The Ah-h-h-h! of Prayer

joy
“Everybody prays whether [you think] of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even stranger than the world.” The Rev. Frederick Buechner.

May we come this week seeking that which is more familiar than ourselves and more strange than the world. May we come in sighs too deep for words and with hearts filled with joy and pain for the hearts which are held by our own. May we be filled with ah-h-h! and lose our selves in the odd silence. May we pray the daily-ness of our living and the living of the lives we love. Amen.

Listening to Tears

In a sermon preached on the Chicago Public Telivision's Sunday Evening Club in the late '80's, Presbyterian Minister and Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist, Frederick Buechner spoke about listening to one’s own life to hear what lies beneath the surface of perfectly everyday words standing for perfectly everyday experiences.

Here is what he wrote about tears: "You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. “They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are. More often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and to summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.”

This week may we pray our everyday experiences, listening especially to our tears. Amen.