In this morning’s Fruit of the Vine, Lori Elliott tells of a time she lost her 8-year-old son. He’d left the house while Lori was making dinner. She called emergency services. “I gave the 911 operator a description of Caleb and told her that he had autism and was non-verbal.” Lori wasn’t sure Caleb could tell someone his name or where he lived, and as soon as she was off the phone, Lori joined her husband in a frantic search: “Amboy is a town of about 350 people but at that moment it seemed enormous.”
In the second century Irenaeus of Lyon wrote of recapitulation, an atonement theory that holds we are saved precisely because Jesus has fully lived as human, effectively sanctifying all of human experience: “The Word remaining quiescent, that He might be capable of being tempted, dishonored, crucified, and of suffering death.” Irenaeus doesn’t get into every single aspect of being human, but I think it safe to assume that the fear Lori describes is a fear that Jesus understands.
Fear is powerful.
“As dusk turned to darkness, my heart began to race and I was having trouble breathing,” Lori writes. “I had never been so overcome with fear in my life.”
Fear is also universal. We can relate. I can relate. God can relate.
Lori suggests a prayer we can pray when we’re overcome by fear: “Dear Lord, when our fear becomes greater than our faith, help us to let go and trust in you.”
Because God understands.
Eric Muhr
The experience of worship
“At the heart of vital Quakerism lies the experience of worship,” Paul Anderson writes in one of several short essays in Meet the Friends. “The Holy Spirit is constantly speaking and drawing us to God, so the question is not whether the Spirit will speak…the question is ‘will we listen?’”
In Quaker Meeting for Worship, Douglas Steere describes how he listens: “The first thing that I do is close my eyes and then still my body in order to get it as far out of the way as I can. Then I still my mind and let it open to God in silent prayer, for the meeting, as we understand it, is the meeting place of the worshiper with God. I thank God inwardly for this occasion, for the week’s happenings, for what I have learned at God’s hand, for my family, and the work there is to do. I often pause to enjoy this presence.”
Out of the silence, there may come vocal ministry, when one Friends stands – or sometimes several – to share a song, a scripture, a reflection, a story – whatever it is that the Spirit has prompted. In this morning’s Fruit of the Vine, Maurice Roberts speaks of a time God’s answer for his need was “immeasurably more ... than I could have orchestrated.”
Cleta Crisman writes in her introduction to this quarter’s collection of devotional readings in Fruit of the Vine that we may be hesitant to speak because of personal pain, because of vulnerability or fear. But she encourages us to share “from that space. It’s where we all really live so much of the time; we need one another to hold up our hands, to create a safe place for God to open our eyes, and to help us carry ... the limitations of our own humanness.”
And Steere continues: “When I feel drawn to share something in the quiet meeting for worship, I simply rise and say it as briefly as I know how, seeking ever to keep close to the root and to avoid all vain and distracting ornamentation. The other worshipers often do not raise their heads or open their eyes. If they feel in unity with what I have shared and if it speaks to the condition of the meeting, out of which it sprang, then it becomes a seed for their meditation. If it does not, they pay little attention to it and continue in their own worship.”
This morning, I’m taking some time to listen for the Spirit who is constantly speaking. I’m pausing in the early morning light to enjoy God’s presence. I’m paying attention to the places where I feel fear, vulnerability, or pain. And I pray that in each of my interactions today, I might say as briefly as I know how whatever it is I’ve been given to share.
Maybe you might join me, wherever you are. I think this goes better when we’re in it together.
Eric Muhr
Chaotic, complex and beautiful
Two weeks ago, in a reflection on one of the books we carry, I wrote about my struggle with prayer, and then, this last week, tired from a long weekend (and a little bit congested), I didn’t write. Many of you wrote to me to remind me that you were praying for me. And at least one of you noticed that I hadn’t sent out a newsletter.
The email was short: “Did you think I wouldn’t notice if there wasn’t a Long Story Short this week?”
It made me smile. It reminded me of the importance of community – a place where we pray for and show up for one another. And it brought up another memory of prayer that seemed good for sharing this week.
I used to work with the youth at a church here in town and on a Sunday night when the regular worship leaders for high school youth group had other plans, I took advantage of the opportunity created by their absence to try something new. I asked students to choose one of about 60 different “breath prayers” I’d created by taking short phrases from Psalm 119.
Students worked for 45 minutes on collages of photos, words, colors, and other images cut from magazines while focused on the breath prayers they had selected. My plan was for the collages to give us something to do with our hands in order to cut down on distractions during the time of worship, but many of the finished pieces were chaotic, complex and beautiful representations of the prayers themselves.
During the exercise, I encouraged students to experience the time of prayer as a time of freedom; so even though I wanted them to have an experience of “just me and God,” I made it clear that whatever activities happened—getting up for a snack, answering the door, conversation, laughter, simply being together – would be completely appropriate during our worship experience. Even so, our time together was a time of silence. Students were absorbed in their prayers and in their creations. In fact, as parents arrived to pick up their children, many students had trouble finding a clear stopping point. They wanted to continue, longed for completion. Most left in silence.
The next afternoon, I had coffee with one of the students who’d been part of our worship experiment. We discussed homework and parents, music and poetry, philosophy and the church, all of the usual topics. But we also touched on the proximity of God, the experience of Christ, the power of a phrase both breathed and lived, an experiment with prayer that had changed us.
For two years after that night, those collages covered the walls of the kitchen corner where I drink my first cup of coffee each morning. I was surrounded by the prayers of high school students who had connected with God while sprawled out on the floor of the church youth room making art. And it was beautiful the way – each morning – that it helped me to breathe.
This morning, I’m already halfway into my first cup of coffee, and I’m thinking about the way your life is kind of like one of those collages – a thing of chaotic, complex beauty reflecting the very image of God, a kind of embodied prayer. And I’m thankful for you.
For the way you help me to breathe.
Eric Muhr