Light Lenten Reflections

Week 7

Hard Prayer

The best parenting advice I've ever received wasn't the easiest to wrap my mind around. A women I knew from church had heard a speaker at a workshop who imparted these words of wisdom. My friend passed it on to our small group. I may not have the words remembered exactly, but the message and intent was: You have to want what God wants for your children more than what you want for your children.

A simple, concise piece of advice, but I have picked it apart over the years to find out why I find this so difficult to fully embrace. God wants specific things for my children, good things, I assume. I want specific things for my children, good things, I hope. These specific things, God's and mine, may not be the same things. How does a parent figure out what God's specific things are when they differ from the parent's?

For each of my children there has been at least one life moment when I was pretty certain I could see what was best for that child, only to find that the child and God had something different in mind. Guess who was right? These times called for talking to God in a way that could only be described as hard prayer. Why hard? Because a big part of this type of prayer requires laying down my pride and personal wisdom and acknowledging before God that maybe He is right and I'm not, that He's God and I'm not. It's talking to Him in a way that says this is what I think needs to be done, should happen, must be the right decision, BUT, maybe I don't know everything, and if You have something else in mind that's better, because You see so much more about this situation than I do, then, O.K., we'll do it Your way. Like I said – hard prayer.

Hard prayer takes place in other areas of our lives besides child-rearing. We all face situations where we see God working for our ultimate good and the good of the lives of people around us, and we are, frankly, just not happy about. Why? Usually because things are happening not how we thought or expected they would happen and it's time to lay down our pride and personal wisdom again and to acknowledge that we, in fact, are not God. Fortunately for us, Jesus modeled hard prayer, and Matthew's gospel leaves us with a perfect blueprint of how to do it well. Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane. He knows he is about to die. He knows that the great plan of salvation is about to unfold and it is going to cost him his life. And still, he is real and honest before his Father in heaven.

And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. - Matthew 26:39-44

If Jesus, who is fully man as well as fully God, can be so open in talking with His heavenly Father about his feelings about what the Father is doing, we should be confident that we can too. It’s O.K. to say “Father, I really don’t like that this is happening in my life right now. It's not what I wanted or expected. I think it stinks and I wish you would take it away. I know everything is possible for you, but I also know that you may have purposes here that I can’t see. Help me to want what you want more than what I want.”

Something to think about: Hard prayer is a close cousin to the real, honest prayer from Week 3. Review your honesty level with God. Are there situations in your life where things are not going the way you want them to and you suspect God has something else in mind? Do you feel comfortable coming before Him with these situations? In general, how attached are you to your expectations? Do you have the ability to let them go when necessary? Read Matthew 26:36-46 and meditate on how Jesus came to the Father in hard prayer.

Something to talk (to God) about: Ask God to give you the freedom to come to Him in all situations, but especially those hard ones that leave you confused and wondering about His plans for you. Ask for the desire to want what He wants for you more than what you want for you. Ask Him to bring to mind the times He has turned your plans or expectations upside down for your good. Thank Him for them.

 

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 6

Peeling Away the Music

“Mom? Do I sing good?” My younger self had been dancing around the house, singing loudly. I had sung solo in school for a second-grade music “test” about this time, and my teacher, Sister Joan Bernadette,* having briefly put her head down on her desk by the end of my performance, came up tiredly smiling, shook her head and declared music “tests” finished for the day. I had been puzzled at her reaction, and it led to the question I asked my mother. Mom, not an unkind person, but someone who held honesty in high regard, replied, “When it comes to singing, you draw beautifully.” The somewhat cryptic critiques of Mom and my second-grade teacher were further fleshed out in high school. We had to give a series of concerts in our mandatory tenth-grade music class, and as a practice would near a final performance, the nun in charge would declare certain singers were throwing the rest of the singers off key. Not wanting to embarrass anyone, she devised a system where she would walk among us during the final practice and discreetly tap certain singers on the elbow. If we got the tap, it meant that we were to silently mouth the words to the song during the concert performance. I always got the tap. It didn't bother me as much as it should have. By then, I had indeed proved I could draw beautifully, and I resigned myself to the fact that I would never be musical.

It was not long after this that God got hold of me, and I started to take my relationship with Him seriously. One of the first prayer groups I was involved with was made up of people similar to me in musical ability. The most musical among us owned a guitar, knew three cords and had been playing for a few weeks. This person was declared worship leader. We started our group with the few songs our guitarist was brave enough to attempt, and we sang as though we didn't sound terrible, which we did, and that God would love us anyway, which, of course, He did. We then moved on to worship God in other ways, meditating on scripture verses, ejaculatory praise, and times of intense silent adoration when the Holy Spirit's presence was so real I could believe if I reached out my hand into the silence I would touch Him. I have always thought it was God's mercy on me that He put me in that group early in my relationship with Him. I learned in those early days that if you peeled the music away from what is generally considered to be worship, you are still left with...Worship.

