Pastor's Corner April 2021: Pandemic Prayer

The world may have been a little quieter with people shut inside, but my mind certainly hasn’t been. Maybe that feels true for you, as well. This poem from Marie Howe’s collection, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, has been speaking to me of late:

Writing a poem about not being able to pray might be a kind of prayer itself - or it might be just another way of avoiding prayer. The same might be said about writing a reflection about a poem about not being able to pray. And so go the spiraling thoughts that are prayer or not-prayer.

Hand wringing won’t resolve the quandary. And really, who needs the added weight of yet more self-judgment while we continue to live in the year’s strangeness? Maybe the thing to do is trust Howe’s mystics who say God is as close as breath - and to breathe in. Hold it. And breathe out. Watch the birds at play in the trees. Consider a flower in bloom. Pet an animal companion. Bite into a piece of fruit and let the juice linger on your tongue. Inhale. Pause. Exhale.

Maybe we’ll start to notice that life, when we are present to it, is all prayer.