Prayer is a habit. It’s a little like running, like going to bed at a reasonable hour, like eating decently, like remembering to write a thank you note, like saying something kind when that wasn’t really your first thought.
It’s funny, when we talk about habit-forming stuff, we usually mention the bad things – bad habits like cigarette-smoking, driving too fast, chewing with your mouth open, interrupting people, swearing. But the easiest way for me to get rid of one of those is to inculcate a good habit. Like prayer.
How do you do that? Pick a time and place everyday when you can get prayerful. For me it happens to be my morning commute on the New York subway. I read a few verses of a psalm and then close my eyes, the noise of the train on the tracks drowning out any other. But surely you can find something even better that works for you.
Here’s a way to start. This month of September we’re launching a 30-day prayer program. You can sign up and get a short inspiring thought everyday. Try it.
The point about developing a good habit is that you don’t have to think about it. You just do it. Some mornings I don’t feel like praying, but I open my pocket Bible, the train takes off, it rumbles down the tunnel and my soul takes off too.
Good habits need reinforcing. That’s why I’ve signed up for the 30-Day Prayer program. There are more than a few bad habits I need to work on.
I was at a dinner sitting across from a woman who’s husband had died eleven months earlier. We talked about grief and I made the comment that I thought she was doing remarkably well. Then she made this gesture with her hands, like a wave. “It’s like that. Up and down.”
What do I know about grief? My parents are still around, my family is in good health, but I still grieve for a classmate who died of ALS and a neighbor felled by a brain tumor and my mentor and friend Van who I expect to call any moment even though he’s been gone for two years. The losses accumulate with the years and I pray for every one of them. How can you not pray for the dead when so many you love are gone?
Back at my office, I turned to a book I’d been reading, a terrific memoir by my friend Rosanne Cash, Composed. In it she writes about dealing with the death of her mom, her father Johnny Cash and her stepmom June Carter Cash in the space of 18 months.
“Deep sorrow and traces of great loss run through everyone’s lives and yet they let others step into the elevator first, wave them ahead in a line of traffic, smile and greet their children and inquire about their lives, and never let on for a second that they, too, have lain awake at night in longing and regret, that they, too, have cried until it seemed impossible that one person could hold so many tears, that they, too, keep a picture of someone locked in their heart and bring it out in quiet, solitary moments to caress and remember.
“Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.”
Grief is terrible, but it’s one place you’re never alone.
Chalk this one up as a caregiver’s answered prayer.
I just spent some time with parents and it was revealing in many ways. My dad, as I’ve mentioned, suffers from a heavy burden of ailments that leave him in tremendous pain. Arthritis, spinal stenosis, neuropathy and all the indignities of a body that’s giving up on him. We talk on the phone regularly but it’s hard from long distance to know how he’s doing. Mom’s the primary caregiver and I worry as much about her as I do about him.
“I’m fine,” she’ll say with the sunny temperament that is God’s greatest gift to her and one that illuminates everyone in her orbit. “The hardest thing for me is just to be patient.”
She’s always moved through life at a vigorous clip and still plays a mean tennis game at age…well, I won’t say what age. In between tennis and bridge and meetings with her book group, she takes good care of Dad. “I have to pray to be patient,” she says.
“That’ll be quite an achievement,” I tell her jokingly.
I was glad to be on hand for ten days. I thought I’d be able to help. I hardly had a chance. Mom makes sure Dad gets up, takes his shower, helps him get dressed. She gets him breakfast, guides him through some physical therapy, gets him the newspaper, reads to him, and waits patiently as he slowly, ever so slowly gets in the car. I never heard that voice I knew from my childhood, “Come on, honey, hurry up.” I never heard a complaint, never even a long sigh.
“Mom,” I said, “you do very well.”
“I do?” she said with surprise.
“Yes, I think your prayer has been answered.” I’m not even sure she knew which one. In the meanwhile I pray for the both of them, that Dad gets some relief from the pain and that the primary caregiver knows she’s got four kids who are ready at any moment to lend a hand.
Carol and I were back at church this Sunday after the vacation, back sitting together, back seeing friends, back singing together – I always like it when she reaches for the descant – back praying together.
I thought of this when I read the latest study showing that couples who pray together stay together. It always seems so patently obvious to me. What does a marriage need to survive and thrive? Intimacy and community. Isn’t that just what you get when you worship together?
Sure, there’s the mutual interest stuff that matters, the coffee-hour talk about vacations and kids. There’s the usual comparing notes about the sermon: thumbs up, thumbs down and what, dear, did it mean to you? There’s something to be said for hearing the same Bible lesson in the same place: “I don’t even remember that passage from Proverbs, do you?” But I depend on the emotional vibe that comes from opening up side by side even in silence.