The simple dictionary definition of worship says it's the reverence and adoration for a deity, a.k.a. God. The early occurrences of the word worship in the Bible make no mention of music. Maybe biblical worship had singing or chanting or maybe “just” the reverence and adoration part. John's gospel states that God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Again, no mention of music. But worship is often so closely associated with music that we forget that it is something that can stand alone apart from it. When we attend a church's Worship Night, we expect musical worship. When we structure church services, we say whether worship comes before the sermon or after or both, but what we are really noting is where the musical and singing parts of the service will be. But worship, true worship, is an intimate form of talking to God, revering and adoring Him for who He is. It can take place in many contexts and forms, but it is that intimate connection with God that makes it true worship.

Worship can sometimes be hard to wrap our minds about. It's not like asking God for something, though answered prayers often bring us into worship. It's not quite being thankful, but thanksgiving is often a quick track to worship. It's not seeing a breathtaking sunset or marveling at a star-studded dark night sky, but those are surefire ways to make me want to adore and revere the One who is responsible for both orchestrating them and giving me the ability and opportunity to see them. Sometimes it can be a quiet time, more like sitting and keeping God company than actively talking to Him. And, yes, for many people, music can be a big part of how we worship God. For me, it's the lyrics of the song rather than the music itself that draws me into God's presence. If the music is loud enough I may be brave enough to venture to sing along, though I really need to hear a melody 30 times before my brain can sing the song, but adoring, revering, praising lyrics will bring me into a place of worship every time. It's why praying the psalms can be a powerful act of worship. David, writer of many of the psalms, was a musician and most likely had music entwined with his psalms, originally composing them as songs. We've lost the original melody, but the lyrics remain intact, and many of the psalms can be entry ways into God's presence when we worshipfully pray or meditate on them.

Anne Lamott has written a short book on three essential prayers. She entitled it Help, Thanks, Wow**. We tend to be good at asking God for what we need and most of us are good at thanking Him for what He has given us. But are we taking the time to praise and give Him glory for just being Who He is? Are we allowing ourselves the time and space to look around us and be amazed at His overarching presence in this world, in our lives? It is good to remember that God delights in our worship, our “Wow!” moments, with or without the music peeled away.

Something to think about: How much of your interaction with God is worship, the adoring, revering kind? Do you tend more toward asking and thanking when you talk to God? These are both good things, but if worshiping God for who He is rather than what He will do/has done for you is only a small part of your time with God, think about what things can draw you into worship more often.

Something to talk (to God) about: In your sit-down prayer time or in your NEAT prayer time this week be aware of opportunities to worship. Ask God to teach you or make you more mindful of how to come before Him in an attitude of adoration and reverence, how to see His amazing presence in your life. Ask Him for more opportunities to say “Wow!” to Him.

*Yep. The same Sister Joan Bernadette from Week 1 - “Prayer is just talking to God.” She had to put up with a lot.

**Just a warning: It's a book written for people who don't normally pray or who might not even believe in God.

 

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 5

NEAT Prayer

In the expansive world of fitness and exercise, there was an acronym that made a buzz awhile back. NEAT (for “Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, if you must know) refers to the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or planned sports-like exercise. For example, twenty minutes rushing around Walmart trying to find where they keep the matches and birthday candles thirty minutes before a birthday party is NEAT activity. Twenty minutes jogging is not. One hour chasing after a toddler is NEAT activity. A one hour Jazzercise class is not. Six hours shopping for a homecoming dress with a very particular adolescent is NEAT activity. A six hour bicycle race is not. Yes, go for a run, take the class, enter a race, but look to increase the amount of NEAT movement in the course of one's daily routines rather than solely relying on set-aside times of focused exercise.

Some people are naturally better at getting NEAT activity than others. The Amish, who probably are unaware of the acronym, are the reigning champions of the NEAT world. As they go about their daily work and lifestyle routines, Amish men walk, on average, 18,000 steps per day, and Amish women, 14,000 daily steps, all without the benefit of exercise classes or sports teams. These are pretty impressive numbers for those of us in a Fitbit-obsessed culture, where 5,000 steps a day is the minimum number for fitness pretense and 10,000 steps the desired daily goal.

In Week 2 of Light Lenten Reflections, when I talked about Nike prayer, the “just do it” kind, I made it sound like we needed to find a specific time and space for talking to God, not unlike the physical exercise sessions we may carve out of our day. And we do need that specific time and place, to sit down and let the rest of the world go on without us, and just spend some one-on-One time talking with the One who knows us better than we know ourselves. But there is something to be said for NEAT prayer - “Now/Everywhere-Everything/Always/Talking”* Prayer. This is the prayer, the talking to God, that is ongoing during the course of our day. Ongoing, that is, if we recognize the need as it appears and take the time to bring it before God. Such prayer happens in the moment, in the “Now”, acknowledging that God is concerned about our “Everythings” and “Everywheres” (“Always!”) and we do it in our natural way of “Talking” to Him. The prayer itself can often be brief and comes from an emotional place of the moment. “Help, Lord,” when overwhelmed with a task at work or when in the middle of a strained conversation going downhill rapidly. “Thanks, Lord,” for that perfect parking spot that miraculously appeared when running late for an appointment. “Wow, Lord,” **upon seeing a beautiful sunset or hearing a warbler sing. Seeing a person in physical or emotional need can trigger an immediate intercessory moment, as can a highway accident or a television news story. Each of our days are filled with opportunities to encourage talking time with God apart from whatever sit-down time we make make for Him.

