Light Gets In: Poland to Palestine, Littleton to Selma, spirit to politics: Prayer from a Prodigal World

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Prayer from a Prodigal World

Time to be completely honest with you:

Gracious and restless God,

We just want to come home.

we want to come home!

We want to be at home, with you,

Now!

Just right now.

We are lost.

And we just want to come home.

No, not to heaven, although that will be lovely when the time comes

but quite frankly, we don't think that is now. For

there is too much unnatural death

unbidden, hideous death here, where we have wandered off to

in our imperious and ambitious immoderate and idiot

obsession with, well, whatever it was we were obsessed with

when we started down this path.

We maybe forgot what that even was.

We are so far gone. So far gone.

We just want to come home.

Can you even find us out here?

We are far, far gone.

Please, please find us.

We just want to come home:

enjoying your grace and goodness every day.

Doing your work:

creative, beautiful and free,

and not as some slaves to

selfish greed (our own),

and to power (for ourselves alone),

in all the wrong ways,

for all the wrong reasons.

We are so tired.

Tired of this stupid life we made for ourselves.

We are eating bombs for food,

And feasting on the emptiness of revenge.

It tastes terrible.

Tenacious and relentless God,

you know:

already you know:

we just want to come home.

We are ready.

Now .Help us.

Grab us by the hand, and.

Bring us to our senses.

Take advantage of this vulnerable moment,

this hideous day of death;

Take advantage of us

while we are tender and weary

of war and devouring and hating and revenging.

Help us get there. Move our feet, move our spirits.

We're so tired and delirious from this crazy life that we don't even remember the way.

Not the way we came, and not the way back.

We can't do it, we just can not do it, can not get all the way home

on our own.

But. This. Yes, this:

We want to come home!

Be for us the aggravated mother who won't let us be

Until we find our way back;

Be for us that tender father who runs out and jumps up and down

and makes a complete nut of himself, a fool for joy,

dragging us all the way back in

to the feast You will make

to celebrate our return.

We want to come home!

To live in the vitality of joy and amazement,

to marvel and wonder,

to build up and bind up and just do good stuff.

The kind of stuff the stirs up laughter and delight,

blows bubbles and farts rainbows,

coaxes smiles and throws parties.

Creator, Creating God,

we don't know how you did it but you

managed

to make us in your own image,

to make us beautiful,

you made us to be like you:

loving, forgiving, creative.

You poured into us your own Spirit of compassion.

You planted within us your own Heart

that is always giving, generous, gracious, and even this,

forgiving.

Thank you, then, for this gift,

Of who we are,

So much the same,

So different,

re-presenting in the world

all the variety of your own eternal and generative power.

You did that.

And we wasted it.

Well, not all of it.

Save what is left and make us want even more.

Return to us our remembering who we are.

Oh, you did that. Already, yes,

We have a vague notion,

enough to work with.

And so here we come,

looking,

looking for home.

Oh, God, we want to come home.

We are so prodigal

we don't know quite where we've got to.

We are still wandering all over the place.

We got stuck in a new ditch today.

We live in a world of hurt.

We are hurting each other in our madness.

We have, in fact, made one hell of a mess.

Of just about everything.

But it's not too much for you.

Merciful and finagling God,

Finagle our repentance. Our return.

Every damn one of us.

Can we ask for that?

Come,

Search for us,

We who are killing each other,

All around your world.

We, who figured out a new way to make each other die

This very day,

Show us life.

You.

You who waste nothing not even our own wasted moments.

You. Who stop at nothing, not even our intransigence,

we beg you, to bring us back.

You who are mercy:

Show yourself to us,

Shine a light, no

Shine a brighter light.

Be the way.

Come out and meet us, find us,

Show us you!

O God. G-d. Allah. Merciful and gracious.

Yes, always gracious.

Show us you, we need to trail behind your kindness.

Show us how to love our enemies,

In fact, show us how not to be enemies.

Show us how to be as welcoming as you are.

Turn us around, you God of all the hopeless,

God of us.

And bring all the lost home.

We're serious this time:

It's come to this:

we want to come home!

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Light Is In!

Forget your perfect offering; there is a crack in everything:

That’s how the light gets in.

__Leonard Cohen

Tallinn, Estonia, late May. 1982, again ’85: Nearing the Arctic Circle. Nights bleached with safely dim sun, dusky twilight a sanctuary from time measured by minutes that emptied too early into unrelenting glare of harsh exposure, daytime’s shaming obeisance to tyranny, unwelcome revelations, when all the wrong things are known and summarily judged: the vulgar and capricious, unrelenting unreal reality of absurdity is dominant; and so we sat, bow-legged, leaning on one another for warmth and strength, entirely illegally through the long hours hours hours, of crepuscular tenebrous tender time, only days away from the ultimate ‘White Nights’ of Midsommer and light got in, light from the porous place of mystery and heart.

