Praytell

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

When I rode my bicycle to church this morning, I needed gloves.  Twenty degrees will do that.  When I returned home, I didn’t need them.  The air had warmed, the ice patches on the bike highway for which our city is justifiably proud had puddles of melted water around them.

So did my heart.

All morning long it warmed.

Our discussions:  When is the first time in your life you knew there was such a thing as meaning?  When did meaning find a group?  What is your call?  The room was filled with quiet conversation, laughter, and curiosity as one story led to another.

Then church.

The band played–a bass, two guitars, a flugelhorn all played and we just sang along. 

The sermon began.  Louis spoke of the revolution in El Salvador, when nobody knew if they would live or die.  When a soldier aimed a rifle at his mother, she lifted a bible.  The rifle lowered.  Such is the power of symbol.

Church ends, coffee begins, and so does dance.  A small group learning to lean one into another to build trust. 

I leave with a warm heart, grateful for the morning.

It was not all that long ago that such a morning would have been all but impossible for me.  For several years, after the strokes, I struggled to keep up with all the activity of a church service.  In those days, I’d walk the sidewalks doing one errand or another in an attempt to be useful.  Along the way, I’d see a steeple.

“I’m here,” it said.  “Someday you’ll return.  But for now, just know that I’m here.”

It was enough to lower the sense of loss.

Just a steeple.  That’s all.

It marked something sacred.  It marked a place of singing, a place of meaning, a place that struggled week after week to overcome despair with hope, and to bring a sense of coherence to a chaotic world.

We need symbol.

They bring depth and life to our lives.

For me, for several years, the steeple was enough.

And so, riding home in the last day of February thaw, my hear is warmed.

“I’m here,” the steeple once said.

“Me too,” I said this morning.

And you too.

Thank you.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

“I want you to see this movie,” my wife said.

“Okay,” I said with a tone of voice that meant, “Not now.  Not tomorrow.”

“Really.”

“Okay,” I responded still intent on delay.

We did not have a television at the time.  She had a laptop computer that confused me every time I touched it.  The thought of holding this little screen with confusing directions, warnings, buttons, F11 ALT SHIFT CONTROL F25, ESC Command, it was just a bridge too far.

I am wary of film, perhaps because they sear themselves into my imagination with such power that I cannot forget them.  I dream about them, have nightmares from them.  I have yet to see a single Vietnam war film–Platoon, Deer Hunter, and so on.  I’m not proud of that, it’s just true.

And so, seeing a film on a tiny computer was not at the top of my list.

“What’s it about?” I asked my wife.

“Birds,” she said.

“Sounds like Hitchcock,” I said.

“It’s called Winged Migration, and I really want you to see it.”

I agreed.  She brought it to me on morning before I was fully awake.  It was in the first year after my strokes, when recovery seemed ephemeral at best and the sense of grief was deeper than I could have imagined.

The film began.  There were virtually no words.  The few that were there were in French, so I could understand them.  There, somewhere in southern France, a small stream flowed through the countryside.  A few ducks paddled in the water.  A few songbirds jumped from branch to branch.

And then the ducks took flight.  Together they took flight.  Together they headed north.  Suddenly we are no longer on the ground.  We are aloft, flying with them on their winged migration.  We fly with the geese.  We fly with the ducks.  We fly with the cranes, the hummingbirds.  Over and over their wings lift and then push.  Below them is an expanse of ocean, the mountain ranges of Greenland, the Alps, the Sahara.

The beauty of their flight touched my soul.  With every ounce of strength they migrated, not once but twice–to the Arctic and then back to France.  Most of them made it.  But some did not.  They could not make it through the storm.  One scene shows a Navy destroyer plowing through a fierce storm.  Suddenly, an exhausted duck drops to its deck and takes refuge over a heating vent.  In an instant it is asleep, trying to gather strength.

Towards the end of the film the scene shows a boat heading down the Amazon river.  Its engine makes a steady sound.  On its deck there is a cage, and in that cage there is a large parrot.  The parrot is being taken to market.  It will soon become a pet.  Somebody will make some money.

