Writing as Prayer

Consistency is not my strong suit. I get interested in a topic and for several weeks I devour everything I can find. Then I lose interest and move onto something else. According to George Leonard, in his book Mastery, I am a Dabbler. It's not always a bad thing. I love to learn. Being a dabbler means I learn lots of things. But it does make it hard to master something like photography or exercising or eating well or sermon preparation or blogging. Inconsistency is the death of bloggers.

This morning I decided that I want to master one thing. But what one thing should I choose? I'm interested in blogging right now. I'm still working on my sermon preparation process. Worship is my main focus at the church. I wish I were interested in mastering exercise or eating right. I realized the area that affects nearly everything right now is writing. Writing this blog. Writing my Fresh Worship blog. Writing sermons. Journaling. Tweeting. Writing even affects advertising our church's movie night and our new children's Sunday school.

So I will focus on writing. I remember reading that writer Natalie Goldberg made writing her practice. Writing, all types of writing, will be my spiritual practice. Writing will be my prayer. I won't tack on a prayer at the end of my posts. I won't just ask God for help at the beginning of a sermon. I will make the entire act of writing into prayer. It's something I can do every day.

What is your spiritual practice? What is your prayer?

Stopping Along the Side of the Road

I work in Centerville, Iowa, and my husband works in Omaha. Every weekend either he comes to Centerville or I go to Omaha. Sounds strange, but it's working quite well.

Every other weekend I have a 3 1/2 hour drive to Omaha. I've gotten to really enjoy my time on the road. Frank bought me a radio that I can plug my iPod into. I download lots of podcasts, like PCUSA moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow and Carol Howard Merritt doing The God Complex, and shows from NPR, and workshops from The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. The time flies by. Frank asked me how my trip was yesterday, and it sounded like a strange question. It went fine. It feels like a short commute from work.

But I never stop. Even when I see a beautiful old barn that I'd like to take a picture of. Even when I see a lake and a winding dirt road heading into a state park. Even when I pass the little chapel by the side of the road that I've now passed hundreds of times. Even the day that everything was coated with an inch of ice and it looked like I was surrounded by crystal sculptures. I never stop. Because I'm on my way somewhere, and I have to get there as soon as possible.

Maybe I should stop, every once in a while, to experience to beauty of the Iowa countryside, not passing it by at 55 mph focused on my podcasts, but standing still. Maybe I can take five minutes, breathe in and out, and say, "Thanks, God." And then get back in the car and continue on.

Notecard Prayers

My friend Sarah writes quotes on notecards and then reads them over during her morning devotion time. What a brilliant idea! (My friend Sarah is quite brilliant!)

I'm always writing quotes on little post-it notes and sticking them on my desk. After a while, I get tired of the mess and try to figure out where to put them. Sometimes I put them in my journal program under a file marked "quotes." I used to put them in a Word document under a file named "quotes." I don't look at either of them.

But if I write them on notecards and go through them during my devotional time, I'll continually be reminded of quotes and prayers and ideas that I want to remember. They will have a place on my desk. And they will start to have a place in my spirit.

My friend Mark just put this quote on his Facebook page: "Obedience is the shape of God's presence." It's a quote by Walter Brueggemann. I'd like to chew on that quote for a while, too. Now it will have a place.

What are some of your favorite quotes or prayers that you would put on notecards?

Repetition

I preached about repetition yesterday. I said the way to make other people's words, like scripture and printed prayers, our own was through repetition. I said that's why we repeat things during worship, like the Lord's Prayer and the doxology and certain verses of scripture. I said children need repetition so that they can learn and be involved in worship without having to read.

When I was growing up, my pastor always opened the worship service with "This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." That's now deeply ingrained in my soul because I heard it so many times. It's now a part of me and not just someone else's words. So I always open the worship services I lead with it. I want it to become deeply ingrained in the people I lead as much as it is ingrained in me.

After worship, one person asked, "When does repetition become brainwashing, and when does it become simply repeating empty words?" Good questions. I suppose, in a way, our repetition in worship is a bit like brainwashing. Are we brainwashing our children to think that God created the day and we should rejoice in it? I do want the children in our congregation, and the adults, too, for that matter, to know that God loves them. And I will repeat it as much as it takes for that realization to wash over them, over their souls as well as their brains.