NEAT prayer, however, like NEAT exercise, can take some work and an adjustment of mindset, and there are those of us who are better at it than others. I confess that my reaction to prayer opportunities that arise in the course of the day is often “I'll pray about that, really talk to God about it thoroughly, when I sit down for my next quiet time.” And I may do that, but I would have missed interacting with God about that situation in the moment. The character of Father Tim in Jan Karon's Mitford stories models this type of ongoing prayer in the moment as he encounters people and situations in his community that need God's presence and intervention. He's a fictional character so it's easy for him, but Brother Lawrence was a real person and, similar to the Amish and their impressive step counts, is probably the reigning champion of NEAT prayer. A lay brother in a French Carmelite order during the 1600s, Brother Lawrence was recognized by his peers and superiors within the monastery as a person who exhibited the character of someone consistently walking with God. His abbott encouraged him to share the nature of his daily ongoing dialogue with God, and the resulting collection of writings, Practicing the Presence of God, is a spiritual classic. A more modern champion of NEAT prayer is Frank Laubach, a twentieth century American missionary who challenged others to attempt to “pray constantly” as encouraged in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. In his pamphlet “The Game with Minutes” he describes how he tried to keep God in mind in some way for at least one second of every minute of the day. Like Brother Lawrence, Laubach expressed the delight of a life spent consistently walking and talking with God throughout the day.

Trying to imitate Brother Lawrence or Frank Laubach can seem intimidating, and we may be a long way from talking to God in every minute of our day. Attempts at such prayerful intimacy is not for the faint-hearted, but it's an idea(l?) worth contemplating. If I sincerely believe that (wo)man was originally created to walk with God in a Garden, I must believe that God is particularly delighted with us when we talk with Him throughout our day, acknowledging His active presence in our daily walk whether asking for His intervention or just praising Him as we interact with His world around us. I think that's neat and I suspect God does too.

Something to think about: Examine your daily talking to God pattern. How much ongoing NEAT prayer is in your day? Do you save all your serious prayer for your quiet time? How often do you converse with God in the moment?

Something to talk (to God) about: Make a concerted effort to have more NEAT prayer in your day. Ask God to make you more aware of Him in the potential moments for praise and intercession. Going for a walk? Find three things in God's creation to thank and praise Him for. Watching the news? Ask God which situation you can bring to Him in prayer in that moment. Stop in the midst of a task just to say “Hey, Lord”.

There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it. ― Brother Lawrence

*Yeah, I had to work a bit to come up with that one.

**Credit to Anne Lamott whose book on three essential prayers is entitled Help, Thanks, Wow.

 

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 4

The Freedom of the Forgiven Forgiver

John was very, very angry with his brother.

Our prayer group was going through a book on forgiveness and had just finished looking at the chapter on forgiving those close to us. Because most of the books and studies we tackled in our group were just an excuse to open up areas we needed to pray about, it was not surprising that John* asked for prayer regarding the situation with his brother.

A few years earlier, after finishing a stint in the military, John's brother had disappeared. None of his siblings had heard from him, and, most troubling to John, his brother, the baby of the family, had not contacted their mother. She was sad and distraught over the long unexplained silence, worried that her youngest child might have come to serious harm. The longer the absence dragged on, the angrier John had become. He was angry at his brother for the pain he was causing their mother, seeing the brother as a thoughtless, immature child with no concern for the feelings of others. During our study on forgiveness, John was convicted of his anger and rotten attitude toward his youngest sibling. John asked for us to pray with him as he waded through the muck of his unforgiveness. As we gathered around John in prayer, he talked to God about his feelings for his brother, both good and bad. As he gave over all the negative feelings to God, asking God to forgive him, John then moved on to talking to God about forgiving little brother. By the end of the prayer time, John had a peace and lightness about him he hadn't felt for a long time. Good, we thought, John has truly received God's forgiveness for his attitude and has finally forgiven his brother. We all went home that night privileged to be witnesses to John's openness and determination to learn to forgive and be forgiven.

Well, as it happens with so many God-stories, this one wasn't over yet. When John returned to prayer group the following week, he was beyond excited. The day after John had prayed for God's forgiveness and the ability to forgive, little brother had called his mother. He told mom he had left the military wanting to find his own way in the world, apart from family. The longer he stayed away, the easier it was for him to remain detached. He had met a girl, married her and had a child. Could they all come home for a visit? Of course, mom-now-suddenly-grandmother said yes. Toward the end of the conversation, mom asked her prodigal why it had taken him so long to call, so long to contact anyone in the family. He acknowledged how much pain he must have inflicted on the family and then said, “I didn't think any of you would be able to forgive me.”