The parrot tries to get out of the wooden cage.  It knows where the door is.  But the door is latched with a twig.  Relentlessly, over and over again, the parrot tries to unhook the door, only to fail each time.  The boat’s engine keeps up its relentless sound as it heads downstream.  Finally, the twig gives way.  The door opens.  The parrot jumps out and takes wing.

I am in tears.  Recovery has an image.

Lent.

We are once again aware of the cages that so easily contain us.  For 40 days we look for meaning in the migration of our lives.

We too are part of a great migration.

We are once again aware of hope.

In Lent we keep trying to grasp the latch that we too will once again take wing.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I have taken my mother and father to lunch at Denny’s restaurant.  There is a Starbucks just across the parking lot, but the waitress assures me that Denny’s coffee is just as good.  And besides, they have omelets and burgers.

The silverware is wrapped in large paper napkins.  We unroll them, and settle in for a late lunch.  The conversation moves in sentences, rather than paragraphs.  We zig zag, sparking memories as we do.  No single thought can last for long.

My mother, would like an egg.  “I haven’t had an egg since we moved!” she says to the waitress.  “They don’t serve them where we live.”

“Well, welcome to Denny’s” the waitress says as she pours our coffee.

My dad and I both know that the nursing home would be pleased to serve an egg for breakfast, and that chances are pretty good the cooks know how to do that.  But no matter.  We cling to the pure pleasure of ordering a single egg, over easy, and a piece of toast.

We begin to talk religion, just a bit.  The talk is not about dogmas, the exact and precise meaning of God, or the divinity and the humanity of Jesus.  Instead, we talk about the hymns and what they teach.  She wants her choir boys to hear the words.  To really hear them.  To take them to heart.

Then.

A shift.

“My parents,” she said.  “I was told they died a long time ago.”  There is sadness in her voice, mingled with astonishment, as if to say, “How could that be?”  Then, “Why didn’t I know?”  Dad and I look at each other, and back to her.  She knew, of course.  Her brother Bill made the call, so did her brother Hal.  The whole family gathered around, as families do at such times.

And then, speaking with a depth of clarity, and an ocean of recognition, she spoke these words:

“I have one single place that nobody else can be–I am their only daughter.”

I reached for a napkin, and wrote down the words that took my breath away.  It was a holy moment.  Her words were a sermon to us all, a sermon that we “know about” but can’t really hear until the time is right.

Each one of us has one single place in our family that nobody else can be.

We have but one oldest son.  Tim is the only oldest son we have.

We have but one set of identical twins:  Ben and Andy are the only twins we have.

We have but one daughter.  Emily, our youngest, is the only daughter we have.

Each has a name.  Truly God calls us by name.

And each has a place.  And truly God sets a place for us at the table.

In name and place we find our essence.

I look at the soft napkin beside me as I type these words, realizing how beautiful a sermon can be when confusion makes way for undistracted truth.

“One single place that nobody else can be–their only daughter.”

The waitress brought the bill.  We left a generous tip.  She didn’t rush things when the ordering took longer than expected.  And she didn’t mind when I reached for a clean napkin to record spiritual dictation.

What’s true of my mother of course, is true true for you as well.

You too are called by name and given a place.

And so it is we speak of our essence in these days of Lent 2010.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Shadows and Light

Madison, Wisconsin

I enter the memory care unit, and find it a home.

First the code to unlock the door that keeps wanderers from wandering through the thickets of dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Then the hallway, with windows looking out over a garden whose gentle drifts of snow are four or five feet high.

Then searching a bit for the room of my mother and father.  Each room has a small memory case outside the door.  Some have photographs, some have mementos.  No, that wouldn’t be them.  Neither would that.  But the next one brings me home.  There is a piece of petrified wood, thick as a hand, and a imprint of a pine cone several million years old pressed into pale volcanic ash.  There is the medal my mother received for founding and directing the Madison Boy Choir.  There is a picture of my three brothers and me, taken on my dad’s 90th birthday.  I’m home.

Through the walls, and the doors, I hear my mother playing hymns from what I am sure is the Quaker hymnal.  One after another.  Great is Thy Faithfulness, There Is a Balm in Gilead, Steal Away, Steal Away, Steal Away to Jesus.

