The Fifth Prayer

The First Prayer for the Fifth Chapter

Oh my Guiding Light, my intellect and emotion are not only lost in this darkness but often hopelessly separated from one another. Divided deeply in myself, I have struggled for years to reach resolution and wholeness, to be joined together with myself permanently and calcified in that moment. I see that you will not allow me to live safely inside a shell, of my own excretion nor a borrowed house like the hermit crab’s. You lead me into valleys in order to lead me over mountain tops and, again, into valleys. All is chasing after the wind but this is actually good. Even my prayers can be improvised, with no definite ending nor aversion to digression.

My resistance is so deep that I feel as if I were cooperating with you when I am actually resistant. My concessions have been too small both to bring me out of darkness, as I desired, and to pass through this darkness in anticipation of the next and next and next. So, I ask you to be my Guardian with the understanding that I am even less capable than a child, since I learn so slowly ~ I am spiritually handicapped, Momma. I need you to gently take me from dark episode to dark episode, skillfully and lovingly. Hold me in your arms even though I seem sometimes to be unlike the son you created, unlike even the son I imagined that I was. Hold me in your arms for my own sake and the sake of your love. There is no one you have created that is not part of your designs and thus both beloved and important. Break down the exoskeleton of pride around me and help me to appreciate this.

Simultaneously, I have faith that you are teaching me a better way to travel through life – you are giving me the muscles and the gear to persevere in persistence instead of stubbornness. Though I am prone to only try harder for a solution, you will perfect an entire method in and through me. You are ready at every opportunity to continue my evolution; my metamorphosis is not one but a series of chrysalises. So, I will not ask you to lift darkness from my life any longer nor even to give me the flashlight. Instead, I ask that you would dwell with me and join me with the darkness until my eyes have dilated, my ears and nostrils have opened, and every hair stands-up on my body to feel my way. Steady me and make me a denizen of the wilderness I have resisted and, please, bless my life with constant learning, everlasting companions, and a peace that surpasses this world’s understanding.

I want to know you better, Sustainer -- whisper to me,

-Fysh Phoenix

The First Prayer

My former spiritual director, Gerry, recommended a book called "Riding the Dragon". It was obviously clairvoyant of him because the book is designed to help those who help others in difficult situations. Of course, I forgot I had it. I was ready for a re-read ...

I decided to read each chapter three times on three consecutive mornings. The first morning, I prayed. The second morning, I wrote a hand-written journal entry about what caught my attention. On the third morning, I wrote a prayer to share:

Prayers for ‘Riding the Dragon’

The First Prayer for the First Chapter:

Our dearest and only Creator, we want to sense the marvels of your presence in our world. Yet, as your Son Jesus told us in the parable of the sower, worries and cares come-up like weeds to choke the fruit of believers. When our gardens are crowded, every plant becomes a weed to its neighbor. Our peace is disturbed by these many campaigns: for excellence, against injustice, and in the name of cordial relations. Kitchi Manitou, help us to exhale and draw a new breath from your essence. Through your Kairos Spirit –the sense of right-timing—teach us to locate the peace that is indigenous to our unique hearts and help it to flourish and proliferate. Lend us the patience needed to cultivate each gift.

In your many names, we ask you to hold tight to us when the emotions of our growth process become overwhelming – teach us not to hold that poison inside. Still, hold us equally close when we have gone to our hiding places in an attempt to normalize our struggle and, thus, shy from the fears and doubts that accompany our evolving Calls in life. Give us the grace to, lovingly, question ourselves when others doubt our endeavors and the freedom to take or leave their comments in a spirit of discernment. We acknowledge that we need divine perseverance not just from determination but through patience and centering. We acknowledge you as a God in-process with us, or else our imperfections would be too disgusting. Prune our unrealistic and misguided expectations, first for ourselves and then for others. Help us to be moved more by compassion than conviction, more by the Almighty than by achievement, and more by the beautiful than the brutal. Take what we thought was only dirt and raise bushel after bushel of flowers from this darkness.

I love you,

In all Your Holy names I pray,

AMEN.

