Prayer and Jordon

Hi, a lot of you know that when I post on Jordon’s blog, I am either making fun of him or he is in a lot of pain. I wish I was making fun of him. I posted this over on Jordon’s weblog but I thought I would post it here too.Not everyone that reads his blog believes in God or prayer but if you do, please pray for some pain relief and sleep for Jordon. The disease is a little sadistic in that when Jordon gets fatigued, the pain gets expotentially worse which makes itself more painful when he is trying to sleep. The last couple of nights Jordon hasn’t slept well, partly in response to adjusting to medication that is supposed to help with the pain. The result is that he ends up in a horrible cycle of sleep deprivation until he is exhausted and his body sleeps through the pain.Right now his only option is to go for long walks several times a night to keep on his feet and to escape the pain. With the pain moving all over his body more, the walks are much less effective.Sadly, traditional painkillers don’t work with neuropathy and the pills that they are treating it take a while to work and then take a while to deal with some really bizarre side effects (Jordon’s taste for food has totally changed and he has phantom feelings in his feet and extremities).So far prayer hasn’t worked. Jordon read’s AKMA’s weblog daily and was moved by this sermon about prayer. I thought I would post it here.

Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine, Seabury-WesternFeast of St Teresa of AvilaRom 8:22-27/Ps 42:1-7/Matt 5:13-16October 12, 2005+We ourselves. . . groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Long minutes, long hours, lonely and frustrating days – days of prayer. Prayer can be a hard job, which explains some part of why it’s often difficult to persuade people to give it a try, and why even here, the chapel is not entirely full day by day. Prayer costs us the illusion that we can do it all, and that the universe rotates around us. Prayer draws us away from tackling the world on the terms we set, and draws us toward a willingness to meet God on God’s terms. Prayer demands that we offer all, but prayer promises us nothing. That, my friends, is a sucker’s bet, and it’s hard to invite people you care about to be fleeced – all the more difficult if perhaps, maybe, sometimes you aren’t absolutely convinced that this prayer business makes any difference your own self.

As if that weren’t enough, somebody has cooked up the notion that even after the first fruits blossom, prayer ought to be easy: a sweet, comforting, restorative balm for our troubled souls. While I can’t rule out the chance that prayer operates that way for some favored souls, what I’ve heard about prayer runs almost entirely the opposite direction. Somewhere, the green lawns of suburbia surround cozy homes with happily active, prosperous nuclear families, where hurricanes never blow, where earthquakes never shake, where the maid never misses a day and the meaning of debt is unknown. Somewhere prayer always comes easily, and always delights; somewhere, but probably not Pakistan or Guatemala, New Orleans, and definitely not �vila.

We can’t make prayer easier by some clever technique, as though it were all in the wrist action, or as though it just depended on knowing the right words. Difficulty lies at the heart of prayer, as the whole creation moans and stammers along with us as we labor to focus our attention on God to open our wills to God’s direction. Tedium and vexation accompany us as we wait with impatience to make a way out of our homelessness in a hobbling, heartless world into a shelter prepared for us from the foundation of the earth.

Hard circumstances make hard prayer, and when those hard praying times come your way, remember that you are not alone. When your soul is full of heaviness, when your arid prayer bores and frustrates you, bear in mind that others have found themselves in that desert before you. At those times, you know I will be praying with you, this chapel will be praying with you; Santa Teresa y todos los santos will be praying with you. The whole creation will strain and groan along with your heart. The Spirit itself will intercede with sighs too deep for words – and with the work that you devote to prayer, the Spirit will work along to draw us more faithfully together, to shape our hearts to welcome the truth, to kindle in us the light by which our praying eyes recognize, in the communion of our faithful friends and reconciled enemies, in constant prayer, in labor that takes delight in serving and sharing, the patient, sweet, brilliant glory of God.

Amen

Thanks to AKMA for posting this and thanks for many of you for walking alongside with us on this. It’s nice to know that we aren’t alone.

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