Wordless Prayer

It's part of our world, this violence, says Laura Boggess in response to the next chapter in Gerald May's Wisdom of Wilderness.

I sit at my keyboard, wish for something profound to say, to add to a hard but good conversation. Nothing comes.

Instead I remember a morning practice, born in desperation, when ordinary word-prayer seemed powerless to help me meet the days in an urban classroom that had no crayons, no paper, no math books, one tiny shelf of picture books, no teaching assistant, 30 kids (many with serious behavior issues).

I don't recall what started it exactly, the wordless prayer. Was it the day after Calvin, my psychotic student, dangled himself out the window, 200 feet above the empty blacktop playground? Or maybe it was the week the principal punched Maurice and Maurice's mother screamed and overturned a huge conference table against my pregnant belly. Perhaps it was when Ivan punched Billy (again), leaving blood on the floor. Could it have been after I shouted at the class (again) and emptied the garbage can onto linoleum and told them to pick it up, pick it all up?

I don't remember. What comes back is the desperation of those moments. I wasn't the only teacher shocked at the violence and deprivation in the school, shocked at how far I could be pushed emotionally. Any given day you could hear shouting up and down the halls. Violence begetting violence.

And then came the peach blush roses. One morning I walked out of my apartment, and a light sweet raspberry scent met my senses. I leaned down for as much time as I could spare from my impending commute and smelled those roses again and again. Their sweetness melted some kind of sorrow and hardness that had begun to be a constant companion. In my mind, I took them with me, a prayer for the day, a solace.

It would be nice to say I became Teacher of the Year after that. Or always compassionate. I still struggled. But the struggle changed. When violence would rise in the classroom, or even in my own heart, I would remember the roses, their soft blush, their raspberry scent. Each time I was faithful to remember them, the moments went better. God was in the roses, I think, giving me a wordless prayer, a way.


Blush Roses photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Unpredictable Paths of Grace

When you grow up like I did, you try to know-it-all. Everything depends on it. Supposedly.

It has been a long time since "growing up", but still some strange place in your head never quite forgives you for not holding together what was never in your power to hold together anyhow— your parent's marriage, hoped-for joys of holidays and ordinary days quashed by volatility, or some other such thing.

Trying to be right, to know it all, brings the need for control; after all, it's so much easier to be right when you understand the playing field, have set the boundary lines yourself, inasmuch as that is possible.

Then along comes Life with a suggestion: let go, drift. In May's The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature, he takes this suggestion and experiences Creation as it is. There's a sense of encounter, immediacy, Presence that May cannot control.

For one year, I too felt such an invitation. Let go. Drift with golden grasses, morning dew, the stars. Then it came to an end, partly because my commitment was finished, but perhaps too because God knew it was time to set me in a new place of encounter, where I could not easily be in control.

Thus, my art pilgrimage, which I cannot explain in an authoritative way. On this pilgrimage, I work in media I never used before (soft pastel) in a form (abstract art) that I have virtually no experience producing.

At some point I must have wanted to relinquish the burden of being right, knowing-it-all (it is tiring, often perplexing). And this desire sent me on unlikely journeys— first into Creation, now into Art. As a Christian I would not have predicted such paths. Aren't there more "Christiany" travel plans God should have suggested?

No, I could not have predicted the importance of Creation and Art in my grace journey. But maybe this surprise is part of relinquishing the burden too.

"Falling" in soft pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

OTHER BOOK CLUB POSTS:
Glynn's In White Tanks
Monica's Stars and Sunrise

Technology Fails Me Home

Rain tap taps. Air is frost-ready. Weeks go by and, still, I have no heat. It is coming at last, later this week, but in the meantime here I am...

Sitting by the fire. Lugging logs from the garage. Tending, turning. Warming hands. Bundling. Noticing.

Like Gerald May in his wilderness, I sit alone and stare at flames dancing. They melt away thoughts, worries, logic and analysis. I find myself, as he did, feeling there is nothing in particular to do. This amber movement mesmerizes, frees. Unlike May, I also sit with others and wonder, is this how hearth came to be associated with home?

When the house is chilled as it is now, we come from our respective corners and meet unplanned before the fire. My big girl draws, paints, writes, leans on my leg as I read, think. I reach out and press her long dark hair between my fingers. I put my hand on her back, and she, unawares, curls her toes against mine. Little One comes too, chatting, smiling, tossing her hair and tangling it. I brush it back in place and smile too.