Authentically Sublime

One place I have not truly been is the Church of the Nativity, though I walk by it daily. Odd as it is, I have not visited the epicenter of Bethlehem Pilgrimages. The throngs kill my mood; maybe I have become a spirituality snob. I want my Nativity Church visit to take on a sublime and deeply authentic quality, to be alone in prayer with the place. The giant queue of muttering tourists deters me. Technically, I was in the building, once, but I don’t count that. Rafík, Zoughbi’s thirteen year-old son, wanted to light a prayer candle on our way to السوك to buy fruit one Saturday. Rafík went up to the priest, in athletic shorts and cleats, whispered in his unimposing way, and the priests nodded their assent and lifted the rope for him. I held his soccer ball and enjoyed the looks of indignation on the faces of all the visitors. It was a moment of authentic spirituality for my young friend, though.

Most Sundays, the Zoughbis bring me with them to an Arabic speaking Orthodox Church not far from the Star Street. I’ve learned to cross myself and to say the Lord’s Prayer in my own language when I notice the congregation reciting it in Arabic. I am still just learning. I like this Orthodox church because they must know that I am an interloping Protestant but they still give me communion. Just before the feast of Saint Francis Assisi, however, Zoughbi and the boys decided they wanted to attend at Santa Catalina’s, the Roman Catholic appendage to the Church of the Nativity complex (not “The Church” proper—they connect through a courtyard). We ended-up at the back behind a pillar. Once again, I crossed myself and spaced-out until the Lord’s Prayer.

The following Tuesday, I joined Liam for an evening vigil at St. Cat’s. Liam is another international volunteer; he just received a graduate degree in physics and looks as Irish as his name sounds. I rely upon my Catholic friends to interpret events like these and I’m rarely disappointed: I picked-up a few tid-bits about St. Francis and the way to distinguish between some Roman Catholic orders.

Liam was not any help deciphering the content of the liturgy, however. The service was conducted neither in English nor in Arabic but in Italian.

“I think I have a fighting chance in Italian,” I joked, “I know some Spanish... they’re related...”

To some extent, I was right. Thanks to a Latin alphabet I was able to sing almost all the words to the songs written in the bulletin and had a vague idea what I was saying (less than half but more than a quarter...). It was refreshing to be singing again but I still felt disconnected from the experience. Occasionally, there would be a reading: first Italian, then Arabic, English and French.

I discretely clicked a few photographs of the inside of the church at this point. The ornate ceiling and the artwork along the walls were beautiful but my attention was drawn to the supporting pillars: the place had obviously been partly destroyed at some point and then restored. The thickest of the pillars were made of more roughly hewn stone but the second-wave of architects had ingeniously managed to join the new parts of the structure smoothly with these relics, creating a network of supports that gave the space a hybrid character and a hint of antiquity. The monks handed us each a long, thin candle. The flame passed from wick to wick. The electric lights dimmed to nothing and I began to wonder if this was where I would feel a moment of heaviness or the movement of the Spirit. Like anyone, I meander closer and further from the Divine.

My hair stood on end when a long moan sliced through the thickening air of the church. From across Manger Square, for the fifth time that day as every day, the mosque loud speakers trumpeted the evening prayer. It was other-worldly, to hear that from inside the church. Barely a minute later, the sounds of the pipe organ and people singing in Italian rose into the air and juxtaposed against the modal changes of the prayers. The resonance of that moment was surreal; we were that close, Christians and Muslims, worshipping the One God with deepest reverence in two historic traditions.

That night, my worship took on a sublime and deeply authentic quality.

Prayer Candle

Prayer Candle

I strike a half-chewed match,

to light my meditation candle. I watch

the yellow fish with the vermillion slipstream

dig,

with acid blue lips

into voiceless wax cylinders.

They were green or violet, to begin with, then white

and now red. They make scents for a while,

bleeding into skewbald reefs between sand-grains

every day,

and sweating into smoke. I watch this naked

ichthyologic archetype of everything that is

flames insist with undulant fluke strokes

to dive

past the waxy crater’s pastel depression

into viscous and deepening seas.

I burrow this abyssal column, probing

in my little faux comet’s wake:

When will I?

Where will I?

With whom will I?

What will we?

How will we?

God, will we?

With each whispered word

the fish flicks its fluke, too cutely, shimmying

shimmering muscles of molten brass.

I relent, then

sigh and blow the light away most nights,

wondering if what I search for is not

dark matter, a denizen of unfathomed space:

a dusky octopus inking, ghostly. Smoke wisps

rise into the wind and escape. I want to

see a flame turn on its wick

and unmoor

and leap

and unfurl its latent incendiary plumage.

I want to see the fire that flies

out of curtained, upstairs rooms

and alights upon entire communities,

gingerly setting its talons on olive trees

like a phoenix that wants to be a dove.