What Are you Doing Up There?
A Reflection on What Prayer Asks of Us
I've been asked it over a dozen of times since Kaaren and I came: "What are you doing up there during the time of silence? What's going on when your head is bowed and your eyes are shut, and you're looking so pious?!"
Usually, I respond by saying, "Well it's certainly obvious what you're doing: Looking up at and wondering about us!"
Today I want to give a more full reply.
Simply put, I catch my breath. I notice it, often for the first time in that entire week. And that surprises me, every single time, it surprises me--not that I am breathing, but that for the first time in a week, I'm actually taking a moment to do nothing but breathe.
Then because we've carved out this time to do it together, I force myself to stick with it, to keep myself still and quiet so that I'm really listening to my breathing, and to the quiet.
Which--not always, but often--begins to speak. Not with words, as much as with what I'd call movement and motion, with a push and pull coming from someplace deep. Like when your empty stomach talks to you by growling. It's a voice that speaks in the language of hunger, of longing.
With my head bowed, my eyes shut, my feet firmly planted on the ground, I notice--again, usually for the first time that week--a longing coming from someplace deep.
Now, "Is this prayer?" It's a fair question of course. But today, I'm not going to answer it. At least not directly. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the line I stopped trying to figure out exactly what prayer is. It now seems fine to me to just let people define it however they need to for themselves. So in conversations like these, it's easier for me to talk about silence and stillness and deep listening, because I do know what that is. And, even more importantly, I know I need it. And that without it, I feel lost.
So, today, on this final Sunday of our month long look at prayer, I want to invite us to talk and think a bit about deep listening and also being lost.
For me that discussion begins by going back to collage--to my Junior year abroad. I was studying in Belgium. It was Easter break--a full four weeks off, which I used to travel all over Europe. I had been told that the Easter festivals in Spain were the best. And as a college kid, going where the best parties were easily won out over all other options.
And indeed, Spain did have the best parties. But then the day before Easter came. "What are we doing!" my friend and I asked ourselves. Who knows when we will get the chance to be in Europe again, if ever. On Easter we should be in Rome. Forget the parties. We need to check out the Pope!
Which is all to say, that your minister wasn't completely shallow and self-focused during his college years. There was also a seeker in me, or at least developing in me. So this wasn't just a "cultural outing" for me, a cool thing to do, another over-seas experience to check off my list. Like a good Unitarian, I was hoping to find something.
But it was late in the game--only 24 hours from Easter morning. No time to waste. We spent all of those 24 hours train hopping from Spain, across southern France, arriving in Rome just as the sun was starting to come up. We headed straight for Vatican city, along with what seemed like the rest of Europe! Literally millions of people crowed into and were making their way through the streets. So by the time our wave made it to Vatican city, the holy city's plaza was already packed full. The only spot available to stand was right on the outskirts of the plaza gates--leaving us in this tiny wedge, this slime sliver of a sidewalk that ran right between the Vatican plaza and the long line of shops and restaurants that circled the holy city.
In many ways it was the best seat in the house. Everything was in front of us. The entire amazing scene. Way up in front was the Pope, perched three stories up on a gorgeous balcony surrounded by bishops from all over the world, looking down on a sea of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of faithful followers, and saying an Easter prayer in all the languages of the world.
That's right, the same prayer, just over and over in another language each time. And as the Pope finished each version, you could see a portion of the sea erupt in applause, "Amens" and hands reaching into the air--each erupting section being people from the country whose language he had just spoken.
The Pope's prayer was one of great assurance, thanking God on behalf of his followers for sending his son so that they might have eternal life, so that they might have a means of escaping this world of struggle and resting ultimately and eternally in a divine transcendent realm.
The cheers and crying affirmed that the crowd had found exactly what it was looking for.
And then I turned around, to literally an entirely different world.
It was actually a tap on the shoulder that caused me to turn. "Hey, you want? You need?" asked a small and round man pushing a cart--a cart filled entirely (and I'm not making this up) with "Pope paraphernalia."
Right there before my eyes were Pope T-shirts, Pope jewelry, Pope postcards, Pope lollipops--yes, you heard right--lollipops, like those giant, swirled, flat circular lollipops you get at Disneyworld. This man had dozens of them--all with the Pope's face somehow imprinted on front in strikingly white sugar.
And to top it all off, his prize item: Pope-on-a-Rope! A large bar of soap on a string, also with the Pope's face imprinted-I don't know maybe miraculously--right-smack on it. And imprinted on the other side a gorgeous scene of the holy city!
Just think of it, you don't have to leave your memories of the Pope behind. You can take them home and wash with them every morning!!
Ok, this is not what the man said--that part I made up--but it was the tone of the entire scene. This man and his cart were not alone. The street was filled with similar carts and booths. "Pope paraphernalia" everywhere you looked. And right then is when it hit me: my unique position in between two worlds, neither of which was offering what I was looking for. On the one side of me was a world lost in otherworldly aspirations. And on the other side was a world equally lost in purchasing and making a quick buck.
And me? On my tiny little sliver of a sidewalk? Well I just felt lost.
Which, as odd as it sounds, was not an entirely bad thing, because it clarified for me that this was not where I wanted to be. The large gap between what I hungered for and what I had in front of me made it clear that I wanted to live somewhere different.