Forgiving and being forgiven, such a powerful twosome. When Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray, the forgiveness part of the Lord's Prayer reflects this duality. “...forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors...” - “...forgive us what we owe to you, as we have also forgiven those who owe anything to us...” - “...forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us...” Choose your Bible translation, but each captures the “and” of being forgiven and forgiving. John had asked to be forgiven of his anger toward his brother. Receiving this gracious gift of God enabled him to forgive his brother. John's forgiveness of little brother, consciously unknown to him but spiritually communicated to him in ways that only God can fully explain, gave little brother the freedom to pick up the phone and call mom. Don't you love the efficiency of God's funny little ways? Two-for-one forgiveness freedom!

Something to think about: Look for any places of unforgiveness in your relationships. How easy is it for you to ask for forgiveness from others or from God? How easy is it for you to forgive others, or even, God, if necessary?

Something to talk (to God) about: If you have found any areas of unforgiveness in your relationships, talk to God about it. You may not be ready to forgive, but that's O.K. Just ask God to move the process along. You may see you are in a chronic pattern of forgiving with a person and feel like you have already exceeded the biblical 7 x 7 of forgiveness. Ask God for His heart for that person and the grace to persevere in the forgiveness process.

*Not his real name.

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 3

Honestly.....!!!

Many years ago I heard a story about a bitter, angry woman who had had a hard life and ignored God, a God she felt wasn’t much of a God at all. This feeling was confirmed when her daughter was seriously injured in a car accident and was in a coma. On the way home from the hospital one evening, she stopped into a bar and had a few too many drinks. As she was driving home, a thunderstorm made it impossible for her to see, and she pulled over to the side of the road to wait it out. Angry at the storm, angry about her daughter’s condition, fueled by the alcohol, she proceeded to curse and yell and scream at God and tell Him exactly what she thought of Him. When she had finally worn herself out, a quietness came over her and she heard the words “This is the first time you have ever talked to me - and I love you”.

I'm not sure where I heard the story – a Christian radio station, probably – and I don't know how true it is, though it does ring with the authenticity of someone's conversion experience, but there are two takeaways from this story that have served me well in my times of talking to God. First, the woman's story shows that God seems to credit very unprayerlike rantings as prayer, as long as they're honest rantings, directed toward Him. I had always believed this to be true, but, still, it was good to hear that someone else talked to God honestly in a less than pious manner. Like the woman in the car, I've had my moments when my talking to God seemed anything but holy, but it was honest and real and directed toward Him. There have been prayer times when I've been angry at God and told Him as much, pointing out how I would have done things much differently in a certain situation if I were God. At other points in my life, a real “just do it” prayer time may have resembled two people sitting across the room from one another, one not unlike a belligerent 15 year old, sulky, silent and slouching, and the other, God.

The second takeaway from the woman's story has to do with the wonderfully awesome combination of the immensity and the holiness of God. Yes, God is a holy God, one deserving of our honor and praise and worship and respect and awe, but He is also a big and mighty God who created us and knows us in all our brokenness and sinfulness and imperfections. In the times we approach Him in that brokenness, sinfulness and imperfection, He is big enough and mighty enough to handle it – graciously, lovingly, tenderly, with His signature mercy. The reason I feel the woman's story rings true is God's response to the woman's rantings - “This is the first time you have ever talked to me - and I love you”. He acknowledges her first real attempt at talking to Him, fraught with all its anger and honesty and brokenness, and still can speak out His love for her. And so it is with us. When we approach Him in a less than “holy” way, He acknowledges our focus on Him and loves us through it.

In his book Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, Timothy Keller takes a close look at Job, the biblical model of undeserved suffering. Job doesn't always express his feelings in a spiritually noble way, but God is very affirming of Job. Keller says:

But why would God be so affirming of Job? Job cursed the day he was born, challenged God's wisdom, cried out and complained bitterly, expressed deep doubts. It didn't seem that Job was a paragon of steady faith throughout. Why would God vindicate him like that?' The first reason is that God is gracious and forgiving. But the crucial thing to notice is this: Through it all, Job never stopped praying. Yes, he complained, but he complained to God. He doubted, but he doubted to God. He screamed and yelled, but he did it in God's presence. No matter how much in agony he was, he continued to address God. He kept seeking him. And in the end, God said Job triumphed. How wonderful that our God sees the grief and anger and questioning, and is still willing to say “you triumphed” - not because it was all fine, not because Job's heart and motives were always right, but because Job's doggedness in seeking the face and presence of God meant that the suffering did not drive him away from God but toward him. And that made all the difference. As John Newton said, if we are not getting much out of going to God in prayer, we will certainly get nothing out of staying away.*

Job sounds not unlike the woman in the car, his talking to God brutally honest, but nevertheless, directed toward God. Job and the woman in the car share, along with us, the acknowledgment of a sovereign God, the One we perceive could/should do something about our messy, broken, painful lives and our messy, broken, painful world. When He doesn't act, or when we can't see His actions, often so different from our expectations, we can bring our confusion and frustration to Him, and He will love us through it all anyway. Really. Honestly...