The “verisimilitude draws up heat in us, zest to follow through, follow transformations of day in its turning, in its becoming,” (Denise Levertov, Matins)

We spoke through many nights of an entirely illegal alternative reality – in their Soviet country and, remarkably also in ours. Of beloved community, of Light from elsewhere, a beyond-belief manumission for our Soviet friends, for freedom! oh, would it ever come? --- and for the possibility of creating a common future that enters through cracks of imperfection. Life in Soviet Estonia then was entirely bleak and uncompromising (except when you were ‘compromised,’ which is another hell of its own.) Every time I left Tallinn they begged me for one thing: more Leonard Cohen. He expressed their reality like no one else. So I learned too of his deep, spooky honest analysis. And reluctant hope.

Entirely illegally, we sat out late through hours, hours, feeding soul and spirit with truth, light, such as we could conceive it, singing “broken hallelujahs,” even as we fed a pitiful, smoky campfire that barely, and needlessly lasted all night,while Juri and Patrick, Luanne, David, Heino, Muna, Paul, Kim, Tiit, Kadi, drop-ins, and me wondered this: what is possible?

In those days, it seemed Auden was right, “Nothing that is possible can save us…. we .. demand a miracle…” For everything worthy was ‘wrong,’ and the upside-down inside-out words of the prophet, Jesus, had never seemed so entirely true. We, entirely illegally – for it was forbidden for foreigners to fraternize with Soviet citizens, we together – no one offering advice, all of us humble, especially us Americans! – spoke in whispers, bare wisps of aspiration, then anticipation: for it must come, it must: the trajectory of history turns toward hope: doesn’t it, please? Doesn’t it?

We entirely illegally let the ashes of anguish gather at the bottom of the fire pit, it being unlawful for us to burn together, hearts one in expectation of future, a miracle when light would get in, when an unexpected, unimaginable – to ordinary apprehension – fissure would open, the crack allowed it – and even through the imperfection (the entirely legal illogical regulations and rules and even internal censorship that would not allow most to partake of our being together,) and so in our mystic communion even through the haze of hopefulness and our determination to struggle together against being overwhelmed, (L. Hansberry) we let the embers of one fire die, while an ever-deeper one burns within us.

Incipient warning broke our reverie: the breaking bad brilliance of dawn, a rooster crowed in the yard nearby, and the spell was broken. Still we had lived those hours of the night and nobody, nothing could steal them, or the horizon that beckoned beyond the farthest reach of light. We spent those quiet moments drawing up the heat, zest, follow through, courage-to-be, and for a transformation that brought us together to the place of turning, returning, becoming…and with early morning came bright unwelcome revelations, of course. Especially for our Estonian friends. But welcome, stealthy, awareness, also, of the horizon, coming closer. Living “already” so much as possible, in the “not yet” reality of another realm.

And so it has been. Their world changed within a decade. Heino went to Princeton. Tiit to Sweden and back. And others to the lives they had longed to live. And we, still, in community across miles, follow transformations, turning, turning, becoming, ever more grateful that, in a yet-broken world, through our broken “hallelujah’s and imperfection, LIGHT GETS IN.

honest. humbled. passionate and defiant but with humus smeared on my face. imperfection my teacher, cracked broken and light gets in.

Welcome! Three years ago I made an 11 week, 11,000 mile road trip alone from Denver to Nantucket and back. Conversations with deep and sweet old friends were mingled in with insights from folks I just met. I was covering familiar territory but it can all feel new, when moving quickly and all mixed together. It was beyond rich!

I invite you to consider this blog a long road trip around the world, from 5 Points in Denver and 'my' beloved mountains, all the way to Moscow, through a time warp of Soviet era Eastern Europe, modern Europe, my true home territory in Sweden, across the Mediterranean into Africa, especially South Africa, and back to the Middle East, especially Palestine and Israel. We travel by way of spirit and heart, conscience and engagement with the traditions and stories that I've gathered up through my desire and attempts to live faithfully according to the words of Micah, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, and with the words and life of Jesus of Nazareth, who said without irony that the life given away for others, will be the fullest life one could ever imagine. And who insists still, that grace, grace is everything. That's a lot of ground to cover!

You are invited to ponder, wonder, and ask right along with me: is this our best work? How can we get beyond the injustices and hate, the deep fears and frightening reactions society tends to put out there? I invite your feedback, ideas, 'best practices.' .