No More Words; More Than Words

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.

— Thomas Merton

In the last couple weeks or so, I have ran into a “problem” in my prayer life. I say “problem” because my first inclination is to try to fix it. But as I have learned in my journey through life, not all problems are fixable, especially spiritual ones. I have found that spiritual problems are usually when I run smack into a paradox, a condition where two things seem not to go together logically but do. There are no solving paradoxes; they are only door ways into deeper understanding.

My “problem” has been with words. I get these very strong urges to pray, but then there are no words to say. I sit there and no words come out to say to God. I am speechless. And then I get frustrated because it feels like my heart is closed when I want it to be open as far as possible to God. Darkness encroaches around me. I feel powerless as I stand on the edge of nothingness.

My heart is not really closed. I just desperately want to reach out to God. “Reach out” is a little bit of a misuse of the word because I know God is everywhere around me, in me. His presence is thick within my life. Maybe a better word is “communion” with God. My heart yearns for a deeper level of communion with God, and I have found that my words are no longer adequate.

When I first encountered this frustration with words, my own words in particular, I turned to more traditional prayers. I have always incorporated traditional prayers like the Our Father and Hail Mary into my prayers, but they seemed like the only words I had left for me to say. My own words felt empty and hollow, even when they came from my heart, dripping with emotions. Then eventually, the words of the traditional prayers started to feel dry too.

I did not want to pray anymore. But then again, I had this overwhelming urge to pray. Unfortunately, the words were not there. My own words seemed feeble and weak. The words from traditional prayers felt borrowed. I had nothing of myself to offer in prayer. I felt bankrupt, empty, helpless. Ironically, I did not feel distant from God. In fact, I felt closer than ever with Him.

I knew I had to persevere in prayer. I stuck with the traditional prayers, mixed occasionally with some of my own little words. I had heard that when you don’t feel like praying, that is probably the most important time to pray.

Somewhere in the midst of all the frustration, I had prayed to God for help, for understanding to why the words were no longer enough for prayer, and for guidance in what to do next. God answered me through a very dear friend.

The other day, my friend and I were talking after school. She wanted to share something with me that was very personal. She was a little nervous and did not have much confidence in the words she was trying to say. I could see that her words were coming from the heart. I felt honored and privileged to be there, that she trusted me enough to share something so special. There is a huge risk involved every time somebody exposes anything so deep from within their hearts. I wanted to make her feel as safe as possible.

As my friend talked, all I could do was smile and nod. I knew exactly what she was trying to say as she was saying it. I saw in between her words; I saw deep within the sacred ground of her heart. I was simply amazed and awed. No words were coming into my mind. There was nothing I could say. I was speechless. I did not even struggle to find words because I knew I would not find them. I got a little teary eyed and a lump rose up into my throat. I literally couldn’t talk. The power to use words was taken away from me.

In that moment of sharing, my friend opened her heart to me. I could see her love for me (as a friend in the noblest sense of the word), her love for God, her love for family and friends. There were no masks, no pretensions, no walls—only love—genuine, honest, authentic love. But that little four-letter word does not adequately describe what I saw. There was so much more. There was also a sense of peace within her heart even though she seemed frustrated on the outside as she struggled to express her feelings. And from that peace, I felt energized to love her more deeply, to love others more deeply, to love God more deeply.

As I reread what I have written so far, I am not sure if the words really do justice to what I am trying to convey. Again, a problem with words. The source of all love is from God. In a way, love is uncreated. How do words, things created from creatures, describe the Uncreated?

God, through my dear friend, has shown me the way to the next level of prayer, a level without words. There is nothing to fear by not using word. There is no real reason to be frustrated. Words, in a manner, can get in the way. The trick is to realize that I am powerless in all of this anyway. I just need to relax, open my heart, let God’s love flow through me to others around me, and to flow back to Him.

Saying I love you
Is not the words I want to hear from you
It’s not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel

More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me
Cause I’d already know

What would you do if my heart was torn in two
More than words to show you feel
That your love for me is real

What would you say if I took those words away
Then you couldn’t make things new
Just by saying I love you

More than words

Now I’ve tried to talk to you and make you understand
All you have to do is close your eyes
And just reach out your hands and touch me
Hold me close don’t ever let me go

More than words is all I ever needed you to show
Then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me
Cause I’d already know

— lyrics to “More Than Words” by Extreme

Christmas Without Being Christmas

[Snowman]

Have you noticed the prevalence of snowmen as a growing secular symbol for Christmas?

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing personal against snowmen. I like them and they bring a sense of nostalgia along with the Christmas season. In a way, this is a false nostalgia for me because I can count on one hand how many white Christmas’s I have enjoyed.

There are many symbols of the Christmas season, many religious ones and many secular ones. And part of the beauty of the season is this mixture of symbols, a symphony of sights and sounds and smells, all playing to our nostalgia of the past and courting our hopes for the future. There is nothing wrong with all of this, but I am a little bewildered at how some Christmas scenes can look like Christmas without really being Christmas.

