There are times when I feel like life has exploded, as though all parts of it collide and nothing goes the way it is supposed to go. From unexpected expenses to surprise illnesses, life laughs in the face of our careful planning, mocks our ideas of control, and smiles sarcastically at our shocked expressions.
I'm left wandering aimlessly, feeling like this is all a big, fat joke authored by a pre-teen boy who can't get enough of cheap joke books.
These are the times when my cynical side says "Why pray? Why read daily scripture? It won't make a difference so why do it?"
I walked into Divine Liturgy yesterday feeling this way. Our church is in the middle of a busy city neighborhood. Parking is difficult and no matter what hour we are there, life is teeming around us. As I walked up the steps, a friend met me and stopped, asking how I was. In the middle of the noise of the city, I found myself pouring my heart out to her, touched and healed with her empathy. On those concrete steps, the questions of what is this all about, the whys, the anger at the suffering of those close to me all poured out of me in a flood of words and tears.
I entered the service comforted and heard by the presence of another.
I went through the motions of the service: Venerating icons, crossing myself, singing the Beatitudes and all the while I was saying the Jesus Prayer, an internal plea for mercy and grace.
It was during the homily that I began to relax. Our priest, Father Patrick, talked about being away on vacation with his children and six grandchildren. "I saw what your life was like," he said. All around him were explosions of life, he was not in his study surrounded by his books and icons. He was not in church serving the Eucharist or praying before icons. Instead, babies with diapers and toddlers with messy faces were ever present. "I saw how hard it is to continue the disciplines of prayer and scripture reading in the midst of this," he said. But he didn't stop there. He went on to say that he also saw how absolutely imperative it was to continue these disciplines in the midst of this, how we can't go on without these practices. Because these explosions of life demand so much that we can't do it alone.
I have tried to do it alone the past few weeks. I rationalize that I am too tired to stand in front of our icons and pray. I rationalize that nothing will change even if I do pray. I make excuses, I blame, I dismiss - but all the while, life explodes around me and I have no tools to cope.
These explosions of life call for explosions of grace, but I can't see grace because I'm to caught up in trying to do it by myself.
I found myself deeply comforted by Father Patrick's words, by his acknowledgement that this is hard. None of this is easy. And it's precisely because it is not easy that I need these beautiful and grace-filled disciplines of prayer and scripture.
Life comes with its explosions and the only thing that can withstand it is grace. Beautiful grace, that hard to define something that we don't deserve but we get anyway. That good word that has not been corrupted through time, instead it shines through dark days, and says "boo!" as it surprises me around hard corners.
Yesterday grace met me on concrete steps and through a homily. Today is a new day. Life is still an explosion, but the explosion of grace is at the ready. I open my hands, ready to receive. It's all I can do and somehow it is enough.
"Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth."*A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. - Frederick Buechner
*Frederick Buechner