Today I started to wonder, not just what words I repeat, but what actions and thoughts do I repeat? I remember someone saying that the people who watch Wheel of Fortune every night get really good at learning how to turn over letters. Is that what I want to repeat? Is that what I want ingrained in my soul? What about pausing throughout the day to pray, or greeting everyone I met throughout the day with a kind word?

What do you repeat most often? What are you washing into your heart and mind?

Do You Pray Right?

When I was in college, I was involved with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. They talked alot about a "Daily Quiet Time." Good idea, although I got the impression that it should be daily (I'm not too good with daily consistency), and in the morning (I'm not a morning person). You were also supposed to read a portion of Scripture and answer questions about it.

Nothing wrong with any of that, except I wasn't too good at doing it. So for the past 20 years I've had in the back of my mind that "I don't pray right." Along the way I've read books like Listening to God by John Ackerman where I learned that there are different types of spirituality, and I'm more a contemplative that meets God through silence. I've discovered the labyrinth and A Guide to Walking Meditation, and learned that I pray better when I'm moving my body. I am nourished by Taize, the music, the prayer services, and now perhaps the podcasts. (Thanks Steve Whitney, for you post on morning prayer for night people, and the links to prayer sites. )I read Everyday Spiritual Practice, and learned that anything from balance to adversity to marriage to recycling can be a spiritual practice. (How about fasting between meals?) I keep in mind a quote from Richard Foster, that just like a child can never draw a bad picture, a child of God can never pray a bad prayer.

And yet... And yet I still have in the back of my mind "I'm not praying right." Why? Why has that stuck so deeply in my soul?

Dear Lord, teach me to pray. And Lord, help me to know that I am already "praying right."

Running with God

I started running today.

Not as in "I started a new exercise routine." I was walking, and all of a sudden I got the urge to run. So I ran a while. And then I went back to walking.

I don't like to run. In fact, except for the time I joined the 50-Mile Club in junior high school (what, on earth, possessed me to do that?), I've avoided running. I've thought about walking a marathon, or a half-marathon, but certainly not running one. I hate to run. So why did I start running?

I wonder if it was because of God? Several months ago I was talking to my spiritual director about my desire to lose weight and exercise. She asked if I had prayed about it. I said no. I thought that asking God to help me lose weight meant asking God to magically take all the extra weight away, or allow me to continue to eat the way I want while still losing weight. But asking God for help doesn't have to mean that. It could mean that I still have to work hard and say no to things I'd like, but that God will help me do it. So I asked God to help me say no to the nachos last week and the third slice of pizza on Friday. And I asked God to help me go out and walk last week. And God did help. And today I even started running.

Breathing the Holy Spirit

I've been having trouble breathing. I went to my allergy doctor the other day. She said it was probably caused by my allergies, so I'm supposed to bump up my allergy medicine. She also gave me some breathing exercises to do. I'm supposed to breath in through my nose, and then breathe out of my mouth slowly, for five minutes at a time, eight times a day.

Before my appointment with my allergy doctor, I met with my spiritual director. During the meditation at the beginning of the session, she told me to breathe in the Holy Spirit. All I could think was, "I can't breathe." I wonder if any of us are having trouble breathing in the Holy Spirit? Or maybe we breathe those shallow breathes instead of the deep, diaphram breaths. Do we need breathing exercises to help us breathe in the Holy Spirit? When I do my breathing exercises, I'll think about breathing in the Spirit.

My pastor friend Caroline said that when she leads the prayers of the people in her church, she starts with centering prayer. She prints in the bulletin instructions, such as "With each breath in, breathe in the Holy Spirit, and with each breath out, breathe out your worries." She gives people about 20 seconds of silence to practice the centering prayer, and then she goes on with the prayers of the people.

With each breath in, breathe in the Holy Spirit. With each breath out, breathe out your worries. Practice that for five minutes at a time, eight times a day. Or whenever you think of it.