Something to think about: How comfortable are you with being honest before God? Can you go to Him in the midst of your anger and confusion, or do you avoid Him and wait until you feel “holy” enough to talk to Him? Are there any issues in your life right now that you are avoiding bringing before God?

Something to talk (to God) about: Talk to God about any of those areas you may have been avoiding or that you feel anger about because God hasn't acted the way you had hoped. Ask for the grace to be wholely/holy honest in your talking to God. If you are already an honest talker to God, thank Him for the freedom and love He has given you in this area.

*If any of this sounds familiar, I've quoted this passage before in another blog post about how to whine to God: https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2020/03/lightlenten-reflections-week2.html I'll probably quote it again. It's definitely worth repeating.

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 2

Nike Praying – Just...Do...It

Confession: There are times I like the idea of being a praying person more than I like praying...

Prayer is not without its challenges, and spending time talking to the living God is not something the world, the flesh or the devil is eager to have me do. All three, at times, will conspire to keep me too busy, too tired or too distracted to pray as I would like. I've had to learn to not over think the time, place and specifications of what my talking to God looks like.

There is much written about setting aside time to be with God, to pray, to read the Bible, to “have devotions”. It is often recommended that one set apart some time in the early hours of the morning to spend talking to God, giving God the best part of your day. But if you are like me, those early morning hours may not be the best part of your day. I had to let go of the wisdom of the sages and talk to God about when to talk to God. When is the best time for me and you to get together, Lord? Where should I be when I talk to you? The answers to that question change with the different stages and places of my life. In my college days, I'd sit in the dark on my dorm room bed, silently worshipping, silently talking to God about my day, my room mate asleep in the next bed. In my night owl lifestyle, I was giving God the best part of my day. As a young mother, I spent nap times sitting on cinder blocks in the basement talking to God, while keeping an eye on a toddler through a small hole in the wall to the next room, listening for a napping infant two floors above through the heating duct. In that basement I was giving God my only “free” time of the day and, strangely (or not), He always seemed to multiply the little time I had to give. As a stay-at-home mom with kids in school, my time with God was mid-afternoon, just before they came in the door, just before the daily whirlwind of sports, activities, dinner, and homework began it's long journey toward bedtime. It may not have been the best or only part of my day, but it was the time I most needed to be “prayed up”, to have had sat with God and allowed Him to give me what I needed for the end of day in those years of active mothering.

Over the years I've adopted what I call the Nike attitude toward prayer – “Just do it.” There are times I'm overwhelmed with all I have to do, convincing myself I don't have the time to talk to God today, but I just do it. There are times when I feel the spiritual feng shui just isn't right among the undone housework to sit down and have a rational chat with God, but I make room amidst the clutter and just do it. And there are those times I like the idea of being a praying person more than I like praying, and I just don't feel like it at the moment, but I just do it.

I find in my retirement years having settled into a new time and place for my talking with God. Late afternoons are usually a good time to give to God now, mornings still not being the best part of my day. I sit in a sunroom surrounded by plants so the wrong spiritual feng shui is rarely an excuse. I find I have more time to spend with God than in the college, toddler or school age kids years. But I still have “just do it” days, just as those dorm room nights, basement nap times and end of school day pre-onslaught times all had their “just do it” days. I didn't always come to my time of talking with God with a perfect attitude, but I did come...well, most of the time...and I still come most of the time. The best part? No matter how or when I come, even on my “just do it” days, I find God already there...

Something to think about: What kind of struggles do you have with making time to talk with God? What are the things most likely to sidetrack you from having a consistent time of talking with God? What are some things you can choose for now, this stage of your life – a time, a place – that would facilitate a daily prayer time?

Something to talk (to God) about: Bring the answers to the above questions to God today. Tell Him about the struggles and the things that sidetrack you. Ask Him what He wants your prayer time to look like in this stage of your life. Spend some time in His presence quietly listening as well as talking to Him.

 

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 1

Talking to God

My earliest memories of praying take place at the foot of my mother's bed. It is here my brother and I would kneel at bedtime along with my mother and grandmother and say our prayers. It was at the foot of that bed I learned the Lord's prayer, the Hail Mary and an informal personalized family prayer that included asking God for specific things for individual family members. When Mom and Grandma would go out for the evening, it was left to Grandpa to supervise our nightly prayer time. Grandpa, who learned his formal prayers as a child in German, would let my brother and I lead the prayer time, asking us to pray the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary so he could learn it in English. We took this task very seriously, though, looking back, I think Grandpa did know his prayers in English and just didn't want to say them aloud, being a somewhat private pray-er.