I enter the room, my dad reading the Economist, and mom playing the hymns.

“I’m working on these for the choir,” she says.  “They know the music, I think they’ll like it, but its the words that count.  The words.  Who is going to teach them the words?  Who talks to them about these things?”

It has been more than 20 years since she has had the choir that blended the voices of boy sopranos with ethereal beauty.  One doesn’t just “sing,” she might have said.  One “sings!”  With an abundance of spirit, soul, purpose,  poise, and  love.

I dare not break the spell.  There is no reason to.  The choir, those hymns, and those lines that await rehearsal in all of our lives, they are so deeply ensconced in her heart and in her hands nothing, and no one, could pry them away from their own reality.  To say, “Mom, there is no choir” would be a great lie.

There are “Angels Hovering Around.”  The chariot is indeed swinging low to carry us home.  We sing a few lines, emphasizing the last stanza, “How great thou art!  How great thou art!”  She has written the lines in a notebook she’ll give to the kids.  “How great thou art” is underlined.

If hymns were all we had, we would know just about all there is to know about God.  And, knowing it, we would sing it.

Share it.

Love it.

Lead it.

Rehearse it.

I’m home.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

From time to time the wise suggest simple answers to complex problems.  As they do, the “realists” say, “Get real.”

I am struck by memory, a headline, and an experience.

The memory is brief.  The Dalai Lama came to New York City when I was consulting with the Council of Churches in the City of New York.  He came to a breakfast, and offered to answer a few questions.  I will never forget that I did not understand a single word of his prayer, but I caught the careful, and profound essence of atonement, prayer, and hope. Someone then asked him about world peace.

He said that if it was up to him, he’d have the leaders of the United States and Russia, who were then cold-war adversaries, go on a retreat together with their grandchildren.  They would cook food together, do the dishes together, laugh together, play together, and talk together.  Negotiations are one thing:  doing dishes with an enemy is quite another, and a better way to break the ice.

Then I read that Evan Bayh is leaving the Senate, which he found to be a house of ideology rather than a deliberative body.  His suggestion?  Once a month, the senators should get together just to have lunch.  Just to catch up.  Just to break bread.  Just to talk shop.  Just to confide.  Just to connect, eye to eye, face to face, hand to hand.

I have noticed, over the years that church retreats, especially youth retreats, tend to be stuck in a rut.  Kids arrive.  Chaperons arrive.  Everyone sleeps a on a hard floor.  The chaperons turn instantly into cooks and cops.  In the morning there are no showers.  Exhausted, there is no way to wake up sore and begin to trudge through another day.

In Minnesota, and Montana, we did it another way.  We farmed the kids and adults out to the houses of church members.  Each member hosted five or six kids, prepared them breakfast, offered them a cozy place to sleep, and let them clean up in the morning.  There was talk.  Everyone did dishes.  It brought us together.  When we did a banquet at church for the kids, maybe 25 or so church members cooked it and served it with a white towel on their arm. We knew each other.  We cared for each other.  We enjoyed the pleasure of each others’ company.  It was full of life.

I have been to many retreats in my life.  At the best ones, we all do the dishes.  We all sweep the floors.  We scrape the plates.  We dry the dishes.  When this is done for us something elemental is missing.  Hospitality and change, it turns out, means creating a shared experience.

The Dalai Lama, Senator Bayh, and small churches in Big Timber, Montana, and Grand Marais, Minnesota were — and are — on to something.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I had heard the quietly heroic story of paperclips.  During the Nazi occupation of Denmark and Norway, those who would not buy into the ideology of purity and violence, began to wear paperclips.  They’d have a piece of paper in their shirt or coat pocket, held by a mere paperclip.  Its presence allowed them to say, “Oh, you’re a resister too.”  It took a while for the Nazis to catch on.  After all, securing a piece of paper to one’s coat on a windy day doesn’t seem like much of a crime.  They did not realize at first that it was a heart-felt symbol of resistance.  Eventually they cracked down, as the adherents of ideological purity always do.

