Wednesday, February 18 - Ash Wednesday

Prayer:

Lent is a time for prayer. This year the Lenten booklet is focused on Prayer as our fellow parishioners of All Saints share what prayer means to them. I have said I cannot ask people to share what I have not already shared, so Kaye White asked me to write the first reflection for Ash Wednesday.

When I was a child I was taught to memorize prayers as a way of setting aside moments to pay attention to God. The first prayer I learned was “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .”, which was a dedication of my trips into the nightly unconscious dream world. The next prayer was the blessing at dinner; “God is Great, God is good. . .” and that was later replaced with “Bless O Lord this food to our use.. ” As I grew in Church I learned the Lord's prayer, the General Thanksgiving, the Confession and more stuff from the Book of Common Prayer. Prayers came in rote form - words to be said.

As I grew in faith, I started to understand it was not about the words that I said but the conversation between my heart and the heart of God and sometimes those conversations had no words but were filled with Holy Silence. I pray to set aside moments in a busy day to remind myself that I am not alone, that each moment is filled with the presence of God who is the ground of my being. God is here when I get anxious. God is here when I find life out of control. God is here when in my arrogance I think I don't need God and I can handle the world all by myself. God is here when I see such beauty that I am in awe and wonder. God is here when I witness such horror in human behavior that I ask God for help in how I might help to redeem it and to give me the strength and will to try. God is here when I fail and when I succeed.

I remember one time when I was driving home from a trip in a winter storm and the old car was on its last legs and I had sixty more miles to go. I decided to give an exclamation of prayer, “Thank you God” for each time the odometer registered a mile closer. I don't think that God fixed the motor, but all I knew was that God was here with me, if the car broke down or not.

Prayer is the discipline to listen to God even in those empty days when I have a glimpse of a feeling that God is a delusion. But the reality of God as the ground of my being is not dependent on any transient feelings. In those moments I remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:20 “Remember I am with you every day through to the end of all eternity.” (my translation)

Tom Wilson