God is a word I use to represent what I believe is the source and the power of creation, the sacred energy of life, of love and compassion, of wholeness and healing. There are many names and many words – and perhaps there are no adequate words – to describe that mystery. It is what our UCG Compact affirms so seriously – that we each worship God, however that mystery is known – or not known – to us individually.

Prayer takes us to another place – Prayer is a responsive action, responding to that sacred energy which is always there.

Readers – 9:15: Diane Farris, Andy Ingram; 11:15: Jerry Steinberg, Talia Raymond

Prayer is not doing but being. Prayer is not words but the beyond-the-words experience of being in the presence of an energy both within and beyond yourself. ~ Kathleen Norris

All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge and walking across that bridge,
we are aloft as on a springboard above landscapes the color of ripe gold
transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. ~ Czeslaw Milosz
Prayer is the opening of the self to God. It is the persistent effort toward openness and receptivity, for there is strength in you, greater than any strength of your own. ~ G. Vlatos

Prayer is not asking for things, not even the best things. Prayer is going where they are.
~ G. Heard

Prayer is not asking for things, not even the best things. Prayer is going where they are. It is an experience of plugging into that connection to the Spirit, being in the place within and beyond me that soaks my soul and my body and my heart with grace and renewal. We each can find that connection in our own ways: in stillness, in meditation, in nature, in music, in poetry, in art, in movement, in dreams. There are many paths for this kind of connection, many opening doors that can move us to that beyond-words-experience of being in the presence of something greater than ourselves, more compassionate and loving than ourselves, a sacred energy of wholeness and healing.

When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,
where the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with fore-thought of grief. I come into the presence
of still water and I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light.
For a time, I rest in the grace of the world and am free. ~ Wendell Berry

In the hours before the birds stream airborne with chiming voice, a silent breath
rests in the pines and upholds the surface of the lake as if it were a bubble
in the very hands of God. And I think – This is how we are called: to cup our hands
and hold this peace, even when sorrow cries out, even when words grow fangs.
Cupped hands gently open supporting peace, like the golden hollow of a singing bowl,
like the towering rim of mountains cradling this slumbering misty valley,
Taking us to another place. ~ Kimberly Beyer-Nelson

I believe that bridge to prayer is always there. It is I, it is we, who are often missing, often blocked or distracted. In that way, prayer is opening oneself to the spirit, coming into the presence of still waters, cupping our hands and breathing, resting in grace that takes us to that other place.

Be still, says the Psalmist. Be still and know. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know that I am with you. Be still, be.

Chant – “Open My Heart”

b– In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 13: 33, Jesus says: The kingdom of heaven is like this: A woman takes some yeast and mixes it with a bushel of flour until the whole batch of dough rises.

I pray because I believe that prayer allows the divine yeast to be released into the world, to bubble and rise and work, like the yeast in the parable. I pray because I believe that through the rising yeast of prayer, change happens. I can’t explain why or how that change happens, and I can’t predict what that change will be. I only know that, when I pray, opening my heart and my soul, something changes. It certainly changes things for me.

Prayer is not a way to get what we want to happen, like the remote control. When we pray, we don’t so much change the world as we change ourselves. We stop trying to control life and remember that we belong to life. Prayer is a movement from mastery to mystery. When we pray, we don’t always change what is outside of us, but we change in some way what is inside of ourselves. We don’t change life as much as we change our experiences of life. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

I forget this at times when I drift away and there are lapses in my praying. I have to call myself back to prayer. I try to do that gently without recriminations, the way I used to put my arm around my sons when they were toddlers, shepherding them back to where they needed to be.

One reason I love to lead Advent and Lenten Contemplative Prayer at UCG is that it gives me the opportunity during two spiritual seasons to bring myself fully back to my practice of prayer. The usual way I pray for myself is to create a breath prayer: a one sentence prayer that identifies my intention during that day or week or season. I have learned not to be too global or grand about this, but to let it be simple. The breath prayer works for me in difficult times, like the six weeks when I was with Larry during his treatment for prostate cancer. And it works in ordinary times as well.