I love my technologies (yes, Sam, I do). But for these few weeks I marvel that at least one of them has failed me home.

Birch on Fire photo by L.L. Barkat.

RELATED:
HighCallingBlogs Things that Go Bump in the Night
Glynn's It Was Lone Elk Park, but...
Monica's Which Fear?
nAncY's book

He Dared to Call it She

Did you do it as a child? Lie down in a field, look up? Did you watch the clouds— see now a dragon eating a fairy... see the fairy morph into a boat sailing away from fire? Did you let nature show itself, name itself, speak?

During a year of daily outdoor solitude, I saw the world with childlike openness. The hemlocks were Rip Van Winkle, sleeping. The pine a manly tree of life and then a mother's lap. A bush, leaning with crooked fingers seemed to be Grandmother. The squirrels were cowboy vigilantes.

I took this as imagination's fine work, based on deeper sensibilities that urged themselves upward— the way I suspect certain languages were formed, that assign gender to words (Why is a table feminine in Spanish, and why a painting? Why is money masculine and an eraser masculine too?)

Rereading May's The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature, I noticed what I had not observed the first time around. May experienced nature as a She. I know he struggled with this at some level because he says...

I've thought about it a lot. I considered that the whole experience might be my own creation. It began in a midlife time when I had suffered losses and was under stress. Could my psyche be kicking up its Jungian heels and manufacturing a disembodied woman-sense to meet some unconscious need? I could never say for certain...

I'm guessing that some of us might struggle with May's experience too, particularly since he concurrently sensed the Divine in nature. I think May knows this. I think it's partly why he spends a moment trying to explain. But then he forgets about defense and simply shares his experience. He dares to name the She he senses... like a child, simply watching the clouds, letting them speak.


Sky photo by Sara. Used with permission.

RELATED:
High Calling Blogs Power of the Slowing
Monica's Pacing
Liz's The Power of Slowing

The Danger of Mary

"May it be unto me..."

Those are inspiring words. They suggest an enviable attitude-of-heart. Like I said before, oh to be gracious, like Mary long ago.

But they are dangerous words too— perhaps not for the reasons that first come to mind. (And this is a good place to express my delight over the offerings many of you are making, in your own posts and poems... offerings that delve into the wonder of Mary's resolve to face danger for the love of God.)

Anyhow, let me explain a secondary danger.

This weekend I'd planned to go to a birthday party (sorry, Sis! :), but instead lay sleeping in the grips of a nasty cold. The secret of enjoying such disappointment is to bring a few books to put beside your pillow. When you wake, you are treated to an opportunity to lie in bed, read and muse (green tea and chocolate are optional; I self-medicated with both.)

When I woke and poked through the book stack, I pulled out The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. Before falling asleep, I'd enjoyed the preface of The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature, in which May had spoken of spending time outdoors to discover your inner wilderness, which is "the untamed truth of who you really are."

What?

Upon opening Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child, the message was the same, "In order to become whole we must try...to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom." The truth Miller speaks of is partly to move past denying one's emotions and needs, to "experience consciously certain feelings" that childhood may have taught us it was dangerous to feel... "jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, helplessness, or anxiety."

If we never feel these things (and many who experience difficult childhoods— or whose parents experienced hard childhoods— do not feel these things, or work very hard to repress them), we risk a lot... unexplained seasons of vengefulness, depression, perfectionism, addictions, even rage.

And this is the danger of Mary— to sit only with "May it be to me...", to interpret it as a self-effacing submissiveness and denial of needs and feelings... not to see the other side... a woman who felt free to cry, ask, mourn, fight.
________

I do believe Scot McKnight captures the balance of Mary's personality— the woman of feeling, fighting. There's still time to win his book; just comment here before Thursday, Oct. 8, 6:00 pm EST. The winner will be offered an opportunity to write his/her thoughts about the book in a guest post on Beliefnet!

There's also time to offer your thoughts about Mary and/or grace. Just drop your link info here and I'll link to your post. Or respond to our poetry prompt, "the real...", for possible feature and definite links from HighCallingBlogs. Drop your poetry link here before Thursday, Oct 8, 6:00 pm EST.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:
Book club discussion of The Wisdom of Wilderness, at HighCallingBlogs
Monica's Wilderness Call on the Freeway

"The Dress" sculpture by Sara. Photo by L.L. Barkat.