Maundy Thursday

Recently, I took the last remaining days of Lent and gave up something that I do quite by habit.

For Lent, I gave up praying.

Well, I did give up praying. But only for myself.

Once, while pastoring, I was asked by some people in a fellowship I led what I would be giving up for Lent. Not that any of us were too much into that tradition- mainly it served like a time to give up those things you resolved to on New Year's Eve, and then failed on. Sort of like a 'do-over' on New Year's resolutions. Some were giving up candy, others were giving up television. One young man vowed to give up Starcraft for 40 days (he failed miserably). When it came to my turn, I quipped: 'For Lent, I'm giving up God.'

This is not a particularly funny thing to say when you're a pastor.

But this year, during the past few weeks, I found my prayer life stagnant to the point of being moribund. This Lenten season was meaningless: I hadn't even been aware of it until I called for a client one day and was told he had taken time off for Mardi Gras. Oops.

The truth is, my faith has become so focused on me as of late, that it's no wonder prayer has taken a back seat to everything else in life. Of course, that focus on ME has to be there, doesn't it? I mean, what with our recent huge disappointment, and the uncertainty surrounding our lives and next steps, of course I deserved all my prayers, right?

I mean, apart from:

- A seminarian alumni dying unexpectedly, and the impact that must have on her family
- My grandmother, active and energized up to her 88th year suddenly taking a calamitous fall
- My pen-pal Samuel, who runs an orphanage in Kenya
- A co-worker whose husband has moved into the streets and taken up an old familiar friend:
cocaine
- The villages in Ethiopia who are struggling valiantly to support a school, a community, potable
water- all without any help from the government, except for their granting of permits once
they have collected the proper 'fees' that go immediately into their wallet
- My wife, who is currently struggling to find her own path
- The husband and father in our community who recently went missing, his abandoned car
found in a shopping center parking lot

Suddenly, giving up God wasn't quite as witty as I thought it had once been. In fact, it now seems like it was damned-near imperative.

At least this working conceptual model of God I've had in my head for the past few years: this tame, palliative, simpering God who grants our wishes in order to curry faith in us. Jesus was called 'The Son of Man' not because he had a human father, but because in his selflessness he taught us how to become men- pardon the particularly singular reference to gender- in other words, he taught us what it was to ultimately be human.

So for Lent, I've given up God, and my supplications to Him. They nauseate me now.

It's been a few weeks, and I have not uttered one single prayer for myself. And guess what has happened?

A whirlwind. Our lives are in utter free-fall. Foxes may have dens, but this particular son of a man does not know where he'll be laying his head next month, next summer, next year. We have bounced from Renton to Santa Fe to New York to San Francisco. We are awash in uncertainty- though not without safety- plying through possibilities and reaching decisions that are demolished as quickly as the next day.

And still I refuse. I will not ask for a single thing to happen for me. Not for now. Post-resurrection day that may change. But at least on that day, now that the blood of emapthy is starting to pump through my veins again, I will make one single plea to Him for me:

Don't let me sink into myself like that again.