Then, while in Tennessee sometime last year I saw a video about an elementary school that decided to notice the racial and economic tensions in their own town.  They wanted to do a unit on tolerance, acceptance, and change.  The teacher shared with them the story of the paperclip.  So they studied the role of paperclips during WWII.

And then somebody had an idea.  “Why don’t we write letters to people who were in the war and ask them to send us a paperclip?  Why don’t we write holocaust survivors and ask them to send us a paperclip?  Why don’t we write anybody we can think of and ask them to send us a paperclip.”

So they did.  Paperclips began to arrive.  Thousands arrived.  Hundreds of thousands arrived.  Millions arrived.  The Post Office didn’t know what to do with all of them.  They had to make a special facility just to handle all of the paperclips.  Millions of people were saying, “We’re with you.  We also believe in the guidance of our higher angels.”

I knew this, and was both impressed and moved.

And then the image began to move through my imagination.  Paperclips.  They keep things together.  In any order, they keep things together.  If we have ten pages held together by a paperclips, we can shift the order of those pages any time we’d like by just pushing the clip to the side, and then sliding it back on.

Staples don’t do that.  If you staple two pieces of paper, the only way to get them apart is to rip them apart.  Now I know that OfficeMax sells staple removers.  They do work, if you force them to work, if you want a machine to undo the papers.  And, of course, there are scars.  Two holes on each page.

Sometimes we get stapled.  And sometimes we staple things.  We become intransigent.  Stubborn.  Dug in.  Determined to not compromise no matter what.  We, who shun ideology, find ourselves with all kinds of ideological certainties.

When we discover that, we need, I need, to give way.  I need a paperclip to resist the fierce principalities and powers of our age that so often staple people to social class, health, faith, or  ideologies that end up owning us.  In the end the scar us.

I’ll take a paperclip that brings us together, that allows for shifting priorities, and that clips the words of life to our soul.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Not long ago I was snagged.  Hook, line and sinker, I was snagged.  It wasn’t any one’s fault.  It wasn’t even my fault.  When you cast into a stream lines tend to snag.  In this instance, I didn’t know whether to keep pulling the line or break it.

I was not exactly sure where to turn for guidance.  I knew enough to not make a hasty decision, and I trusted enough in the Spirit’s leading to know a way would be shown.  But that can be a long wait.

I called one of my brothers.

I talked with my wife, though she was in the hospital.

Two of my sons called.  They had heard about the snag.  Just how I do not know.  But that’s the way families work.

Finally, I needed to make a decision.

And so I called home.  Which means, I called the nursing home where my father and mother, both a ways moving through their 90th year, reside in a memory care unit.  I asked to speak with my dad.

“I’m snagged,” I shared with him.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

And so I did.

“Do you remember when you said that the toughest decisions in life are not between good and bad, but between good and good?” I asked him.

“No,” he said.  “But if I did say that I’d love to take credit for it.”  We both laughed.

For an hour I shared the decision I needed to make, and he shared his wisdom.  He is in the memory care unit because he has difficulty remembering things.  But memory, I knew, has nothing to do with wisdom.  I needed guidance from the core of his heart, from a lifetime of experience.

There is no need to share what counsel he gave.  That’s not the point of this column on the fifth day of Lent.  There is a need to say, “I trusted the guidance that came from his heart.”  He understood the depth of the unexpected snag.  He received, with complete comprehension all the dynamics, all the tensions, all the hopes, and all the feelings.  He “got it” in a second, and gave his loving counsel.

Yesterday we spoke again.  He did not remember the conversation.  But I will never forget it.  It holds the key to whatever future I may have as a writer, to whatever ministry may develop when I lack a congregation.  I am grateful beyond measure to have been able to call home, and talk with my dad about life.

Memory is one thing.  Wisdom another.

Years ago he said to me, “I’ve pretty much figured out life, but nobody asks me a thing about it.”

It was into this pool of wisdom that I cast my line.  It returned full of nuance, complexity, compassion, and direction.  It is astonishing how often we discard people with disabilities when it comes to wisdom.  But I’d say, “If you want to know about life, talk with those who have lived it.”

One of them is my dad.

And so, I reeled in the line, tied another fly, and have cast it again.