Early in our marriage I remember hearing something that really touched me in church, I glanced at Carol and saw her wiping a tear from her eye. “Yes,” I thought, “we need to be always doing this together.” What better way to stay in touch with her heart.
Twenty-seven years later we’re still at it. Same place every Sunday. Of course, we get fed up at times and are tempted to sleep in, but we show up. Not for nothing did our marriage start here with a prayer. If we didn’t keep working on the prayer part we would never be as close as we are.
I’ve just spent a week at the beach with my extended family – nieces, nephews, siblings, sibling-in-laws, kids, amazing caregiver Mom and indomitable Dad – and every night at dinner we’ve said grace. Somebody said grace. My dad’s graces are famous for their rambling informative everything-but-the-kitchen-sink quality. Friends used to call them “the six o’clock news.” But my wonderful brothers-in-law can hold their own.
Larry has a lovely quality of opening his heart and telling “Father, God” all he’s grateful for and Mike, warm and irrepressible Mike, always remembers the food and “the hands that have prepared it,” which in our case can be quite a few. It takes a lot of hands and shoppers to feed anywhere from 10 to 25 of us. (Carol says we’ve served over 200 meals for the week…and we’re still counting.)
But I can always tell if Mike’s here or not here because when Mike’s at the table we always hold hands for grace.
I guess it was the tradition in his family and it wasn’t the tradition in mine. Quite frankly, I love the way he does it. When we hold hands around the table or with paper plates in our laps, you can feel the warmth of the family as we warm our spirits and souls in gratitude (balancing dinner in our laps).
A family is a wonderful, changing, growing thing. I’m glad to think that we adopt traditions as new members join us. I give thanks for everyone of them. They’ve all taught me a thing or two.
I can remember Dad helping me get dressed for church as a little boy. Making sure I had the right shoe for the right foot, helping me buckle my belt, pulling up my socks, buttoning my shirt, brushing my hair – what little I had of it with my buzz cut. “All right skeesix,” he said, “you’re all ready.”
This time it was me helping Dad get dressed for my nephew’s wedding. Dad’s hands work slowly these days and I was glad to help. Buttoning the buttons on his suit pants, tucking in the belt, buttoning the cuffs on his starched white shirt, pulling up the socks, putting on the shoes.
His feet hurt from neuropathy so I had to go gently with the shoes – sorry if I pulled too much on the heels, Dad. I remembered how he taught me, years ago, that though socks were good for both feet, shoes had a wrong and a right foot. He stood up when he had the shoes on, a pair of black shoes he hadn’t worn since the last family wedding. “Are they on the right feet?” I asked.
“I think so,” he said, testing them.
The biggest challenge was the bow tie. Dad got it started, then I worked on it for a while. Not very successfully, I’m afraid. The final result was a group effort, with much credit to my sister’s ministrations.
The roles can change fast in the parent/child relationship, faster than you would ever expect. Dad helped me look great for years. I was glad to have the chance to return the favor.
Pinned to the bulletin board of our kitchen is a photo of summer that I stare at all year long. The beach chairs, the big tent we set out in front of the beach rental, the endless expanse of sand, a surfboard, a sliver of water and our noses in a book.
By the end of the week I’ll be there!
One of the great pleasures of life is looking forward to a great pleasure in life, like vacation. The anticipation, the expectations, the planning, the booking of flights, the checking on towels and bathing suits. Do we need more sunscreen? (Yes.) Will last year’s suit do? (Sure.) Do I have a good book to read? (Yep, too many of them.)
For years we’ve rented a house with my siblings and parents for an August week at the beach. I look forward to swimming out to the buoy, long jogs on the beach, grand feasts we manage to stage for up to 25 people. We all cook, we all eat, we all do dishes.
It’s a bit of heaven on earth, and hope and love fill it with delight. Soon I’ll see everybody on the sand: my siblings, my parents, my kids, my nieces and nephews, their spouses (we keep growing as a family). Great expectations are essential to my prayer life – all those months of staring at that picture on the bulletin board. “Whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, think about these things,” the Bible says.
Vacation is around the corner, summer’s answer to prayer. Can’t wait
What do you wear to a vinegar festival? “A sour expression,” a friend of ours suggested.
The festival was hosted by Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourette at Our Lady of The Resurrection Monastery in LaGrangeville, New York. Sounds like quite a mouthful, but the place looked a lot more down-home than that and the Benedictine Brother Victor was engaging and approachable, wearing a dungaree apron over his gray cassock.
We were up in his neighborhood, visiting some friends, and they mentioned Brother Victor. He’s a bit of a local celebrity, the author of several cookbooks and devotional volumes. “My sister is going to his vinegar festival this weekend,” Carol said. “We could meet her there.”
