Dan Rather didn't get it...

If last week I was all, “Holy Contemplative Prayer, Batman!” coming off my spiritual high from the monastery, this week it’s been more like:

Cricket. Cricket.

I once heard told that Dan Rather asked Mother Teresa what she said during her prayers. 

She answered, "I listen." 

Dan followed up with, "Well then, what does God say?"  

Mother Teresa smiled and answered, "He listens." 

For a moment, Dan didn't know what to say, so Mother Teresa added, "And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you."

If you read my post last week, you recall I took Saint Mother Teresa’s advice, and instead of talking to God, I started listening. I gotta be honest…I think I’m Dan Rather. Fortunately, I’ve been in the 60-somethings Psalms this week, and I am beginning to think that David had a little Dan Rather in him, too.

In Psalm 61, David says, “Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to you, when my heart is faint.” My Bible commentary remarks that the psalmist feels “far removed from the presence of God,” in verse 2. Check.

In Psalm 62, twice David says, “For God alone my soul waits in silence.” Same, dude. Same.

Finally, in Psalm 63, from the wilderness David cries, “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” My commentary says that, here, David is describing “a place where God is not.” Still with you, David.

All week long, I’ve listened for God. And all week long, my soul waited in silence with from the end of the earth in a dry land where there is no water. At least I’m in good company, though, with David and Dan Rather and all.

When I was at the monastery, Brother Benedict and I had a brief discussion about a book he was reading by Saint John of the Cross, The Dark Night, in which (and I’m paraphrasing Brother Benedict’s synopsis here), Saint John describes that there are times when God pulls away from us and leaves us to a darkness for a season in order for us to grow in faith. Kind of a “conviction of things not seen” thing, maybe? Who knows.

Listen, John Ortberg tried to pull this same line on me toward the end of his book, Soul Keeping. Maybe I’m not spiritually wise enough for this kind of theology, because right now, in this season of my life, ain’t nobody got time for that. God up and leaves? Really?!

So, instead of thinking that maybe I was just stuck between Dan Rather AND Saint John of the Cross, God forbid, I decided to turn to Pandora.

Whenever I can’t seem to find God anywhere, I have turned to music. I have always found God’s presence waiting for me there, particularly in the old anthems found in the blue hymnbook of my childhood church. Now until very recently, I hadn’t been able to develop the same kind of attachment to contemporary Christian music. I’m pretty sure that Carmen clouded the entire landscape of contemporary Christian music for me from the late early 90s until about 6 months ago. But, this new wave of Christian artists is rising up, and some of their stuff is Psalm-worthy. Nathan recently turned me onto the Robbie Seay Band, and with their help toward the last half of the week, I decided not to let the Dan Rather in me win out. This is their modern remake of an old, old Advent hymn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnZr9bhcXuM

Each morning, during my prayer time, I have been meditating on this song, particularly these words:

Dear Savior come to tired earth

and bring the grace of dawn 

Dispel the night and show Thy face

Come, Messiah, Come

Now, we didn’t hear any update from the adoption agency this week, because there wasn’t one to give. Between that and the dark silence I found waiting for me every time I went to God in prayer, I’m going to be honest, I needed God to dispel the night and bring the grace of dawn.

And I honestly don’t feel like God’s done that yet.

But, like the song says:

There is hope today

that God Himself might shine upon our souls and say

Unto you a Savior comes

and everything will change

So, I’m going to keep mediating on these words and hoping each new day for the Messiah to be so present with me that even Dan Rather would know God is there.

In God's Grace, 

Kameron, Nathan, J. Henry, Amelia and our New Little Girl!

Setting Down My Prayer List

It’s been one year and three days since we received our referral. Three hundred and sixty eight days of many ups and even more downs. In light of the recent events with our agency and the anniversary of our referral, I revived a long-standing, never-actualized desire to travel to St. Bernard’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, in Cullman, Alabama for a time of spiritual renewal. The timing finally felt right, and after making a few jokes about “The Thornbirds” to Nathan (which he had to Google), I fished my mind from the gutter and scheduled the visit. I had planned to spend the 48 hours in some sort of intense prayer vigil for movement and mercy with the adoption, but that’s not what it turned into at all…

I arrived at St. Bernard’s at right before 5p mass and vespers on Thursday. Guests at St. Bernard actually sit with the monks and participate in the offices (chanted prayers), so after mass, I anxiously made my way to the chancel area, found a seat, and tried not to make a mistake as we all prayed together.

