Wednesday, June 30, 2010

To "Anonymous"

As I sat here in the hospital room with my mother-in-law and and family a few minutes ago, I took a moment to check my e-mail. To my surprise, I discovered that at least one person is still reading this blog. Unfortunately, you have chosen to keep your identity "anonymous."

But whoever you are, if you're still reading, I want you to understand (though I rejected your comment and it will not show up on my former post) my understanding of God and prayer.

I do NOT in any way "blame disease or government incompetence on not praying enough or properly" (in your words). I do NOT subscribe to ANY understanding of God or God's work in the world that DOES blame terrible things on "not praying enough or properly." To do so would NOT make me feel better, and would indicate that I believe in a God not of wholeness, peace, and grace, but of terror.

Instead, what I believe about prayer and God is this:

Prayer is a gift that invites us into, and allows us to maintain, relationship with the God whose will and work are always for our wholeness and peace, and for justice and peace in the world.

True prayer is the equivalent of open, full, and honest communication between a parent and child, or two lovers.

The God I worship is all-loving and wants to be in real relationship with us.

The God I worship did NOT create chaos, disease, division, or government incompetence. That all came from somewhere else.

The God I worship has overcome the power of all of that life-stealing stuff through the self-giving of Christ (who himself was God become flesh out of love for us, to share humanness with us and offer us life eternal in and with God).

Through the gift of prayer, the God I worship reveals healing and resurrection in powerful ways to God's children.

The God I worship will ultimately eliminate all of the life-stealing stuff in the world and make all things right and whole forever. Though I can't explain why that hasn't already happened, I know that God touches us even in the midst of pain to bring wholeness and peace, and I am thankful for that. I do continue to pray for the day of peace and wholeness, and redemption of all creation, to quickly come.

And by the way,
my mother-in-law is now actively dying. Her death will release her from pain and bring her a peace she has not known in some time. And if the government had worked the way it was originally "supposed to" according to our human plan, we wouldn't be able to be here now...we'd be in Russia instead.

So perhaps, in God's mysterious love, this holy time was protected for us to be HERE NOW...even maybe through some "government incompetence." Who knows? I just embrace the mystery and praise God that I can feel the mystery of divine grace.

I also pray that you, and all of the children God created, can also one day feel that mysterious grace. There's nothing more beautiful, or life-giving.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

My Prayers

There is so much pain in the world, all the time.

But sometimes the deep pain touches closer to home than others.

RIGHT NOW, my mother-in-law is lying in a hospital room in the cancer center of a major regional hospital. This past Friday, she became unresponsive right in front of my eyes, the eyes of my husband, and the eyes of our five-year-old son. Though she is now out of that particular area of the woods, she is very tired of fighting a 4-and-a-half-year battle with an uncurable disease. But she's only 62 years old, and she needs to see her grandchildren all graduate from high school and college!

RIGHT NOW, our second son (who will turn 3 on October 4) is waiting for us to return for him. He is in a "baby house" in Russia with 89 or so other children under the age of four. He has a picture book of our family, a toy phone to "call us" on, and the promises of his caregivers that we are coming back for him. But we can't get to him, because the U.S. government (Citizenship and Immigration Services) has declared that they have until the end of July to process our application and issue their approval for us to adopt this child. They've also said that there's nothing we can do to speed that process up, even though we first submitted our application to them in December. And all we want is to go to Russia and pick up our child, love on him, introduce him to his big brother, and bring him home. RIGHT NOW.

RIGHT NOW, my sister in Christ, friend, and clergy colleague Narcie (a 30-year-old campus minister, wife, daughter, sister, and mother to a 1.5-year-old and a just-now-3-year old) is preparing to have brain surgery to remove a tumor that was found a week and a half ago. She will go in for this surgery on Friday.

You can read Narcie's journey, and share your prayers with her and her father, by following their blogs here and here. I hope you will join me in praying for them.

These, among a few other painful situations for those I know and love, are the soil from which most of my prayers are growing right now.

Or maybe the word is not growing, but "groaning," which is (I believe) one way of interpreting what the Holy Spirit does within us since, or when, we "don't know how to pray as we ought." Come to think of it, there's a lot of stuff I need to hear in Romans 8, which is a passage another dear friend of mine from divinity school used to pray in its entirety, from memory, when her Chron's Disease or Multiple Sclerosis would have her doubled over in pain.

It seems like there's a lot of stuff from Paul in that particular part of that particular letter about suffering and "waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." And there's something else about groaning in labor pains while we wait for the revealing of glory and God's children in there, too, isn't there? Perhaps I'll go read Romans 8 one more time. Maybe you'll join me in that, and in prayer...