The Willingness of Love

Love is the willingness
      to give up a part of yourself
      you think you know,
to discover a part of yourself
      you never knew existed.

— John Squadra

Makes you wonder what you will find if you give yourself completely to God?

If I Could Ask God One Question

God said to Joan, “It’s not about the answers; it’s about asking the right questions.”

— From the TV show, Joan of Arcadia

A dear friend of mine asked me a simple question the other day. Because of its simplicity, the question could have easily been discarded with a noncommittal kind of reply. No, I wanted to answer this question in all sincerity. I wanted to give an honest and genuine answer to my friend. I am sure many people may have thought about this question, but I wonder how many people have really sat down and meditated on it.

My friend asked me: If you could ask God one question, what would you ask?

I hate to admit it, but my first impulse was selfish. I thought that I might ask God how He saw me. Or maybe something like, who am I? Or, what will make me truly happy?

Nah. There is so much more in the world than just me. I thought about my friend. Will I meet her again some day in heaven? Then I thought of my mom. She had died back in ‘93 from ALS. Maybe I would ask God if my mom was in heaven with Him.

Boy, that’s a tempting question to ask. But with such a question, there is usually an answer, and I might not like it. If the answer was affirmative, what joy! If the answer was negative, well…I can’t imagine how despairing that would be to hear.

Maybe I would ask God something cavalier, like who really killed JFK? Or, is there intelligent life on planets orbiting other stars? Or, what expletive did Jesus yell out when he smashed his thumb with a hammer? (He was a carpenter after all.)

Or, what about one of the “big” ones? Maybe, what’s the meaning of life? Or, why are we here? Or, what happens after we die?

What about something more along theological lines? Like, how do I learn to know Your will? Or, how does the Trinity exactly work? Or, did Jesus really have to die to bridge the gap between man and God? Or why is there pain and suffering in the world?

Maybe, something more personal, like what does God see as the best and worst traits in humanity? Or, does God get tried of hearing all our whining and complaining and asking for this and that?

Maybe I could ask God to explain precisely why He loves us? Or, why did His Son sweat blood in Gethsemane? What did He pray for that night in the garden?

It seems that there are many questions I could ask God. The original question seems to beg for certainty in some small area in our lives. Something that we will never have one hundred percent. If we did, then it wouldn’t be faith, would it?

As a whole-hearted, committed Christian, one who yearns to be a good and faithful disciple, my faith has already asked all those questions above and many more. (Except for the JFK, intelligent life, and smashed thumb questions.) And at the risk of appearing prideful, the answers have already been given. I just have to open up my heart, be still, and listen humbly to God’s whispered replies. I also have to be willing to accept God’s answers and not expect to hear what I want to hear.

In a way, I can ask God any question I want right now, through prayer.

I think I know the question I want to ask God. I think I have been asking this question every day since I fell in love with Christ. The question is: How can I genuinely love You more fully?

The Light Within Us

[Sunset]

Yesterday evening, we were visiting the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. A memory of someone special reminded me to take a picture of this sunset.

My dad and his wife came in for Thanksgiving. We always seem to take visitors from out of town to the Memorial. As they walked around and as my kids went off playing up and down some terraced grass steps, I stood near the survivor tree by myself and looked out over the whole plaza. I noticed that no one ever seems to visit the Memorial alone. Everybody was with someone else, either in groups of two’s or three’s, or with a whole big clump of family.

The blue of the sky from the setting sun, the green of the grass and the pine trees, the water from the reflecting pool, all contrasted sharply with the bronze walls at the ends of the plaza, the empty concrete walls where once stood a building, the rock inlay in the walk ways.

For the most part, the whole plaza was quiet. Even the normal street noise did not seem to invade the area. There is a solemnity about this place. People were generally silent, or they talked quietly among themselves. Once or twice, the quiet would be broken with the sound of someone softly hollering at a family member to come over near them. But it was mostly quiet. Then I noticed some other more subtle sounds. I heard the sounds of life—laughter of children (not only mine but others) and the song of a bird singing to the setting sun.

It dawned on me as I stood there taking it all in. This Memorial, like all memorials, are not only a remembrance of the lives lost, but also a celebration of life itself—a celebration of the light within each of us, and how that light, if we do not interfere with it, spreads out from us, among us, to fill our hearts with love. Memorials like this one remind us that people are the most important part of our lives, not the things we own or fuss over. It is all about people. Only love will fit through the narrow gate of heaven.

[Chairs at Bombing Memorial

Each of the 168 chairs, representing the victims of the bombing, are lit at night to remind us of the light within each and every soul. From across the reflecting pool, you can see how that light, even though the person it represents is not visible, still affects, and reflects, in us today.