To me:  that is what Lent is about–Renewal.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We once lived, and perhaps still live, in New York City.  On the corner outside our apartment at 136th Street and Riverside Drive, there was a fire hydrant.  Most of the time we paid it no mind.  It was just there.  We walked past it the way way we walked past my bicycle in our office/living room/bedroom/dining room.

But it gets hot and humid in New York City.  All day long, the streets, the sidewalks and the buildings bake in the heat.  All night long they release heat, just a degree or two, maybe three, but certainly not four.  And then, the next day, the heat up once again.  We had no air conditioner.  Neither did most of our neighbors.  When it’s hot you go outside, find some steps or a park bench, or take a stroll down Broadway.

Unless you are a kid.  In which case that hydrant is one of God’s top two or three ideas.  You find a wrench somewhere, and open the hydrant which gushes and sprays water all over the corner.  There is a certain kind of laugh, of shriek, of pure joy that only kids can make once they have opened the hydrant and begin to tease, play and cavort in its cool waters.  It takes about twenty seconds for the rest of the neighborhood to arrive.

Within the hour, an officer also arrives.  Opening hydrants on a summer’s night is, of course, illegal.  It is against the law.  One should not do it.  One should never do it.

“Okay, kids, gotta shut her down,” says the officer.  The kids scramble.  The officer doesn’t ask them for a wrench–he has his own.  The gusher soon becomes just a bubbler, and then nothing at all.  The officer leaves.

As soon as he is gone a conspiracy is born.  Yes.  A conspiracy.  It begins like this:  “He’s gone.  Let’s go.”

And so within an hour or two the hydrant is once again opened . . . just as the officer knew it would be.  And, deep down, just as he knew it should be.  He’d return, just as the kids knew he would.  Everyone knew the rules, but beating the heat on a summer’s night is a game filled with laughter, with false authority, and with genuine compassion.

So is life.

I have nothing against rules.  I am ruled by them.  I need them.  They inform my actions, overcoming impulse with assuring certainty.  But boundaries are full of unintended consequence.  They rely on fierce judgements.  It is so easy to find what is “wrong.”

The city was wrong to not have hydrants that couldn’t be opened by kid’s wrench.

The kids were wrong to waste the water of New York City.

The officer was wrong to not CRACK DOWN and issue a citation.

The observer was wrong to enjoy the erosion of authority.

But there might have been a greater wrong:  to not love life, its people, its joys, its mirth on an August night.

The boundaries of life are fluid, not frozen.

On this day when the banks of snow on the streets below my window are three or four feet high, I am thankful for the memories of a hydrant, an officer, and the kids that invite me once again to love life.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Give It Time and Even the Sky Has Something to Say

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The scripture for this Sunday is well-known.  A famished Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread and to receive all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping the god-of all-that-is-not-true.  Both Jesus and Satan quote scripture.  The question before us is not whether or not the verses are true, but how each is heard.  How it is we hear the Word becomes an essential question.

I have shared with you this story before, but amidst the Tea Party phenomenon would like to pass it by you yet again.

On a snowy, windy, icy day, Barbara and I were driving to Great Falls, Montana.  There were four cars on a 50 mile stretch of the road between Big Timber and Harlowton.  One of them was a Highway Patrol car.  I was driving ever so carefully, not wanting to see a red light go on, and not wanting to slide off the icy road.  The patrolman passed me.  Quickly he passed me.  His car, complete with decals, lights, and an official license plate began to fishtail.  And, sure enough, he went off the road.

I slowed down, and gently proceeded to the scene of the accident.  I got out and slowly walked up to his car.  I couldn’t help but laugh a bit as I said, “Gee, you were going a bit fast given the conditions, officer.”  He didn’t get the joke.  He reached for the radio and called in to headquarters.  Knowing he was okay, we continued on, at a safe speed, and without incident, to Great Falls.

As I read about the Tea Party’s take on life, I’ve wondered what the conversation might have been like had I been “outraged.”

“I can’t believe that,” I would have said in a huff to Barbara.  “How on earth could they have hired someone who can’t even drive?”

“Beats me,” she would have said.