Dinner followed in silence, which intensified my feeling that I had made a grievous error in thinking there was anything for me at a monastery. What the actual hades had I been thinking? These monks won’t even talk to me. This was probably the stupidest thing I have ever done. I bet Nathan knew this was going to be a train wreck; why didn’t he tell me this was a bad idea? This is totally his fault.

Friday, I woke up at 5:30a ready to pray. After breakfast, I sat down in a rocking chair that became a perch for me for the rest of my time at St. Bernard’s. Before I began my laundry list of adoption related prayers, as has become my custom to pray, I remembered something that I had read from the Sermon on the Mount the night before: the Lord’s Prayer. Well, actually, I remembered the few lines before Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer. In Matthew, Jesus says, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

I can promise y’all, I am a pray-er of “many words.” Throughout this last year, with a little help from the spiritual formation of my childhood, I had developed a truly inaccurate view of the nature and purpose of prayer. The good news: the amount of time I spend in prayer has never been greater. The bad news (kinda embarrassed about this): I had developed this notion that I had to pray for every need we had related to the adoption every day using very specific words (lest God be confus-ed…), or God wouldn’t come to our assistance. Many times I have actually concluded my prayers with the Lord’s Prayer, realized that I forgot to mention a specific prayer need, pried my closed prayer back open to stuff in that need, and then re-recited the Lord’s Prayer, so that my tag-on prayer wouldn’t be invalidated by occurring out of order.

This is messed up on so many levels.

Most importantly, though, what is my prayer life saying about my understanding of the character of God? I’m not trying to self-deprecate too much here, because I believe God abides with us where we are, but prayer was becoming exhausting and weighty and self-centered and neurotic. And that’s all unnecessary. Jesus is all, “your Father knows what you need before you ask him,” and Paul is all, “for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

I realized, sitting there in that rocking chair, that God loves me. And you know what else? God loves our daughter. And even if I never lifted another prayer need up related to this adoption again, the Spirit will still be interceding for her in Ethiopia just like it will be here. Thanks be to God that her eventual homecoming isn’t dependent on my ability to beg God correctly for it. I don’t have to explicitly name every one of our current needs every morning. God’s already received word; the Spirit delivered the messages more eloquently and quicker than I ever could.  

So, I ended up spending very little time praying for anything specific at the monastery. I just sat there with Jesus. The good news about waking up at dark-thirty for Matins and Lauds (fancy Catholic prayers) is that I was able to I feel the early morning breeze blow across my face for a good two hours afterwards and imagine that it was the “ruach,”, breath of God, confirming God’s presence with me in that rocking chair.

And you know what? Those two days I spent at St. Bernard’s with Jesus, neither one of us was really saying anything, but I still felt heard. It was one of the sweetest spiritual experiences of my life.

Before I left the Abbey, I had a conversation with an incredibly charming monk, Father Francis, about the nature of prayer. He highlighted our culture’s obsession with originality and insisted that the prayers of the Psalms can’t be improved upon. Sold, Father Frances. Toward the end of our conversation, he confirmed, “Prayer isn’t about changing God, it’s about changing you. Let their words [the Psalms] become your words.”

There’s just one problem: when you’ve been talking to God one way for three decades, it can be more than a little difficult to change the nature of your relationship from this side of things. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ask God for what we need; in fact, God even directs us to ask, seek, and knock. Repeat. I’m not going to go Gregorian-chants-or-nothing with Jesus from this time forward. This is merely a story about my prayer life, not a recommendation for yours. 

For the next few months, I’m going to pray the Psalms or keep quiet and listen. I’m not going to ask God for anything. I’m going to let someone else’s good words become my words, and I’m going to be still and allow the Spirit to do its thing. Because “he knows our needs,” and His glory will be revealed whether I beg for it or not.

By the way, do you know how I know that’s true? Because two days after I returned home, we received an email from our new agency that all the in-country issues with our old agency had been resolved. The biggest obstacle in moving forward – separating from our old agency in-country – was overcome on Friday morning, while I was sitting at a monastery in prayer, not saying a word.

In God’s Grace,

Kameron, Nathan, J. Henry, Amelia and our New Little Girl!