Keep it simple

Wednesday night I watched my granddaughter praying.

I had dropped off some cookies at my son and daughter-in-law's new apartment, something I could never do when, until two weeks ago, they lived 500 miles away. When I arrived that evening, they were  putting my 17-month-old granddaughter to bed.  Good timing on my part, I would say.  Soon the little one was hugging me tight as we rocked in the chair in her room, keeping the beat as I sang through a long list of songs, lullabies and a hymn or two.   She was very still for a very long time.

Sure that she was asleep, I laid her down in her crib.  Immediately her eyes popped open wide with a betrayed look, and for a minute she did not move, just looked around with her concentrating frown at what was still a strange new room.

Suddenly the arms reached out.  When that had no effect on me, since I was trying to be the responsible adult saying it was time to sleep, she then demonstratively sat up.  And when that did not accomplish what she needed from her grammom, she started to whimper with displeasure.  Now this toddler has no concept of God yet, but she has already learned the first lesson of prayer: trust the one to whom we pray.  She, more than I, trusted that the one who loved her would not leave her alone in a strange dark place.

What’s a grammom to do?

What's God to do for that matter?

Lord, teach us to pray, said Jesus' disciples one day.  They had heard that John the Baptist's followers had received a workshop on prayer from their teacher and now Jesus' disciples wanted to hear Jesus' version. They certainly knew Jesus went off to pray a lot.  How did he pray?

So Jesus told his followers something quite unique: to pray to Abba.  Papa.  Not Creator-of-the-Universe.  Not Ruler of-all-nations.  But to Abba---our good and dear parent.  Father.  The heart of Jesus' prayer is an intimate, trusting, close relationship---like a child in the arms of a loving parent.  In prayer we are children, and in prayer our Abba is not going to leave us alone in a strange dark place.  Prayer is trusting talk (sometimes wordless) with our Abba.

The second thing I notice about Jesus' teaching on prayer is that he kept it simple. (Luke 11:1-4) Hear the simplicity of Jesus' petitions: Give us bread today.  Forgive us as we forgive.  Save us in hard times.  He said it simply.  There is nothing hard or involved about his prayer.  It is as simple, really, as one of us wordlessly reaching up one's arms to the trusted One.

Why do we pastors seem to make prayer much more complicated and fancy?  Ecclesiastically verbose, if you will.  And why do those of us sitting in the pews or chairs think our prayers are not good enough to pray out loud?

Lord, teach us to pray, queried the disciples.

Are my prayers more complex than necessary?  Probably.  While at times I have been told my praying is comforting and people are grateful, maybe it is more about the fact I am praying than what I say in those prayers.  Have in the end my prayers also been intimidating?  Do people in the congregation prefer me to pray rather than risk their own words in comparison?  If for my part I have unwittingly led the congregation to think that prayer, particularly community prayer, takes special training, I have not been a good teacher.

Last Wednesday, standing beside a crib, I was not asking:  Lord,teach me to pray.  But suddenly he was inviting:  Elaine, how would you like me to teach you something about prayer since you are intending to preach on Sunday.  This has been his crib-side teaching: That simply raising my arms to Abba is quite enough.  That the Lord receives my simple wordless plea with his arms open wide as well.

A missed connection

Somehow I missed an important connection.  I've known that "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was a 1940 novel written by Hemingway and that "No Man Is an Island" was a song of the 60's and 70's (with rather sappy lyrics, by the way).  But how did I miss that these two titles, now common phrases, were originally written by a 16th-17th century English poet and priest?  Not only that, but these familiar phrases are part of a collection of meditations or brief sermons?  Here are those two phrases originating in John Donne's Meditation XVII.

No man is an island, entire of itself.  Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.  Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.  And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.    —John Donne (1572-1631)

You can read the one page meditation here.  And you can read the article that made the connection for me here.

In a time of human history when there was plenty of war, terrible disease and religious divisions, John Donne speaks of the deep way humankind is connected to one another.  He also speaks in the paragraphs before and after the one quoted above of how we are all connected in the universal Church.  We are all a part of the Church (the body of Christ) and if one dies, a piece of me dies too.  Hence the bell tolls.

How timely is this?  Or is it simply timeless?  Stalled debates in our governments.  Wars around the world.  World economies reacting to each others' news.  Some people starving while others are overfed.  The tense balance between human consumption and the planet's health.  Instant connection to people around the world via the web.

On a smaller scale, in my little playing field, Lutheran congregations are learning that they need each other to do mission together.  And some Christians are realizing that no one can be an effective messenger of the good news of Christ all on their own.  Didn't Jesus send the followers out by twos (Luke 10)?  We truly need one another, whether that happens in a formal or informal way, to grow in faith...a concept that runs counter to the "I'm-spiritual-so-I'll-just-do-my-own-thing" idea.

Donne addressed all this centuries ago.  Except Donne puts it so much more poetically:  that if a clod of dirt were washed into the sea, Europe would be the lesser.  That when I hear a church bell tolling a death, a piece of me dies too.  That no man is an island; we just think and act like we are sometimes.  When are times when you have sensed that profound connection with the whole that Donne is writing about?