We'd also said grace before meals, and sometimes grace after meals. When I started Sunday school as a first grader, I was viewed as a superstar because I came to class already knowing the trifecta of prayers that we would be learning that year – the Our Father, the Hail Mary and Grace before Meals. What more to praying was there? Already I knew prayer could be memorized words written by other people, prayers we made up ourselves to fit our family needs, prayer to bless our food before we ate it and thanks for food after we ate it. And thanks to Grandpa's reluctance to pray out loud, I knew prayer could be silent and private as well.

In second grade, as my class prepared to receive first communion, we were required to memorize 25 catechism questions, which we practiced reciting everyday in class. Sometimes the memorized questions opened up second-grade-level theological discussions that Sister Joan Bernadette did her best to moderate with a straight face. The subject of prayer must have come up for I remember her response to it being simple and firm and, for me, life-changing. “Prayer,” she said, “is just talking to God.”

Just talking to God...

I've experienced a lot of spiritual growth and adventures in various spiritual disciplines over the years, but I've never been able to get beyond the truth and simplicity of a second-grade teacher's explanation of what prayer is. After her pronouncement, I added talking to God to my growing list of what types of prayer I practiced. I still acquired “prayers” as was wont in the Catholic Church in the 1960s, laying in bed at night and saying the Act of Faith, Hope and Charity, the Act of Contrition and random other memorized prayers that parochial school had required me to learn. But I also talked to God. The “prayers” became rote, though I occasionally made myself concentrate on the words and appreciated what they were saying. Talking to God, though, never became rote, but was always fresh and real and often desperate. When I was a senior in high school I had my significant moment of knowing God differently. I already “knew” about Jesus's death on the cross and that it meant I got to go to heaven when I died. It was, after all, the answer to one of those long-ago-memorized catechism questions. But as an eighteen-year-old, I suddenly found myself taking God seriously, was saved, born-again, redeemed, or whatever theological label might be put on my renewed experience with the God I talked to. Now my conversations with the living God began in a new way.

I thought I'd focus this year's Light Lenten Reflections on talking to God, a.k.a. prayer. I won't attempt to write a definitive work on the subject here. (Light Lenten Reflections, remember?) It's not my style, and there are centuries of writers who have covered the topic in far more detail than I ever could. There are a lot of great books out there for those who want to delve deeper into prayer this Lent.* What I want to encourage us to do this Lent is to look at and practice how we talk to God. We all have some some concept of what prayer is or what we think it's supposed to be. We may feel we are good at it, or not so good at it at all. But if we believe that we were created to walk with God in a garden,** then we were also created to interact with Him on that walk. Let's put on our spiritual Nikes and just...do...it....

Something to think about: What are your earliest memories and understanding of prayer? How has your concept of prayer changed since childhood? Do you feel you can talk to God or are there any barriers to easy conversational prayer?

Something to talk (to God) about: Most of us feel we don't pray enough or pray “good” enough. Spend some time talking to God about your prayer life or lack there of. Be honest about how you feel about growing in your prayer life and tell God of your fears, hopes and expectations of what you'd like your time of talking to Him to look like this Lent.

*My favorite is Richard J. Foster's Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home. Timothy Keller's Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God is good, too. The Foster book is more practical, the Keller book more theological, but both are encouraging.

**We were! I wrote about our garden relationship with God in The Angle for Light Lenten Reflections 2020.

 

Minne-so-tan

Part II

Being There

I'm always intrigued at this country of ours - one nation, made up of individual states, each having their own unique funny little ways.* I am a New Yorker by birth and upbringing, a begrudging Illinoian for over 30 years, and now a Minnesotan. As I'm writing this, we have now lived in Minnesota for almost six months. 

It has not been a "normal" relocation. While house-hunting in Minnesota, I noticed an increasingly troublesome pain in my left leg. Though I jumped through the usual medical hoops to diagnose and fix what was becoming a serious walking problem, I was in pain through most of the packing and unpacking portions of our move. By the time we were settled in to our new place, I was pretty much unable to walk. Eventually, what had been initially misdiagnosed as a lower back problem, turned out to be an "easily" fixable hip issue. I just needed a hip replacement. The pandemic had made such surgeries "elective", meaning long wait times in scheduling. I must have been able to project a sufficient amount of pain and desperation as well as flexibility to the surgeon's schedulers, and I was slipped into a last minute cancellation.

Recovery from hip surgery takes time, and though it was great to now be painless, I still wasn't fully able to do all the things I would have normally done to make myself at home in my new state. Having always been an avid walker and explorer of new places, I found it difficult to not be out in our new community, to not be able to explore the whole new series of trails and parks and rivers and lakes that Minnesota is famous for, and, of course, to not be able to fish. My husband was now out and about and doing those things on his own (not the fishing, though). Still, I've discovered some things about living in Minnesota from traveling around in the car and reading and watching local news and just sitting at home. Here are some of them:

We moved to be closer to family - and it's great fun! Visits from our oldest daughter and our two granddaughters weekly, coffee and some sweet treat every Saturday morning with our youngest daughter and the occassional weekend visit with our son. We've celebrated two birthdays the past two weekends, with all of us gathering together for dinner and cake. After years of living almost 400 miles apart, it's a nice change.

