The Slow Way: Prayer is a Returning to Love
Life is like faith: circular, moving round and round, faster and faster, tighter as you get to the bottom. It’s like a tornado, really.
The Enneagram, an ancient wisdom tool that was translated into written form in the 20th century, does more than label people into personality types; it helps us make sense of our motives, how we encounter the world, and the psychological reasons we often find ourselves making the choices we make. (If it’s new to you, reach out to me! I’m happy to share books and podcasts that can help you discover where you might fall in the system.) The Enneagram has been a powerful communication tool for my marriage and has helped me understand the people around me in ways that have led to so much more compassion and care than might have come naturally.
All that to say, I’m an Enneagram 4, which means I live in a lot of my thinking life in the past. I’m married to an Enneagram 7, who spends much of his thinking life in the future. That makes him more fun, you guys. And it makes me more melancholy and emotional. While I remember everything and feel the colors of the feelings in all the events of my life (hence, I’m a memoir writer), my husband is full of ideas, dreams and possibilities. He’s always thinking of how to make the next things wonderful and beautiful and fun. I’m always thinking of what happened, what it meant, and what could have been.
I say that to tell you that these past two weeks of every year of my life are deeply tinged with melancholy and joy and nostalgia. On June 13 we celebrate Chris’s birthday. A few days later, Father’s Day. Then August’s birthday. And, now that we live on the east coast, the last day of school. Y’all. I can’t even with the last day of school! Every year, my boys get older and it is devastating and wonderful. And my insides are close to bursting.
And of course, there’s our wedding anniversary, with our yearly practice of talking through a memory from every year of our marriage, which gets harder and harder as the years go by, and sweeter and sweeter. I share all this to say, it’s been a week for living in my past in an even deeper way than usual.
We had our last Found Book Club this past week. We celebrated Found’s 8th birthday by sharing a virtual book club for the past 8 weeks, and as a result I got to know a whole group of you I wouldn’t have known otherwise. It filled me up and I’m grateful for all of you who participated. We talked this past week about something I wrote in the afterword of the book: “Prayer is not an act I perform, words I recite, a behavior I strive to maintain. It is a returning. It is a broken life finding healing, a misplaced soul recognizing home.”
In the chapter before that, I wrote: “Not all stories begin broken and end whole. Most start somewhere in the middle, and they fumble forward crashing and rising again.”
I’ve been thinking about those two things this week, as I’ve considered the 18 years I’ve spent married to Chris, or the 14 years I’ve been a mother, or the end of elementary school for Brooks, and the end of middle school for August. And the loss of my dad six months ago. Not all stories begin broken and end whole. Most start somewhere in the middle, and they fumble forward . . .
When I lost my dad, I had an immediate gut-ache that I hadn’t known while he was sick. While he was sick I only wanted to be present, to love him well, to show up and usher him peacefully to the end. After he was gone though, I was suddenly shocked that life could end like this, right in the middle of things. His granddaughter graduated from college only days before his death. His grandson would get engaged a few months later. He had barely gotten to enjoy retirement. He had flies to tie and rivers to fish. He had ideas to work out, Sunday School lessons to teach. He had little grandkids left to watch grow up. It wasn’t the right time. I wanted death to be tidier. I wanted my dad to have the strength to say all the things he wanted to say to us. I wanted him to feel finished, fulfilled. I wanted his faith to feel like he had been able to complete the whole story.
Of course, this is not a new idea. People die all the time without completion. In fact, I doubt that even my grandmother who lived to be one-hundred and died twenty days later felt as though she had been able to finish everything. What does it even mean to finish a life?
We talked about that at book group, the idea that more than anything else, prayer is a returning to the love of God. Not an act, not a performance, not a task to do in order to earn some divine approval. But a returning to Love.
And maybe if that’s the case, we can get rid of the upward image we often carry with us about what life is supposed to be. That we are moving up a line on a graph, moving from Point A (birth, at the left-side base of the graph) and ending up at the right hand corner. Complete. Final. Having checked off our big life dreams as we went. Instead, I think, life is like faith: circular, moving round and round, faster and faster, tighter as you get to the bottom. It’s like a tornado, really. We move around and around the sun, but also around and around each other, being pulled tighter toward what we’ve made the center, as life brings us closer to the point at the bottom of things.
And that tornado can sometimes feel terrifying. But it's also beautiful and powerful. If we lean into the circular movement of the tornado and away from the tidy upwardly moving graph, we might gain some wisdom. We might ask ourselves what we’re circling, what we’re coming back to over and over. And that answer might give us some insight into the kind of life we’re living, the person we’re becoming, and where God is in all of it.
Here’s what I hope for me and for you: That our life might be a circular movement toward Love, the divine love we find in the story of Jesus. That we might move around that story every day, closer and closer. That our circular returning might get tighter and tighter around that Love. Because if it's true that our life story is a cycle that eventually forms into a tornado, what kind of power will we be? I think the power our lives leave behind have everything to do with what we cycle around: Will it be our own comfort? Our own desires? Our culture's definitions of power? Or will it be the Love of God that compels us to live for justice, the sacrifice of our comfort for the good of our neighbors, and the peace that comes from settling into the abundant love of God that makes us new?