“Officer,” I would have said.  “I happen to be your employer.  My taxes support you, and what do you do with them?  You waste time.  You call a wrecker for a problem YOU caused.  Just goes to show nobody can trust the Highway Patrol.  I’m going to turn you in.  A lot of good that would do.  They’re all just like you.  I’m taking the road back from your kind.”

Then I would have gone back to the car, and said, “Told you,” to Barbara.  “We need a revolution.  I’m serious.  This kind of nonsense has got to stop.”

“Calm down,” she might have said.

“I would but it’s too serious for that,” I would have retorted.  “This is not the kind of government we deserve.”  And then we would have finished our trip to a church conference because we know there’s got to be goodness and righteousness somewhere.  That forgiveness stuff, that hope stuff doesn’t always apply to the real world.

Had that been my take on the incident, there would have been no laughter, no sense of irony, not the delicious moment when I could tease an officer and actually feel bad that he was embarrassed by the unfortunate incident.  In short, there would have been no life.  Outrage doesn’t like life much.  It’s anger, focused on the moment has a way of eclipsing the future.

And what does this have to do with Lent?  A lot.

We are in a forty-day season.  Lent takes time.  Lent needs time.  So does life.  And, as it turns out, so does love.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Ice Water and Light

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Just as there is a history to this season of Lent, so there is a history to these writings that make up Praytell.

The children leave home.  They do so with both promise and a bit of anguish.  When we dropped our oldest son off at college, neither my wife nor I could maintain full composure as we left him, and drove back home.  When the twins left, heading in different directions, the same thing happened, there were days of necessary sadness.  One expects the oldest will leave.  But the middle ones.  Will they also go? And then, a few years later, the youngest, my one and only daughter, I drive her and her mother the 500 miles round trip  to Havre, Montana, to board the Amtrak for Minneapolis.

They’ve gone.

I wonder, I can’t help but wonder, what kind of a father have I been?  What were those arguments about?  Those times we laughed a window into our soul and made our way through Manitoba watermelon fields and Yellowstone . . . will they  last?  They went to church, because I was a pastor.  We said grace at meals.  When they were little there were prayers when they went to bed.  But had I talked with them deeply enough?  Had I shared enough?  Or had I relied on some kind of spiritual osmosis?

And so, one Lent, I decided to write them, each of them, all of them, each day of Lent.  It would be my Lenten discipline.  Each e-mail had a simple tag line:  Lent 1, Lent 2, Lent 3, and so on.

Sometimes I keyed off a verse of scripture.  Sometimes I keyed off their relationships with each other asking them to get along, to forgive, trust–the kind of hopes any parent harbors.

Last year, after receiving the Lent 2009 offerings, I received a call from New York City where one of the twins, Andy, now works.  He asked me to type Larrypray.com into my computer.  I did and a website appeared.  The Lenten sharings now had a home named Praytell the e-mail address my wife invented for a pastor’s family with the unlikely name of Pray.  Now, a year later,  I again write these entries with the hope of being useful, and always wondering a bit if I have hit the mark.

And so here we are.  Last night, Ash Wednesday, my nephew Chris asked our pastor at the middle of the labyrinth walk, “What is Lent?  What does it mean?”  The answer was, the word means “Lengthen.”

That is true as these are the days begin their stretch towards light, warmth, and rain instead of the snow.  But to me there is another word for Lent.  It is:  Deepen.

I heard yesterday morning of a man who decided his Lenten discipline would be this:  he would not multitask.  Period.  When he drives his car there will be no radio.  No CD.  When his children interrupt him (oh my what I wouldn’t give for those days not all that long ago, with a twin on each arm, an older brother, and a younger sister waiting in the wings) he would listen to them, he would pay attention.  Full attention.  He would try to not just “get through” hearing a sermon and get to the coffee hour–he would listen.  He would deepen his listening.  He would lengthen his attention span.

I liked that.

I liked that a lot.

And so, on this day when I must finish a project that has proved elusive with too many distractions, I hope to pay attention to life, and perhaps even to God.

With gratitude to Tim, Ben, Andy and Emily Jane Pray, and to you, the reader of these lines.