This addition to yesterday's post on prayer comes from one of my favorite writers and theologians, Fr. Richard Rohr. (He's a pretty awesome Fransican priest as well.) His work is vast and worth your time for sure. His book, Yes, And is a collection of his work that has been gathered and adapted into an amazing book of daily mediations. Today, under the same title as this post, Rohr writes,

When your house is on fire, the recommendation is often to get out, not pray. First move your ass to safety, then offer up some words of gratitude if and when you get out. Thats pretty much how it works. That’s not what I did. My mind is wired and conditioned differently now. Prayer not panic. It’s my idea of the evolutionary concept of fight or flight.

Prayer was my first instinct because I had woken up panicked way too many times and I was tired of feeling that way. So I worked hard to change that about myself. Now instead of myself get panicky, I just talk or listen or focus on God (whatever that looks like in that moment). I would try to breathe slowly and purposefully. Eventually the panic disappears, but not without doing the work. Now whenever I feel it return my first instinct is to realign my focus onto God. It’s a spiritual practice that nearly every religion uses, because it really works.

You might be in a place of panic right now. Your job has been shuttered, your investments have sunk, and you’ve been sequestered in your home with nothing but news of things getting worse before they can get better. You read social commentary that freak you out even more and pretty soon your panic become its own pandemic.

My suggestion? Pray. Say something to God, or if that’s not what you believe in say something to the air, the sky, the ground, or your dog. (We can debate later whether or not God is present in all those things). Just pray. Open your heart and begin the conversation. Call up what you’re feeling and have a chat with it. Let it know how you feel, or what you want. Talk to it instead of running away from it. I call this prayer, you might call it therapy. It doesn’t matter what it’s called as long as you do it. Trust me, it works.

What I have learned is this: prayer takes my focus off my fear and moves it towards my faith. I don’t pretend that this is some magical remedy, just a way to recalibrate and realign my head and heart to the place of peace I desire and deserve. It’s a spiritual practice that takes time to become instinctual. Well, you have the time!

I don’t want to get your blood pressure boiling but in California we’re in lockdown mode and will be for at least another 40 days. There’s a lot you can do to change the way you think in that time.

Maybe it's not such a surprise that this pandemic hit at a time when Christian churches are celebrating the sacred season of Lent. A holy time before Easter when believers are called to give up something for 40 days as a way to commemorate the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness overcoming temptation and discovering his truth as the Son of God. Lent is a time to “fast” from something that will challenge, push, and bring you closer to God. What better time to work on something positive and life changing than today.

I have written extensively on this Lenten practice and why it is also important to “feast” on something as well to help celebrate the coming closer to God. As I like to remind people, Lent is a time when it’s okay to fail. In fact it’s necessary. That goes against all that we have been taught. When most people fail with their fast, they give up or abandon it altogether. I say instead of giving up remind yourself what you’re feasting on.

For example if I am fasting from judging others, I will feast on excepting all people. Therefore, when I judge someone, I quickly think about excepting them. I repeat this action as necessary. In fact, this particular one I had to repeat over and over in every minute of my awake stage. I'm all but positive I also did it in my sleep.  Behavioral Psychologists believe that most behavioral changes can be made in 40 days if you put in the effort to make those changes. You might have done this with a 40 day diet, or 40 days to a better body. In 40 days we can change our eating habits, and have an exercise routine that sticks. Same is true about prayer. No surprise then that in the Bible the number 40 is significant (look it up here).

Jesus took 40 days of fasting, having had nothing to eat or drink. He not only survived the wilderness and tempation by being in prayer, but he also was enlightened to what he was being called to do in the world and how to do it. Or take Gandhi who made fasting a huge part of his philosophy of Ahimsa or Non Violence. During these fast, he focused his attention on the kind of meditation and prayer that would inspire changein himself and in others. This practice helped India reclaim their freedom from British colonist.

I would incurage you to take the next 40 days to rewire your thinking by keeping your eye not on the fast but on the very thing you want to feast upon. You will fail, but not really. Because each time you mess up you are reminded of how you are to succeed.

Think of a scale where there is a bucket full of fear weighing down one side, and an empty bucket of faith on the other one. It could be buckets of panic and peace if you want. The point is, each time you fail with fear or panic, remind yourself of your faith or the peace you desire. And each time you do that...take a little from the fast bucket and put it in the feast bucket. Before you know it, the scale begins to balance out. And then they begin to tilt in favor of where your head and heart desire and deserve to be.

You can use this time to panic or learn how to be at peace. You can spend the time in flailing in fear or practice ways to fortify your faith. It’s up to you to decide what you want to get out of your life and what you want to put into your life.

​Not sure what that is?

May I suggest you don’t panic but take a deep breath and pray on it. Talk to your heart. The answer is already in you.

Imagine for a moment the Spirit of God carrying you to a place where the land is withered and the air is dead. There are no trees, no shrubs, no signs of water or life anywhere, except for a life that once was. All around you are piles of dried up tibias and fibulas, rib cages, skulls, and vertebras. Bones upon bones, as if giants had fed on smaller humans and tossed the remnants to the ground like a bunch of chewed up hot wings.

