The Wonderment

Prayer of Transformation - April 2012

My monthly prayers follow the themes set by the Church of the Larger Fellowship and the Quest for Meaning. April's theme is Transformation.

 

How amazing and astounding that we can change and grow, that we might begin curious and grow self-satisfied and change again to a dancer in the wonderment of life! What a blessing not to be bound to bitterness or to sorrow or to rage or to fearfulness our entire lives! What a blessing to be able to choose another way, a way of mercy, a way of kindness, a way of love, a way of generosity. And when we reflect upon how we were and how we are and consider how we might yet be, when we can hold onto and point toward how sorrow taught us new depths of caring, the real strength of community, the solace of days of rain and being wrapped with the blessing of who and what we have lost, but once had. Transformation is life. Faith is how we dance that change, growing more skillful in our clumsiness, changing and changed with hope, with mercy, and with love. May we be transformed for generosity and for peace, transformed in growing wisdom and in growing kindness, transformed by making amends and by forgiving, transformed by risking faithfully and cherishing what matters, transformed in our wondering and our forbearance, transformed with each breath in the mystery and wow of this all. Amen.

Silence & Wonderment

Sound - whether we hear it or not, whether we pay attention to it or not - travels in waves, waves that affect us and that we move through as well as waves we make ourselves. We grow used to this stuff crashing against us and learn to ignore it, to selectively tune into particular sounds or sensations, to retreat into sounds we control and understand. Those of us who are deaf and hearing impaired still experience the waves of sound, just differently from those of us called hearing. The world is very different when it is relatively still than the usual hubbub and busyness of the average city.

Silence is a stillness. For many of us, silence is frightening, a brokenness in the continuous waves of sound that tells us the world is as usual. Have you ever woken knowing that something is wrong because the world is too quiet, because there are not enough vibrations? In this break from the usual, we can become more alert, more mindful. We might grow restless. We might meet what worries us in the stillness.

Yet the stillness of silence is also the space, the break in the usual surf breaking against us, that opens into wonderment and awe. That wonderment and awe is just on the other side of restlessness, just past what worries us, in the space that is made in stillness for the unexpected.

 

Lucky Duck

A Story for All Ages

 

Once there was a duck that met an alligator, just as the duck was trying to land on the slough.  Just as the alligator snapped up, delighted to have dinner come to it, the duck winged backward, trying to get away. And get away the duck did, but not before the alligator’s teeth crushed one webbed foot. Ever after, the duck limped around, muttering “Unlucky Duck, Unlucky Duck, Unlucky Duck.” Ever after, the alligator lurked around the surface of the slough, waiting for another duck. All the while the alligator hummed to itself, “Lucky Gator, Lucky Gator, Lucky Gator.”

 

Muttering all the while “Unlucky Duck, Unlucky Duck, Unlucky Duck” the duck came upon some sightseers who were tossing bread into the slough (even though they knew they were not supposed to do this.) The duck snapped up bits of bread as fast as it could. But a moorhen was also swimming right then and it grabbed one tiny piece of bread and swam off to its floating nest to enjoy the feast. The duck was furious to have missed this bit of bread, and quacked even more loudly, “Unlucky Duck, Unlucky Duck, Unlucky Duck!” Meanwhile, the moorhen cackled, “Lucky Hen! Lucky Hen! Lucky Hen!”

 

The duck built a nest and settled down on it, grumbling about how unlucky it was to have to sit the nest. But after many weeks of this grumbling, duck felt one egg move, then another. “Oh no!” thought the duck! “This is a terrible time! Why, it might rain! Night will come in a few hours! I’ll have to feed the ducklings!” One shell cracked and one duckling came out. Duck quacked, “I’m so unlucky! The other ducklings have not arrived!” As the pace of hatching quickened, Duck was too busy to think about luck at all. And when night did come and all the ducklings were hatched and under Duck’s wings, as the Duck and all the ducklings went to sleep, all Duck could say over and over again was “Lucky Duck. Lucky Duck. Lucky Duck.”