We drove through beautiful farmland along a winding road, getting lost several times before we found Brother Victor’s place. We walked up the drive and I saw a cross on top of an old fence and a statue of St. Joseph on the drive. Several local farmers had set up tents to sell cheese, yogurt, cookies, preserves and yes, vinegar. Brother Victor makes his own too.
He’s the only resident in the Benedictine monastery so he’s got a lot on his plate, a vegetable garden, sheep, geese, hens laying eggs for sale. It occurred to me that a brother who grows his own produce and sells it and puts on retreats and writes cookbooks has to do a lot of multi-tasking. But I suspect he does it in a way that keeps the important stuff first. “Ora et labora” have been the motto of Benedictines for centuries. Work and prayer, the two intertwined.
We found Carol’s sister, bought some food, talked to the sheep, talked to Brother Victor. I thought about how spirituality at its best isn’t an escape from anything but a step towards an active, engaged life. That my prayers are meant to keep me involved, caring, attentive. Carol took my photo and then we walked back to the car.
Why does it always rain after you do the watering?
Why does it never rain when you remember your umbrella?
This is really going to be about prayer – I promise – but let me start with the weather. It was really hot last week. And it hadn’t rained in a long while. The grass in the park is looking pretty parched and the crabapple tree outside our kitchen window is losing its leaves. In July.
And yet on Saturday, there was supposed to be this tremendous downpour.
Appropriately, dutifully, well-advisedly, we took our umbrellas with us when we went to visit family in Connecticut. Did it rain? No, not even a drop. The umbrellas sat in the back of the car like the three graces waiting for a dance. Wallflowers. Sunday, I decided, I’d better do something about that pathetic-looking crabapple, not to mention the hydrangeas, my geraniums, our basil and mint. Everything needed some water.
So I dragged the hose over and let it soak the ground. The sky was a cerulean blue, mind you, with just the occasional cumulus cloud to be picturesque.
An hour later the heavens opened. Thunder, lightning and rain splattering on the driveway and soaking the soil. Dodging a lightning bolt, I put away the hose. “I want you to know,” I told Carol inside, “the only reason it rained was because I was doing the watering.”
There are two ways of thinking about this: 1. The bad things that you fear will happen don’t happen if you’re prepared for them. 2. The good things happen when you help them along.
That’s the prayer part – I said I’d get to that. I sort of divide my praying time between the things that I don’t want to happen and the things that I do want to happen. And then, as the Bible says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). I like to urge the good rains along.
In the past week my son Timothy has cooked dinner for me twice. Both nights Carol had meetings and it was just going to be the two of us boys and I figured, coming home at 8:30, that we’d send out for Chinese or maybe try the new Thai place that has opened up on the corner.
On the contrary, I came home to find Timo chopping scallions on the cutting board – good knife skills, Tim – heating up oil in the big skillet and consulting an opened cookbook. “We’re going to have fried rice tonight, Dad,” he said to me.
This is one of those unexpected delights of parenting. You take your kids to Little League and soccer, you sign them up for guitar lessons and an SAT review course, you teach them in Sunday school class (learning far more about the Bible than they probably did), you ask them to clean their rooms. You hope somewhere along the way they acquire some life skills that will make them happy, engaged, fulfilled, thoughtful, inquisitive, articulate and able to fill out IRS forms someday. No where did I put in there: “Must learn to cook.”
And yet here was my 20-year-old son cooking and cooking for me. (Add “caring” to the list.)
So here’s what I’d like to tell my friend Jim who is just starting out in this fatherhood journey: “You’ll pray, you’ll teach, you’ll exhort, you’ll cheer, but no matter how much you plan, your kids will come back at you on their way to adulthood with some wonderful surprises.”
Fried rice one night and a very good vegetarian risotto. Healthy too. Thanks, Tim.
Chalk this one up as a caregiver’s answered prayer.
Do you hold hands in your family during grace?
I can remember Dad helping me get dressed for church as a little boy. Making sure I had the right shoe for the right foot, helping me buckle my belt, pulling up my socks, buttoning my shirt, brushing my hair – what little I had of it with my buzz cut. “All right skeesix,” he said, “you’re all ready.”
Pinned to the bulletin board of our kitchen is a photo of summer that I stare at all year long. The beach chairs, the big tent we set out in front of the beach rental, the endless expanse of sand, a surfboard, a sliver of water and our noses in a book.
What do you wear to a vinegar festival? “A sour expression,” a friend of ours suggested.
In the past week my son Timothy has cooked dinner for me twice. Both nights Carol had meetings and it was just going to be the two of us boys and I figured, coming home at 8:30, that we’d send out for Chinese or maybe try the new Thai place that has opened up on the corner.