And friends, it seems to me that, whether we call it prayer or meditation or contemplation or even just plain old setting aside a time of quiet, this is the same thing that often comes to us when we turn inward and listen deeply. This story of mine, of being stuck between the Pope and the Pope-on-a-Rope, is not just my story and it's not just limited to that day a number of years back. It happens regularly for each of us more often than we'd like to admit. A quiet moment comes upon us and jars us into looking around and noticing-maybe even for the first time in a long time--that the loudest voices surrounding our lives are not our own, and that this is not how we want it to be.
In other words, our moments of quiet and the accompanying call of our deepest longings come to us as a challenge.
Which is why I don't think any of us come this morning really wanting or needing to be convinced of a new way of thinking about prayer or contemplation. That work has already been done. We already experience "looking inward" as a moment of challenge. What we're looking for by being here, frankly, is a motivational kick in the pants to follow up and act on that challenge.
There's an African folktale. It's one of my favorites. It tells of an American trader that docked his ship in an African port and hired natives to carry goods inland on their backs for bartering with other indigenous people for their produce. Day after day he got the men up early and walked them until late at night, always thinking of how much more profit he could make if he could shorten the time that his boat stood empty in the harbor.
One morning the trader got up and found the hired natives sitting quietly in a circle. The trader urged them to get up quickly and get started down the trail, but no one moved. After a long pause, the leader of the group announced decisively, "No sir, we're going to sit still and wait until our souls catch up with our bodies!"
That's it isn't? This decisive commitment to sitting still so that our souls will catch up with our bodies. That's what, when we are most awake, we envy in others and want in our lives.
And it's not hard at all to figure out why. Mary Oliver, the poet we heard during our readings, has another poem called "West Wind." In it, I think, she gives voice to that voice in all of us when we are at our best. "Listen to me," she writes, "You know everything. You leap into the boat and row. But listen to me. There is life without love. But it is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. Listen to me. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days buried." Who of us would disagree. Deep down we know it. A dead dog nine days buried. This is what it feels like when we live lives in which our souls are not given a chance to catch up with our bodies.
And besides being a phrase of warning, it's also a phrase of assurance. I don't want us to lose sight of that. "Waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies" also reminds us that it's not all left up to us. "Waiting for your soul to catch up" implies that our souls remain in pursuit even when we leave them behind--that our deepest longings don't forget about us, even when we forget about them.
A church member recently shared a great story that speaks to this. She talked about how, for so long, her passion for art was not a part of her life. It was just too difficult to figure out how to fit it in. "You've heard the record, the broken record" she said: "Bills to pay, mouths to feed, too unrealistic, I won't be good enough, Just a silly dream." So she kept on with her lifeless day job and employed the "R.I.D. method" to keep her love of art at bay. "Rid?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "Rid. R...I....D...Repress, Ignore and Deny."
And, smiling she said, "Generally it worked!" Then after a pause: "But eventually it catches up with you. Depression takes over, or something else. What you love and need to do just doesn't let up, until, that is, you finally give in and acknowledge that your loves just don't go away."
She is now a "mostly" full-time artist. And yes, her kids have a smaller house than they might otherwise and their mouths don't get fed restaurant food as often as they would if she'd kept her day job, but mostly they and she are all just fine.
They are, she says with a smile, all just fine.
But that's the thing, though, isn't it? When it comes to letting your deepest longings lead your life, we all worry about and imagine that it won't work out "all just fine." For a whole bunch of complicated reasons, we worry that following the voice we hear in our quiet prayerful moments will wreck everything, make things fall apart, cause change that will turn out to be just too hard to handle, for everyone. Sermons about following our bliss or listening to that still small voice inside usually, we know, paint a picture that is all too sweet and easy. All bliss, no bruises. All embracing the new, no honest accounting for what we have to leave behind or forgo.
And that's not fair. Nor is it true.
So today, I think we all need to acknowledge that, yes indeed, prayer is dangerous. Yes, listening deeply and following the voice you find there is a great risk. As Mary Oliver said in the poem Kaaren read, "On the day you finally knew what you had to do...the whole house began to tremble." It's also why Oliver described the journey as a "wild night." It's not always clear where it will lead. "Before praying," wrote the great Jewish rabbi Baal Shem, "a person should be prepared to die."
And yet as scary as that makes it sound, we know from experience and from the experience of others, that this dying--as my artist friend made clear--just isn't all that terrible.
I think of something the Dalai Lama recently said.
In a question and answer period after one of his talks, he was asked about his smile. "Your holiness, you're always smiling. What makes that so?" asked the audience member. With an even bigger smile, the Dalai Lama replied, "Oh, I smile, not because everything in my life is happy or has gone well, but because I'm me."
It's one of those characteristically super simple "Dalai Lama replies" that can drive you crazy. We overly intellectual Unitarians want it to be much more complicated than that, but it just isn't.
Yes, listening to your inner voice and deepest longings will have significant consequences.
Yes, giving up a good paying, albeit boring day job to pursue your passion will make life more complicated and full of sacrifice.
Yes, opening yourself to the desire for a new relationship after betrayal leaves you vulnerable to more hurt.
Yes, living out your environmental values will force you to give up things and wrestle with ugly feelings of resenting others who have more than you.
Yes, following the beat of a different drum will isolate you and sometimes leave you lonely.
But in the end you will be you.
And with that accomplished, you'll be just fine. Even better than fine.
It is, indeed, as simple as that.
In the poem Kaaren read earlier, Mary Oliver made sure to include the wonderful phrase "Little by little, as you left that old life behind, the stars began to burn."
That's no small thing.
She's talking about life coming alive.
And if that's the result of praying, and listening to our prayers, then it seems like an awfully good deal to me.
Let's get to it.
Amen.
March 25, 2007