For instance, this Lent I am trying to unplug from annoyance. I’ve noticed how often I’ve been annoyed lately: at the news, at something that’s going on around me that I can’t control, or someone in my family, or at myself. Annoyance is taking up too much of my time and attention. I know enough, however, not to pray that I may never be annoyed again. Instead I am practicing awareness of what is annoying and then praying to let that annoyance slide away without clinging to me.

About a week ago, I had a day where there were more annoying things than I could count in the morning, including listening to and talking back to the latest political tweets. In the afternoon, in the parking lot on my way out of Publix, I dropped a bag of groceries with a dozen eggs in it, which of course all broke. When I got home, after cleaning up the egg mess, I started putting the groceries into the refrigerator. The shelf on the refrigerator door inexplicably fell to the floor, taking with it every condiment we had, including a huge jar of raspberry jam and a full jar of pickles with juice, all breaking and spilling over the kitchen floor that I had mopped just before I went to Publix, in preparation for Larry’s sister and husband flying into Gainesville from Virginia Beach to visit us, and I had to pick them up at the airport and drive them to our house before I left for church to lead contemplative prayer. I got here, still feeling quite annoyed. I tried to settle down, and it finally occurred to me to use my breath prayer – “As annoying as things were today, may I let that annoyance not cling to me tonight.” And, after a few times, it helped.

I commend this practice to you: one sentence of intention, some focused breathing, throughout the day and the week. And you can add to it, if you wish, the word you use for the holy. It works for me; it helps me change my perspective and it keeps me grounded in my intention.

I believe in praying for others by simply holding a person in light and in grace without prescriptive answers or assumptions. I pray for the whole person, and I release the end results because I’m not in charge of end results. Who am I to think that I know what the best results are? Often the healing that is needed is part of a much larger picture than the obvious situation that I see. I am simply doing my part by helping to release the divine yeast.

When I am going about my daily life and a person comes to mind, I take that as a sign to pray for them. Just saying their name can be a prayer, because if I don’t know what that person needs, I can be sure that God does.
~ Kathleen Norris

I invite you to try this now. Think of a person in your life whom you would like to pray for. Take a deep breath in and out – visualize this person surrounded by light – held in light – and send love and healing within that light to them.

“The Angel” – Hannah Norton and Mark Burlingame
“In the arms of the angel, may you find some comfort here.”

Sometimes the healing that happens takes years. I am estranged from my niece Susan who broke off contact with me in 2007 on the heels of her father’s – my brother’s – nasty painful divorce. For several years, I tried again and again to restore something of my relationship with her, to no avail. At times I was so angry and so hurt that I felt like completely withdrawing. But Susan has a child, my great niece Kate, and I want Kate to know that she has family on her grandfather’s side who care about her. So I send Kate small presents on Christmas and on her birthday, sometimes with notes and pictures of my immediate family. Now that Kate is older and can write, I receive short perfunctory thank you notes addressed to “Mrs. Reimer”. This month, for her birthday, I sent Kate a game via Amazon, but Amazon would not include a gift card. So I sent an e-mail to Susan explaining that the Amazon package coming for Kate was from me. Two days later, I got an e-mail reply from Susan – the first in years – calling me “Aunt Sandy”, thanking me for sending the gift, and telling me how much she had enjoyed my Christmas note. My friends, I don’t know if this is a one-time miraculous moment, or if a window is opening up a bit for the future.

I do know that I have prayed for Susan, holding her in light, and perhaps more importantly, I have prayed for myself throughout these 12 years, praying to keep my heart open to her in case some day she or Kate could reach back to me. Those prayers have soothed my pain and my anger and helped me to remain present to the possibility of healing in whatever form it might come.

I spent some years of my life not praying because I wasn’t sure that anything would happen as a result of my prayers. Now I pray in order to allow the possibility that something may happen as a result of my prayers. I used to pray like this, with my hands closed, holding tight to what I thought should happen. Now I pray like this, with my hands open, being open to whatever healing and grace can arise for me to receive and as well praying that I may be a channel of God’s light.

E. Forrester Church writes, “The mystery of God will remain a mystery, which is, I suppose as it should be. Yet when I open myself to God in prayer, incrementally my wholeness is restored. Perhaps what I call the mystery of God is also the mystery of life itself. I cannot know nor do I care, because the power that emanates from deep within the heart of this mystery is redemptive.” May it be so – Amen.

Sandy Reimer

Sunday, March 31, 2019