If that’s not weird enough, God tells you to prophecy over the bones. Convince them to take a deep breath and get up because God’s going to do something really cool, and they won’t want to miss it.
 
It’s one thing to talk to the dead. But commanding them to rise up is a whole other thing. It’s clear Ezekiel has never seen Night of the Living Dead, or any Rob Zombie movie, because like any prophet worth his salt, Ezekiel does what God asks his to do. 
 
He begins to preach. And preach he does. As the words pour out of his mouth, the bones began to rattle and lock together; their muscle and flesh and skin returned as they once were. And the breath of God sweeps over them and resuscitates an entire valley of naked zombies. 

The author of this story lets us know this is a metaphorical tale – a story of God’s promise to breath life back into the people of Israel who were being held captive in Babylon. After all those years imprisoned in a foreign land God’s people were spiritually dried up and parched like a desert wasteland. They felt as lifeless as dead bones.

But here’s the thing, God hears their cries, just as God hears ours. In one grace filled breath their hope returns, and so will ours. Just as God resurrects the life of his people, so too does God resurrect our lives even when the odds of that happening are stacked against us. 

As we progress through this pandemic, we will be faced with new and difficult challenges. We too will have to find a way to put life back together again. Especially when we feel as lifeless as a pile of old bones. 
 
As daunting and overwhelming as life might seem right now, must not lose hope. But be on guard because it’s in these moments doubt, depression, fear and anxiety sneak in and drag us away to a dry wilderness of hopelessness and despair. Just as God didn’t give up on Israel, God does not give up on you or me.

I recently read a pneumonic for the word faith that I think is worth sharing. It goes like this:  Feeling Afraid I Trust Him. Ezekiel trusted God. Even when all the things that he loved the most were taken from him, he still believed the bones could rise again. 
 
In the season of Lent, we are called into the wilderness not to wither and die, but to lean on God, to inhale the very breath of God deep into our soul. Wherever you are right now, faithful or faithless, God is asking you “Can these bones live?” In other words, do you believe God can restore us back together again? Our hope lies in the answer. 
 
If I am to believe Jesus then I believe God’s promise of restoration is real. This life, with all its unknowns, pain, and suffering, is not the end of the story. God hears our cries and comes to us, to breath new life in us.
 
If I believe in the incarnation, the very breath of God becoming flesh and bone in the man Jesus, then I can believe in his resurrection, and the new life that comes through him because of it.
 
If you believe that God’s promise is real, that these bones can live again, then you will find your hope – hope that will grow your faith and bring you closer to the very heartbeat of God’s love for you. But if you believe these bones will live, then you must ask yourself, what am I going do with my bones today?  Will I raise the dead? Make the blind see and the deaf hear? 
 
If that seem impossible, remember it was Jesus who said, the person who believes will not only do what he did but even greater things.  
 
In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for breath is also the word for spirit. God’s spirit is breathed into you for a purpose, not just so we can have life, but so we can live life abundantly, fearlessly, graciously – as one united people.  

Jesus gave us his final breath, the very Spirit of God, so that we could proclaim the truth of God’s love for all things. Like him, we are to take that Spirit and be the miracle God wants us to be.
 
With a single breath, we can heal the sick with compassion and care. We can feed thousands of people by sharing our resources with one another. We can forgive sins and bless people no matter what. With God’s breath, we can resurrect the dead by being resurrection people. 
 
God is calling us to prophecy to others by being people who show compassion and seek those who have been pushed out to the fringes and love them back into society.

This is what Jesus' miracles were all about… returning people back to God where we all belong. This is what resurrection looks like. This is how our dry bones come back together, how we as a community and as a human race come back stronger and healthier than ever before. 
 
As we walk and live amid the painful and death-dealing realities that plague God’s creation, let us not lose the hope that God calls us out to the wilderness, just like Jesus was called out from the grave, to bring new life to those whose spirits are withered and dead.
 
And so I ask you, “Can these bones live?” If so, then let them know.  

I wrote, “Life is a river you have to jump into. There’s no getting around it. It’s there and if you stand in one place too long,  it’s going to rise around you. So you might as well jump. 
 
Today is that day. It’s a day you have to believe that your faith can trust the river, to trust its flow and its movement. You don’t have to change the water, or coerce its currents, or try to improve its direction. You just have to jump in and enter the flow. Be one with the water, one that rises and falls. And rises again.
 
Richard Rohr writes, "You can trust the river because the River is God who flows unguarded." God is the water, not pulling you down but moving you with ease and flow. Just allow the flow to flow, not merely around you but through you as well. Become part of the river. Become a part of the flow. 
 
This will take immense faith and confidence in God’s goodness, especially when you are unsure or afraid. When I feel myself get panicky, I try to take control. I try to quickly make things right. But on my terms. And I lose my ability to be present. I spin out in the past and freak out over what’s to come. The problems right now, are right now. In the present, where the River flows. This is where we meet God, or where God meets us. 
 
