Dismissals

I think about prayer … what prayer is, what prayer means and how I should pray. Author Anne Lamott says her two best prayers are, “Help me, help me, help me!” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She may be right and it would be hard to forget the words. My Dad believed that every prayer required some effort on the part of the person praying … that “thoughts and prayers” alone seldom come to much. He may be right, too. Page 856 of our BCP: “Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.” Amen.

Ed sold his house. He said it was a nice little place on a cul-de-sac with a garden and a big tree for shade. But Ed was moving. He always complained about the trains. I like trains and couldn’t imagine why a train would bother anyone. They sure bothered Ed. I went to help him move. Nice house. Then came the low throb of diesel engines … the earth trembled … the train’s brakes squealed … the tracks cried out with every steel wheel that went by. Ed shrugged. We packed the truck in silence … until another train … twelve minutes later.

Behind a driver doing 20 in a 30 mph zone, the traffic light ahead was green. But, at the first sign of yellow, on went the brakes, then the left-turn signal and we were stopped. At last, the light turned green again. The car ahead didn’t move so I offered the tiniest little honk of encouragement. I regretted it. As the car turned left, I saw a young woman at the wheel. She waved cheerily so I waved back. On the car door, a bold sign said: “Driver Education.” I pulled away slowly. That day, I received the education.

Scripture’s plain: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” I did. Once. In a graveyard. I said, “OK, God! If you’re here, show yourself!” I waited. Minutes passed. Then it came, traversing the field of tombstones, a shadow from the distant tree-line, quick, silent and right at me. I ducked! The shadow went on to the east and was gone. I stood stock-still. I heard the faint drone of a small airplane’s engine, an airplane that cast its shadow across the graveyard, across me … and that’s the last time I put God to the test.

What will cure what ails us? What potion or pill will lift the pall and let the sun shine in? What might be the remedy for sickness or malaise? We all want the fix! For Dr. George Sheehan, a cardiologist in his 60’s, it was running that changed his life. For each of us, it will be something different but the search for that something will lead us into new ways of thinking. Dr. Sheehan was once asked if running was good for diabetes. Sheehan replied, “Running might good for diabetes but running is certainly excellent for the diabetic.”

At the museum, I stand before an ancient statue of the Buddha, his hands and nose long ago broken off. Vandals did the same to statues of the church’s saints, breaking off ears, fingers and toes of any unguarded statue of a saint … even a figure of Jesus! Perhaps it’s not vandals but faithful followers who needed a keepsake or remembrance. Who can say? The statues of the Buddha and Jesus and others are safe now in the museum. They look pretty good for having survived all those centuries … maybe a little worse for the wear, but so am I.

The man worked hard and met his obligations. He did what was expected of him and then some. Worked. Volunteered. Went to church, sang in the choir, served on committees. Always on the go, he looked like a car with two flats and no gas. One day I saw him looking rested and refreshed. I asked, “What changed?” He said, “I was so weary I fell out of love with everything. In the silence that followed, in that still, quiet time, I heard a call to return to some things. Not all things. I’m still tired but I’m waking up.”

A knot of people worked their way around an old man on hands and knees, patting the sidewalk. “Crazy,” said a man, pushing through. Someone said, “Shouldn’t someone call someone?” A small boy and his mother, holding hands, watched the man pat the pavement. The boy pulled away, squatted in front of the old man. “Look!” The boy pointed. The man felt about where the boy pointed and found the lens that has fallen from his eyeglasses. The man thanked the boy and, together, they fitted the lens back into the frame. They shook hands and each went his way.

She had been writing to prisoners since prisons were invented. She wrote to prisoners in this country and prisoners in faraway lands. She instructed me, “Use good rag paper, not the cheap ditto stuff. Use a good pen, write big and bold with indelible, waterproof ink, not the smeary, dime-store ink.” What difference did it make, all this archival paper and ink? She said, “You write to one prisoner, but your letter will likely be read by a hundred. Your letter will be passed around for months and years to come, each man holding it, reading it and imagining.”

My Dad called him “contumacious,” a three dollar word for stubborn. The man felt ill-used by everyone. He quit every filling station and grocer in town and drove to the neighboring county for gas or a bag of groceries. He treated his family the same way and there wasn’t one family member that he hadn’t written off. Some years went by and the man started back shopping on Main Street and spending time with his family. My Dad asked him, “Did everyone hereabouts finally see the light?” The man only said, “No, sir. I did. I saw the light.”