Day #161: When You Agree to Speak in Church

 Well, in the church Zoom meeting, anyway.

I agreed to do the reflection on the Lord's Prayer for Sunday. Having just gotten to preparing it now, I have lost the directions so I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do, just the passage I am supposed to reflect on. I believe they call that winging it. So I'm gonna write my draft here and see how it goes. It will also tell you about my day, how convenient.

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I'm afraid of heights.

I used to think I was afraid of flying, but I confirmed this week that I am, in fact, afraid of heights. I confirmed this while riding in the passenger seat of our Subaru Forester climbing a dirt Forest Service road up a mountain. Here's a tip: if you are trying to find the Snoqualmie Tunnel, don't ask Google Maps. It doesn't know.

I found myself holding onto the little plastic handle above the car door. Does anyone else do that? I know it doesn't help...in the event that the car slides on the gravel and we go plummeting down the mountain, the fact that I am holding the handle will make zero difference. But I clutched it anyway.

The kids thought the road was awesome. James, who is six, could tell that Mama was getting nervous so he made sure I knew his imaginary friend was buckled, but he loved the bouncing of the car over huge rocks. Max, who just turned two, giggled the whole trip. They are going to love roller coasters when they are bigger.

My best friend asked me once why I hate turbulence while flying so much but don't mind roller coasters. I reminded her that roller coasters are on rails and planes are on air. From a physics standpoint, probably equally as secure, but I wasn't good at physics and I don't like the idea of a roller coaster on air.

What I kept thinking as we climbed this hill to nowhere is, whether we find this place or not (of course we were far beyond phone service and had no idea if we would,) we still have to come BACK DOWN this road. At which point I will be forced to look at the hill I might plummet down to my death. And it is true that it is on the road down that I started crying.

I'm telling you this story now, so obviously we made it. And the danger, as usual, was largely in my head. But here's the interesting thing: we did eventually find the tunnel and my kids were TERRIFIED of it. Didn't last five minutes. It's incredibly dark in there and as we walked in both of them started crying. It didn't matter that we had a flashlight or that we knew it was safe or any of that. It was dark and it was scary. Now, I wanted to walk in the tunnel and I felt perfectly safe. The thing has been there for a hundred years. But we turned around and walked out. Their fear is as real as mine is.

Fear is rarely about reality. We were in no danger in the tunnel and virtually no danger on the road...I-90 to get there was probably FAR more dangerous. I was afraid on the hill for the same reason my kids were afraid in the dark: it's easy to fear what you can't control.

I have no control over gravity. They don't have the power to know what's in the darkness. When you can't control a situation, fear takes over. Fear isn't logical. It doesn't care how many planes take off and land every day without incident. It knows that you aren't flying the thing and don't understand how the physics work. You are out of control.

The world is a very scary place these days. There's actually very little that I do control. Probably nothing, if I'm honest. Six months ago I would say, sure, I control some things. I decide what I make for dinner. I decide where my kids go to school. Turns out, I don't have control over even the small things I thought I did. Not when there's a run on groceries and the school shuts down. Then you eat what you can buy and teach your kids in your dining room. You really don't control anything. And that's where prayer comes in...well, at least that's where prayer comes in for me.

I have a complicated relationship with prayer. There. I said it out loud. In church. I've confessed.

I like the idea of talking to God. I know we have a relationship. I'm trying to teach James how to pray. I tell him God is always there and he can always talk to Him. I know as a kid I found that reassuring, even if I didn't know what to say.

In the early days of the quarantine, I tried to think of what to say, of what to ask, and it all became so overwhelming I couldn't begin. There were too many things to ask for. There were too many things that scared me. It was all too much.

Then one day I started just whispering the Lord's prayer at night as I went to sleep. That's a prayer I've known all my life and I don't have a complicated relationship with it. It soothed me. I felt relaxed. Somehow, those words allowed me to release fear to God, and to sleep.

I remember as a kid being asked to defend the Lord's prayer. A friend of a different denomination said if you just recited a prayer, if a prayer was written down and you repeated it, that wasn't really praying. Jesus, according to this friend, wants you to say what's in your heart in your own words.

Trouble is, when Jesus and I start talking, I get incoherent in a hurry. I know He doesn't care, but for me a prayer like this soothes while a prayer like that is stressful. It takes all kinds.

I didn't have the ability at that time in my life to defend this prayer. But I do now, because once I was in London as they were closing St. Paul's.

I know...Snoqualmie Pass to London is a long jump in one reflection, but stay with me, I will try to connect the threads.

I didn't have a long time in London so I was trying to see everything and by the time I got to St. Paul's they were shutting it down. It was pretty early in the evening, but the lady told me on that night of the week they have a vespers service and the cathedral is closed to tourists. Of course, anyone who wanted to was welcome to come in for the vespers service.

Okay. That sounded nice. I didn't need a tour of the thing. To sit in it and listen to the service sounded good to me.

It was a pretty simple service. There were maybe forty or fifty people there and if you can imagine that size a crowd in that space it felt TINY. A lot of them were like me, lost tourists who wandered in for a service because they couldn't do anything else in the church in that hour. When we got to the Lord's prayer, the priest invited us to join in and pray out loud. Do your version, in your language, he urged. We've had parishoners from all over the world pray with us and this prayer binds us together.

The sound of forty people reciting the Lord's prayer in half a dozen different languages in St. Paul's cathedral is a sound I'll never forget. If anyone ever asks me what prayer sounds like, that's what I'll think of. I couldn't have planned being there in that moment to hear that sound...but that's where I was supposed to be.

And now I whisper those same words, which have been there for me all my life in different ways, alone in my room, in my own language, as I try to survive a world over which I have zero control.

I'm a singer, and so I kind of know how lyrics flow. There's a rhythm to them, even when spoken. When I get to the section of the prayer I'm supposed to be talking about today, thy kingdom come, thy will be done...that's when I feel myself breathe. There's a breath there. The words slow down there. That's the moment when you release that control.

To not have control is terrifying, but it's also a gift. I don't have to fly the plane. I don't have to build the tunnel. All I have to do...is be. When I let go of control, when I allow that breath out, I am saying, okay, I'm not the driver anymore, I am the passenger. I am opening my eyes and letting this ride take me where it will go. Thy will be done. That's a HARD thing to say. Hey, God, you're in charge. I'm gonna try to be less freaked out because you're driving this thing.

The thing I almost missed on that road, because I was busy being terrified, is it is one of the most glorious places on the planet. The drive over Snoqualmie pass, no matter how many times I've done it, is breathtaking. I am standing in God's kingdom...and in order to see it, I have to take a breath, and let go of all that other stuff in my head.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

It's a good thing I have it memorized. I have to say it over and over again. For as long as this ride lasts.

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Media consumption: Olive Kitteridge is ongoing, I finished Bud, not Buddy, it was quite good, and today I barely started a novel in verse I think is gonna be GREAT, The Red Pencil.

Today I'm grateful for road trips, deep breaths, car snacks, my kids and all their snuggles, my husband and all the adventures, and peanut butter.