A Tornado of Divine Love. Is that a thing? Maybe. I want to live like it is.
A Slow Practice
What are we circling around? I want us to spend a few minutes today imagining our lives in a prayerful posture.
Take a deep breath with me.
Breathe in: Spirit, give me clarity and wisdom to see my life’s pattern.
Breathe out: Spirit, you invite me to return to you.
Take some time to consider the graph version of a life. If you were graphing your life on an upward trajectory from Birth to Death, what moments would you mark on the graph? Maybe you want to pull out your journal and sketch it out for yourself. If you do, you’ll probably find that the line of your graph is not always moving up. It probably slips down, stays straight, moves up and then down again. Look at the moments you’ve sketched out or imagined in your mind. What feels right about the graph version of your life? What feels false about it?
Now, consider your life as a tornado. Imagine the circle of your choices bringing you into tighter and tighter cycles of choices. What have you circled your life around at different points? What are you circling your life around right now? Do you feel like the circular motion is getting tighter and faster? Why do you think that is? When you consider what things, relationships, or ideas you’ve spent your life circling around, what comes to mind? They may be relationships, dreams, belief-systems, or even normal, instinctual behaviors like the pursuit of comfort or a specific vision for your kids. It could be that some of the things your life circles around feel good and true to you, and some of the things bring guilt or shame. You may despise some of the things you circle, but still feel trapped in relational patterns or habits that you don’t know how to break. Can you take some time to list those centering choices to God? Repentance is a scary religious word, but it really just means, as my pastor Michael Rudzena says, choosing to recognize and admit to the ways we’ve fallen short of Love.
End your time of reflection by acknowledging the ways you’ve fallen short of Love, and the dreams you have for your Holy Tornado Life: Who and what do you want to center your life on? What do you hope to return to over and over until it becomes The Thing at the middle of everything?
A List of Things
It’s officially summer at our house! Thursday was our last day of school and our family is busting out of here to spend some time at our favorite place in Maine. I’ll also be off to Collegeville for a long and wonderful writing retreat, and spend some time in Texas with my fam. That means we’re taking a good and restful break around here! I’ll be back in August with a fresh version of the newsletter, dropping back into your inbox August 13th, and continuing weekly after that. I’ll miss our conversations for the next five weeks, but it’s good and healthy and right to take breaks and that’s what I plan to do. In the meantime, I’ll also be taking a five week break from the podcast. It’ll be back in action August 16th. Until then, friends, as we say around here: Rest, Have fun, Love each other.
I’ll still be active on Instagram while I’m away. If you don’t follow me over there, feel free to jump over and make that happen. :)
I was thrilled to read about the new play Corsicana, which opened in New York this past week. It’s written by a playwright who has a sister with Down syndrome, about a brother and his sister with DS, working through the death of their mother. It stars one of my favorite actors with DS, Jamie Brewer, who was a star in American Horror Story, and who I was lucky enough to interview back in December 2019 for The Lucky Few Podcast’s live show. You can read a review of the play here.
I’m finally reading Idelette McVicker’s new book Recovering Racists. Idelette is white and grew up in South Africa during the heart of Apartheid. She is also deeply serious about the teaching of Jesus. This book is especially for white folks who need to reckon with the deep, systematic racism within us, and within society. For any of you who aren’t sure what to believe when it comes to the endless talking heads pontificating on Critical Race Theory, this book will help you decipher what the teaching of Jesus has to say about how deeply we can carry our inclination toward othering, seeking the good of our “tribe”, and what the life of faith can do to heal those places, and ultimately society.
Just finished The Midnight Library by Matt Haig on the recommendation of my friend Amy Julia Becker. Here’s what she said about it: “The Midnight Library is a story about regrets. Nora comes to a place in her life when she is ready to end it all, but when she tries to do so, she finds herself in ‘the midnight library.’ It’s a place where all the possible existences she could have lived are options for her to try. She can see what it would be like to marry her ex-fiance. Or what would have happened if she had continued pushing herself as a competitive swimmer. Or if she had pursued the research project she loved.” This was a fun, fast read that made me think deeply about the choices we make, my own regrets, and what it means to love the gift of life. Highly recommended for your pool days.
I’ll miss our weekly chats this summer, friends! Can’t wait to come back to you refreshed and rested. Sending love.
I loved the tornado analogy and for the reflection it's bringing me on my own circling and what's at the center. Hope you have a sweet summer break!
Hi Micha,
Just wanted to say thanks for your writing. Your newsletter and podcast are a gift to me each time I read and reflect along with you. I hope you have a great summer break and I’ll look forward to August when you begin again. By the way, I found you thru City Church in San Francisco. Fred is a family friend since childhood. Blessings to you and your family.
Mae Beth Ragland