Once you’re in the water it’s hard to swim upstream and return to your past. And it’s difficult to see what’s downstream at the surprises that await. If your past has taught you anything, it’s that there will be surprises to come. Thus, jump into the river. Be in the water and stay focused on navigating the currents with ease and flow. 
 
You have to enter the river. You will see that sometimes it will be turbulent, sometimes it will be calm, but all times you will be moving and flowing to exactly where you need to go.  God is the River. Trust the flow, be present in the movement, and know that anything unexpected is still part of God.

​Do not fear. Do not worry. Do not be afraid. These are some of the most common and most prolific phrases in Scripture. They sound nice and look good in needlepoint. But let’s be real. You will be afraid, and you will fear...we all do. But in our fear and worry, God is with us there too. With a contingency plan. It’s all part of the river of life. 
 
Jesus said, “Anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” 
 
So don’t lose what little or great faith you might have. Instead jump into it. The overwhelming feelings you have in your stomach, the unbearable weight that sits on your heart, and the noisy confusion in your head, they are all part of the river. They are ways God is trying to speak to you, to help you navigate. 
 
In this madness promise me you will take some time to stop, breathe, and listen to what God is trying to say to you, and see where you are being directed to go. As you do, don’t forget to look at all that’s around you and see its beauty. For it’s there you will find your peace, your joy, and your faith...all splashing together in one endless flow of love. 

In the book of Philippians, it says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil. 4:6).
 
To an ancient prophet, God tells Jeremiah, “Call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you” (Jer. 29:12). “Call to me and I will answer you, and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jer. 33:3).
 
As we celebrate Lent, we are reminded of the words of Jesus, who spent forty days in the wilderness praying. He said, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24).
 
Of course, prayer is more than making a wish list for God to fulfill. God is not Santa or an ATM machine. God is better than that; calling us into a relationship where our hearts are emptied out only to be filled with more than we ever thought possible. 
 
Every major religion includes prayers as part of their practice. So that tells us it’s an important ritual. I look to Jesus as my example. He certainly prayed a lot. There are six references in the gospels that he spoke in prayer, and one instance where he directly gives us the words to pray.  We know he prayed in the morning and at night, and before or after something big happened. It wasn’t unlike him to skip off from the crowds to pray alone. 
​
In prayer Jesus kept a channel open to God. Like the red phone on the presidents desk that whenever you pick it up there is someone waiting on the other end ready to get you your Diet Coke. But like all conversation, prayer is a dialog not a monologue. We might have a lot to say, but we need to keep our spiritual ears and hearts open to hear what God has to say to move our hearts Godward.
 
People who are new to faith often ask me if there’s a particular way to pray. I tell them it’s no different than having a conversation with someone. Sure there are prayers that walk you through stuff you might be dealing with. I have a stack of books filled with prayers that are offered for birth to praying over the dead to everything in between. 
 
My mom’s the type of person who doesn’t like to read prayers. She hates it when everyone prays the same thing. She says she prays from her heart. That’s not to say other religious people don’t do the same, but I like to remind her about the power that is lifted up with 100,000,000 voices singing the same prayer to God’s ears.
 
If you ask me, the only thing that matters is that we begin the conversation. This can happen using a rote prayer from a book, or just by simply saying, “Hey God. What’s up? It’s me. Can we talk?” I like the prayer Nadia Bolz-Weber says every morning when she wakes up, “Lord help me not to be an asshole today. Amen.” It’s not your typical prayer, but it’s a prayer that reaches God’s ears. 
 
In Christianity there are different types of prayers. The four most common are confession, contrition, petition, and adoration. 
 
Confession is just that, naming your wrongdoing. Contrition is a prayer that asks God for forgiveness. Petition is asking God for a favor. Adoration is simply praising God, or showing your gratitude. You can pray one or all four or something you want. Meister Ekheart is to have said, “If the only prayer you say is ‘Thank you’ then that would suffice.”   It doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it as long as the conversation is happening.
 
When I am called to pray over the sick and dying, I use Psalm 51 as my template because it covers all four types of prayers in one beautiful poem. Let’s read it. 

Paul writes, “May the mind that is in Christ Jesus also be in you” (Philippians 2:5). This is the truest depth of our Christian tradition, what it truly means to be a disciple of Jesus. We are called to recognize, surrender to, and ultimately be identified with the mystery of God utterly beyond all concepts, all words, and all designations. This is our destiny. —James Finley

Jesus started his life like all of us, as a vulnerable baby. He, like you and me, had to learn how to trust. Trust his mother and father, his community and peers. His God. This trust led him to be able to surrender. It allowed him to give over his self, to shed his ego, and be totally one with God. As James Finley states, “This is our destiny.”

A goal we must all strive for as we strive to be more like Christ and less like ourselves is to trust God enough to surrender our will to God. This requires entering into your vulnerability, as you did as a child. What can you practice today that will help you understand, and ultimately (and faithfully) trust God in the process? What fears do you need to let go of in your life to move into this mystery of God’s truest love?