AfterWords | An Invitation (December 3, 2023)

A 3-Minute Read
by Katherine Carrier

We all gathered Sunday and first watched as parents brought their children up for a special dedication service, devoting themselves to a rich and beautiful charge of parenting well. Then Andy so masterfully told of Elizabeth and Zechariah, a couple who late in life, in old age, with no children, became parents to John the Baptist. “God has heard your prayer,” the angel told Zechariah.  And after so many years of asking and not receiving, everything changed. Elizabeth became pregnant and she and Zechariah found themselves with very specific instructions in their own baby dedication service.

There may be a word despised by so many children, and that word is maybe. Maybe stands on the other side of longings. The desire to go, to do, to see, to have, all become questions for someone who can make it possible, parents or teachers or leaders, and the response bounces right back as “maybe.”  It gets tricky when not all maybes are the same. Some maybes happen. Some don’t. So not unlike research subjects, little mice in mazes, children continue to construct elaborate solutions to illicit the correct response, thinking their own behavior will enable them to insert [Maybe] into a formula whereby they solve for “X” and get the right outcome.  Does [Maybe] equal better grades? Exemplary behavior? Bad behavior? Flattery? Comedy? Schmoozing? Living a formulaic life ensues.

Zechariah and Elizabeth lived in a big MAYBE for many years. Setting up a little screen play in the imagination, like Andy did on Sunday, we see the young couple promised to each other, in conversation of late night courting, plans with a foregone conclusion “when you get pregnant …” Then they set up housekeeping and nest for “when we have kids.” The inevitable becomes probably than turns to maybe and so they examine their lives. Are they solving for X? They pray. They try. They live a righteous life with Zechariah himself in occupational service to The Almighty, and yet month after month, year after year, decade after decade, every formula fails. There have been so many prayers, in volumes dated from hope to lament, and Maybe has moved  into negative territory. Barren. Impotent.

So here at the start of Advent, we have an invitation, extended by Andy on Sunday, to come to the place of our sunken maybes, to own hope deferred.

Wait just a minute. Advent. Hope. The hope candle. I have to revisit my notes from Sunday. Was that what he said? Peer into our deferred hope?

I glance over at my reimagined Advent wreath. It’s a lazy Susan that finds itself filled with multicolored glittered bottle brush trees, tiny styrofoam balls covered in paint and glitter on a thick layer of sparkly shaved plastic snow — plus the four Advent candles. This wreath probably symbolizes and summarizes my own answer to deferred hope. It’s not the first time I have used glitter to solve for X.

But we are called deeper, deeper than consumerism, deeper than the places we go, deeper than substances, sex or even solutions, maybe especially solutions. We are called into the deferred hope itself. We are called to sit. Lament. And we are called deeper still. We are called into our very own barrenness, our very own impotence.

This is a weighty invitation. Kings and queens send out weighty invitations, on fine parchment, heavy ink, crested wax seals. Break open the seal and possibly it reads something like this…

[your name – say it out loud]
You are hereby invited
To come
To an appointment
With Me, The Great I Am
Because I love you
[again your name – say it out loud]
I love you and I always have and I always will
You are my child

And still, even with the very official invitation, for many of us, hearts sink even further. Because this is just another MAYBE. Where have you been, God?  If I show up, what makes me think  You will even be there? How about this? How do I get myself some of that incense Zechariah had?

Spite the maybes, forget the incense and formulas. Just try your very presence, your one true authentic self.

Ideas on Finding Authentic Presence

Start with the bare truth. Say it. Voice it, “I’ve tried this,  Spirit at least I think I have.”  Or ‘this once seemed to work and now things feel different.”  What is the truth of your own presence before God? Is there a confession? Many confessions? Are there doubts? Yet you are still here, performing the service, waving the incense. Your presence to the process makes evident something is still here. Something inside you calls to the Spirit, to the Deep. It is here your presence meets The Presence. Ah! There is a spark.

Where can you go from here? What do you do? How can you get the spark to light? Feed the little flame? Well, there are disciplines and ideas of authentic presence. Some thoughts from our series on prayer practices, and on showing up in your authentic self…

Take a passage for lectio divina, like John 1: 4-5. Allow the words of the passage to surround your hopes, your laments, your life, to surround impressions of your daily habits.

Take your prayer on a slow walk along some path in one of our parks into mindfulness. Notice everything. Notice the coolness of breath entering your lungs, the warmth of it flowing out. Then take your awareness to something else. Notice how your clothes feel on your body and how the air feels on your bare skin. Let that go and take your awareness to sights, the blue of sky or gray of clouds, lichens hugging bark hugging trees, mats of pine straw and leaves along the floor of the earth. Tune into sounds, birds, cars, your footsteps, rhythmic and steady. With each sound or sight or feeling, build gratitude around what you notice. Remember that even pain is a sense and a necessary one: the wounds of lepers were healed and then the sensation of pain was restored to them. Is there pain you have abandoned that should still speak to you? Have you let it numb you to life and God?  Feel and see and hear everything. Remind yourself you are fully animated. You are alive. Then let God know you are present. And listen.

Get somewhere quiet and alone, even if you only have eleven minutes. Breathe in deeply, very deeply and just sigh out. Embody the emptiness, the barrenness of the hope deferred. Speak it. Say aloud or whisper the shapes of the words that form themselves around your disappointment. Ask for Presence. With more time, perhaps journal the words that come up, that speak your pain, your anger, your disappointment, your shame. Let hot tears fall on the page and ask for Presence around the words written there.

Take time to find silence and practice a breath prayer, like the Jesus Prayer. Breathe in: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God — Breathe out: Have mercy on me, a sinner.  And repeat this over and over. Finish with breathing in: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God — Breathe out: Have mercy on all the world.

We are not priests in the way of Zechariah, but we can have disciplines that bring us into the Presence of God. Start slowly, but do start, and build practices steadily. Refer back to the prayer practices Eric Seidel shared October 29 of this year for different listening practices.

Finally, find community. Find someone you know who cultivates the Presence of God in their own life and just spend time with them. Do something together – have coffee, have lunch, play golf or tennis, take a walk, do art, go see art, build something, clean something, cook something. Together! We do life apart way too much and this alone is lament.

You can also find excellent resources for help in navigating lament or loss, like finding a counselor, a spiritual advisor, or a support group.

Again, the invite:

You are hereby invited
To come
To an appointment
With Me, The Great I Am
Because I love you
I love you and I always have and I always will
You are my child
[speak the invitation out loud with your name]

Here are just a few verses around the invitation:  Matthew 11:28-30, Jeremiah 29:12-13, James 4:8, Psalm 46:10, Romans 8:26-27, Philippians 4:6, Revelation 3:20