Big birds are still here -

When we moved we sadly left our old house with the pond in the backyard with its egrets and great blue herons and never ending array of wildlife. We now live in a townhouse community with only more townhomes in our backyard with neighbors' birdfeeders attracting juncos and chickadees and other winter birds. It was, then, with delighted surprise we found that spilled bird seed from said feeders also attract turkeys – yes, large, thanksgiving-sized birds that stroll through our backyards on a daily basis. We've also seen pheasants. Our biggest ornithological surprise, however, has been the presence of bald eagles. We live near a bend in the Mississippi river so we have the river both to the north and east of us. Bald eagles nest along this stretch of the Mississippi and we have only to look up to see bald eagles. Bigger than hawks, the eagles are easy to spot with their distinctive white head and tails, though I will admit that my first eagle sighting was of a juvenile that had its white tail and but had yet to develop its white head. Still majestic.

Winter is winter - 

The weather pundits here say that this winter is a colder than average winter for the Minneapolis area. Most of last week we awakened to sub zero temperatures. The wind chills on those days were in the double digits. This could explain why every townhome we looked at had a gas fireplace, which is a nice feature when the temperatures start to drop every evening in preparation for the next subzero night. The Minneapolis area has a yearly snowfall average of 52 inches compared to the Chicago area average of 27 inches, but we former New Yorkers still remember our nine years in Rochester, New York, with its yearly snow average of 99 inches. This is probably why, though we have had snow on the ground here continuously for weeks on end, it doesn't seem overwhelming. We've seen worse.

Weather is a state-wide obsession -

Local weather forecasts in Minneapolis are a wonderous display of Minnesota stateness. Seriously. Illinois and Minnesota are roughly the same length top to bottom, about 378 miles. Chicago weather reporting is only interested in Chicago area weather. Living 50 miles away in a far north suburb of Chicago, our village was sometimes not even on the Chicago stations' weather maps, and it would take a devastating tornado in downstate Illinois for the local Chicago weather to report it. Here, the local TV weather people report the state's weather, in every local news forecast. It took some getting used to to hear high snow totals being predicted for areas of Minnesota 200 miles away with the same seriousness as a snow that would be predicted for the Minneapolis area. I've yet to find a solid reason for this phenomenon. Are those living in the far North dependent on Twin Cities television for their weather? Does everyone living in the Twin Cities own a cabin in the north
woods and need to keep an eye on the weather up there? Is there always someone in the Minneapolis area planning a hunting or fishing trip and therefore need to know what weather to expect in other parts of the state? Or is it just another aspect of "Minnesota Nice", care and concern for our Minnesotan neighbors up north?

Minnesota Nice – Everyone we've met here is nice. Store clerks, medical personnel, neighbors – they all seem nice. Minnesota Nice is a real thing, a way of describing the pleasant ways of the people here, though some say it is a superficial nice at times, a desire to avoid confrontation. Still, twice in the past three weeks, I was asked if I needed help getting to my car. Both times I was waiting at the entrance to a store while my husband went to get the car to pick me up. Both times the offer was made by a customer, not an employee, one even offering me a ride home if I lived nearby. This offer was made by a woman my own age who thought I was calling for an Uber. Maybe the offers were inspired by my gray hair, maybe by my cane, but I like to think it was just some Minnesota Nice.

Wait, wait! There's more...winter -

Minnesotans embrace winter. For the most part, they don't complain about it but find ways to enjoy it. Last week, the 32nd annual Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza attracted 10,000 people to a large lake in northern Minnesota. Most forest preserves are open for cross country skiing, many lighted at night. There is a myriad of winter festivals, snow sculpting contests, frozen ice displays of various kinds and loppets, which are cross country ski events, often lighted by luminaries when they occur at night. I know about these events not from actually attending them, but from learning about them watching the local news, sitting next to our gas fireplace in the comfort of our warm living room. The local news also highlights the best backyard skating rinks and pond hockey tournaments, visiting families and kids aspiring toward a professional hockey future. Sometimes the cold weather events challenge one's sanity, like this year's NHL Winter Classic held at Target Field in Minneapolis. It was -6 degrees at game start, dropping to -10 with wind chills in the -20s, officially making it the coldest outdoor game in league history. And then there was the World Cup qualifier soccer game played outdoors in St. Paul between the U.S. and Honduras. The temperature was 3 degrees at game time. It did not end well for the Honduran team which came ill-prepared, losing 3-0 and having some of their players treated for hypothermia by the end of the game.

                                                * * *

It's still early days in our Minne-so-tan adventure, and more than half of those days have been cold, snowy wintery ones. I've not fully embraced the winter aspects this year. Maybe I'll try snowshoeing next year. As for my husband, he has already ventured out on his cross country skis, blazing a trail in the swale between the townhomes in our neighborhood. He's well on his way to being Minne-so-tan.

