Yesterday I listened to my 88 year old mother read a book to a circle of women and girls. It was a beautiful, holy experience. We were celebrating the birth of a baby in our extended family and there was just something about being together, feeling the generational love and connection that overwhelmed me. As my mom read a children's book about the joy of belonging and the beauty of life, I had the realization that I haven't spent enough time gleaning wisdom from this woman. Along with my dad, she raised eight children. Our family is now a small army. I need to be asking her more questions.
This morning I used the book A Rythm of Prayer to pray. It's a book of prayers compiled by Sarah Bessey.
Following are excerpts from a prayer included in that collection. I hope to ask my own mother the question that shapes this prayer.
“She Said, ‘How do you know when you are hearing from God?’”
By Amena Brown
She said, “how do you know when you are hearing from God?”
I didn’t know how to explain
It is to explain the butter grit of cornbread to a mouth that just discovered it has a tongue
The sound of jazz to ears that only ever thought they’d be lobes of flesh
The sight of sunsets to blinded eyes that in an instant can see
To fail at the ability to give words to how the scent of baked bread can make the mind recall a memory
Every detail…
My words never felt so small, so useless, so incapable
I wanted to say
Put your hand in the middle of your chest
Feel the rhythm there…
You don’t have to be inside the four walls of a church to cry out to the God who made you
Because no matter where you sing or scream or whisper God’s ears can hear you…
God’s ears are here for the babies
For the immigrant, for the refugee
For the depressed, for the lonely
For the dreamers
The widow, the orphan
The oppressed and the helpless
Those about to make a mess or caught in the middle of cleaning one up
Dirt don’t scare God’s ears
God is a gardener
God knows things can’t grow without sun, rain, and soil
I want to tell her to hear God
You have to be willing to experience what’s holy in places many people don’t deem to be sacred
That sometimes God sits next to you on a barstool
Spilling truth to you like too many beers…
I want to tell her God is always waiting…
God is always saying
I love you
I am here
Don’t go, stay
Please
I try to explain how God is pleading with us
To trust
To love
To listen
That God’s voice is melody and bass lines and whisper and thunder and grace
Sometimes when I pray, I think of her
How the voice of God was lingering in her very question
How so many of us just like her
Just like me
Just like you
Are still searching
Still questioning, still doubting
I know I don’t have all the answers
I know I never will
That sometimes the best thing we can do is put our hands in the middle of our chest
Feel the rhythm there
Turn down the noise in our minds, in our lives, and whisper,
God
Whatever you want to say
I’m here
I’m listening
Joy and peace,
Ruth
