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7 Pleading Takes

7 Pleading Takes

Last updated on: May 26, 2017 at 8:29 am by Anne Kennedy

7 Pleading Takes 2017-05-26T08:29:06-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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As a chastisement for comparing the Holy Spirit to Mark Hamill, which wasn’t very nice, probably for either of them, the sky is shrouded in a thick covering of gray clouds, just so that we don’t get above ourselves. Anyway, it’s Friday, so Takes.

One
Yesterday was the last day of online class for us, by which I mean a couple of the children, but, you know, it takes the whole family to shove individual members through those last desperate hours. Now we have a long week stretched out full of finals, and then the month of June to catch up on all the stuff we didn’t get to during the scholastic year. No sweat. It’s going to be cakes and lollipops. But boy am I excited about July.

Two
If you want advice about homeschooling–like, ‘should I do it?’–my well considered answer this time of year would be a resounding, Oh Sheol No. Of course, by August I’ve completely exhausted the wisdom and perspective of May and am easily swayed by shiny school supplies and book catalogues. ‘It’ll be fun,’ I think. ‘This year we’ll do a good job.’

Three
While sitting around waiting for children to finish end of the year projects and papers and tests and all manner of work, I’ve been sitting in the kitchen reading about the Manchester bombing, watching clips of the queen visiting young girls and women in the hospital, and clicking on and then immediately clicking away from Ariana Grande music videos. I don’t really know what to make of the whole disaster. We’ve become used to, though still horrified by, the occasional bombs going off, the carnage, the quick remonstrations not to have bad thoughts and feelings about Islam. The pattern unfolds without much variation or change. I understand that the powers that be don’t have the emotional and intellectual reserves to really deal with what is unfolding in our midst, and that this is how we all get to live now, probably until it gets so bad that we’re willing to have any leader who promises to stop it, but that will come with other problems and costs we won’t want to face either.

What I can’t fathom, personally, is a martyrdom for something so culturally vapid–the paper doll pop icon. It’s not like we’re dying in churches, here in the west. That distinction goes to the martyrs of Syria and Africa and the Middle East. No, we’re dying in concert venues and football stadiums, in movie theaters and subway cars. It seems rather, how shall I say it, ignoble. Given all the freedoms of the known world, all the knowledge, all the money, all the privilege, it is telling that the pop star and the soccer match are dignified by our blood. Discouraging actually. And I say that without malice or even really judgement. It’s just where we are. It’s what we want. It’s the thing that we like. But it’s also why we don’t have the wherewithal to think through what it would mean to stop the carnage.

Four
Also read about this nonsense–the idea that quiet academic spaces are oppressive to minorities because they, the minority student population, are not used to it. We must have lots of noise and no reflection about anything at all because of white patriarchal hegemony. Or something. Reading about it made me almost blind with rage.

Every week on Thursday evenings I open up one of my Catechesis atria to three or four neighborhood children. Now, it’s hard to get any children to be quiet and still, any time, even children who have grown up in the church and in that very room. Children are by nature subject to volumes too loud and body movements too enormous. But one of the reasons for being in the Atrium, I would say even one of the central reasons, is for children to have a place to practice being quiet and still. There isn’t anything in the life of the average child today that gives the gift, the opportunity for stillness of mind and heart. Everywhere they go and everything they do is designed to keep stillness away. But here’s the thing, if a child cannot be still for a few minutes, a child cannot hear about Jesus. You have to stop, and listen, and stop talking yourself and stop looking at the screen in order to physically hear with your ear the good news about Jesus.

In other words, if you want to oppress and put down someone and keep him down, make sure that he never, from the youngest possible age, have time or space to think in quiet. Make sure that he never has a moment of silence and peace. Fill up all the airwaves all the time.

Five
I have struggled with my neighborhood kids on Thursday nights to gain thirty seconds of quiet prayer. I finally landed on the brilliant idea of bribing them. I hold up a pack of gum and a bag of gummy bears before their eyes, me sitting on my low stool while they are all spread out on the floor all over the room. ‘Come over here and let me read you a story about Jesus and pray for you and you can have a piece of gum and a whole handful of gummy bears,’ I plead. It takes five minutes for them to decide they really want candy. They come over and keep talking. I shout the story over their heads and then pray for them. But they do come. And they can now, after a year of Thursdays, sit for an entire thirty seconds to be prayed for. It took me three months to get through a meager retelling of creation and the fall. And all because they don’t know how, and have indeed been kept from the great gift and beauty of silence. Most Thursday nights I come home, wrung out, to weep.

Six
Someone left a truly ignorant comment on this blog a few days ago. Something like, ‘ok, if prayer is so powerful, pray for the the amputee’s leg to be restored.’ A comment akin, I think, to the little boy last night who, when invited to pray, began by saying, ‘I wish for…’ I stopped him straight away and said, ‘We’re not wishing. We’re praying. We’re talking to a person, a Being, even though we can’t see him.’ He looked at me quizzically and without comprehension. But, being unable to be still, he couldn’t hear more than that. I hope he comes back next week.

My prayer for him, and for the commenter, and for person who thinks that silence is oppressive rather than golden, and for all of us in the west who feel like despairing and giving up, is that God, along with having pity, along with the balm of mercy, would enliven the spiritual ear of each of us, and all of us together. I’m not praying for revival, for some big event that will shake the world into believing. No, rather, for a gradual if miraculous opening for just thirty seconds every day of the ear to the quiet, still, imperceptibly subtle voice of God proclaimed in the scriptures. Be still, I think God said somewhere or other, and I think that would be a really gracious gift for him to give.

Seven
And now I will arise and go tell all those children to stop shouting and be quiet and study, and you can go read more and better takes. Pip pip.

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