Prayers for a Hungry World: An Introduction

An unexpected thing happened to me the other day when I was swimming. As a result, I decided to write a blog in Lent on prayer and I'm calling it, "Prayers for a Hungry World." This particular blog entry is an introduction and serves to explain how this idea came to me and how I hope to focus these prayers. The prayers for each day that follows will not be nearly as long as this introduction! Here is my story:

Whenever I have an opportunity to swim in a pool, I undertake my spiritual practice of  "praying my laps" which involves using the phrase, "Jesus Christ ___________  me." (Occasionally, I throw in a prepositional phrase such as "in me" or "through me"). I go through the alphabet, thinking of action words that start with each letter and then fill in the blank, repeating the mantra with the word as I do a lap. I end up swimming 26 laps praying in this fashion.

My prayers took me to a deep place one day last week while I was swimming. I came to the sudden realization that by praying in this way, "Jesus Christ ____________ ME," I was thinking and praying only for myself. I began praying, "Jesus Christ ____________ US." By using this phrase instead, the images that came to me when I repeated each mantra expanded by leaps and bounds and subsequently became richer and more meaningful.

During one of my laps, I started to think about my son and other young people who are searching for a way to make it in our world - particularly in a culture where it seems we are all caught in an inescapable and unhealthy system.  Some young adults I know wonder how they can live differently and how they can break away from this way of living and often feel hopeless and despair when they realize they can't escape it entirely. For some, all they see is a dystopian world before them. They see injustices in the world - injustices perpetuated by our own nation (and others, too) - and what they see is not pretty.

I kept swimming, sticking with my mantras.  Maybe it was when I started to pray, "Jesus Christ, move in us." Maybe that was the lap that got me thinking in particular about my son. As I propelled myself through the water with my arms feeling the resistance as I pushed them forward and then pulled them back by my side, I thought of questions that tug at each of us -  difficult questions about justice and our complicity with the injustices that are played out in our world. I began thinking about all the different kinds of poverty in our world - financial, physical, spiritual - and I was reminded again that all of us, in some way are impoverished.

I am not sure, on the whole, that our world today is any different than it was a half century ago, a century ago, a millenium ago. Suffering has always been with us. Poverty of all kinds has always been with us. Injustice has always been with us. A future that looks uncertain and bleak is something most people have experienced at some level and at some time in their lives.

So, what propels us forward, keeps us afloat as we face a future that sometimes seems hopeless?

For me, it is the waters of baptism that help keep me afloat. That is my lifeboat. It is knowing that even as I fail at times, as we all fail at times - God loves our miserable selves, washes us clean, sets us upright to face the world again, gently pushes us back into the world, and when we're bruised, welcomes us back - oftentimes covered with dust and mud - and cleans us up all over again.

This is the hope I cling to and the hope I wish for those who see only a dystopian world. I think that - whoever we are in this crazy world - each of us is doing the best we can. Sometimes we fail, yet in the middle of a "crazy mixed up world," little kindnesses are being done every day. Do the best you can do and know that no matter what, God's amazing and abundant love surrounds you completely. "Jesus Christ, move in us!"

I will be "praying my laps" in my journey of prayer this Lent.

I dedicate "Prayers for a Hungry World," to my son, Joshua who inspires me every day.