Winter: It's not just a season, it's who we are – Garrison Keillor

*I've written about some of these state differences here: https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2013/11/statesroad-rites-rite-rit-noun-social.html

Minne-so-tan..

Part I

Getting There

I guess you could say that Child #3 is responsible for us now being Minnesotan, or, as they say in the Minneapolis area we have recently started to call home – "Minne-so-tan". It still sounds a little strange to my Long Island/New York ears, ears that have spent the past 32 years in the far north suburbs of Chicago. But here we are, retired, downsized and relocated to the city of Brooklyn Park, outside of Minneapolis. When so many of our fellow boomers head south at this stage of their lives, how did we end up here? My husband jokingly says it's because the Chicago winters just weren't cold enough for us, but the truth is a bit more complicated than that. It is a move 15 years in the making, though there are times it has felt a lot longer.

It began when our youngest daughter, in a desire to establish her own Big Ten identity, applied to the University of Minnesota her senior year of high school. She had looked at, then turned down, her older sister's alma mater, the University of Illinois, and then did the same with her older brother's University of Iowa. Child #3 loved the urban Minneapolis campus she had chosen and stayed in the area after graduating college. While Child #3 was still an undergraduate, Child #1, already graduated from and working for her small town university, was looking to move to a larger city. A graphic designer, Child #1 visited Child #3 with portfolio in hand and checked out potential employers. One hired her on the spot, and we found ourselves with two children in Minneapolis. Both met guys, got married and settled in the city.

We had been empty nesters for some time before my husband and I retired, so downsizing and moving somewhere else was always part of the plan. Neither of us are fond of the heat, so with two children in the cold climes of Minnesota, the Minneapolis area was as good a place as any for us to retire to. Just as we started the dejunking and repainting that precedes this kind of move, we were delayed by back-to-back medical detours. An unwanted diagnosis followed by surgery followed by another unwanted diagnosis, followed by treatment then surgery then a year long recovery put a full stop on our moving plans. Since both unwanted diagnoses were mine, it substantially slowed down my dejunking and repainting, and our move was put on hold for two years.

Recovered and back to climbing ladders with paint brush in hand, I painted and cleaned, gave away stuff and more stuff, called a realtor and started collecting boxes. By this time Child #2, tired of the long daily commute to his job in the Chicago area, took a job in Rochester, Minnesota, where he had a short walk to work and a short drive to anything else in town. He was also an easy 90 minute drive to his sisters in Minneapolis, so our plan to relocate there now brought us close to all three of our kids.

Then the pandemic struck. Yes, we could show our house in the midst of it, buy a new place in the midst of it, but did we really want to have that much social contact in what was then still a pre-vaccine world? I thought of the dozens of trips to Walmart and Home Depot that every move entails in the weeks after buying a new place. Did we want to add that to our daily exposure to whatever strain of covid might be out there? We decided to postpone our move until we were fully vaccinated.

And that did happen, eventually. What also happened about the same time as said vaccinations was that the sewer pipe from our house to the main village sewer line no longer sloped in the proper direction. The fix was far from simple, and about the time we had planned to have the house listed with the realtor we found ourselves with a twelve foot deep ditch in our front yard, extending from the porch, through the street and into the yard of our neighbors across the street. It was not pretty, and neither was the additional 50 feet of sewer pipe in the basement that was necessary to reconfigure the proper angle of the outgoing sewer line. And we got to pay for all of this ourselves since it was a problem with our sewer line and not the one belonging to the village.

Our realtor was unfazed by the six foot wide mound of dirt that now snaked across our front yard. It was a sellers' market, she said. The house was great, she said. They would figure out the lawn repair, she said. She recommended listing our house the morning we were leaving for Minneapolis to visit our daughters, our first trip since the beginning of the pandemic. Our selling realtor connected us to a buying realtor in the Minneapolis area, so our trip up north would become a townhome-hunting adventure as well. We headed out on the road at 9 am and by noon we had received notifications for 12 scheduled showings for our lovely house with the new sewer system and the not-so-lovely front lawn.

Well, God is good, and so was our realtor. Twenty four hours later we had five offers on our house, all above listing price and one high enough to cover most of the cost of the sewer repairs. This offer also had a flexible closing date, no contingencies and contained the magic words "as is" when it came to the front lawn. Needless to say, we were now highly motivated to find a new place in Minnesota since we would be homeless in two months time. The housing market was a sellers' market there as well, with scheduled showings cancelled before places came on the market as some people were making offers on homes without actually seeing them in person. We were not those people, so we did go inside over a dozen townhomes and found one that was almost perfect and didn't disappear off the market before we put an offer in on it. When our offer was accepted, we were officially on our way to being "Minne-so-tan".

"...every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end..."

- from Closing Time, Semisonic, borrowed from Seneca

Next:

Minne-so-tan

Part II

Being There