Forging a Path for our Souls through Distraction

 

 

The Eastern branch of the Huron River ran through our property when I was growing up. It wasn’t much more than a creek, but it was our creek. Crawdads skittered under rocks and the water flowed cold, even in August.

As the stone ranch was being built on the hill 15 years before, the contractor who was creating this house as his family home, disposed of a pile of flat cement blocks in the creek. Perhaps he was trying to dam it up. Perhaps it was a romantic gesture that was then too heavy to correct. But those flat cement blocks in the creek became my favorite place to unwind after school. As the water flowed, something loosened in my brain. The cement blocks made for a poor illustration of a waterfall, but it was my waterfall. And in the confusion of junior high, it became my favorite place to pray.

 

 

A few years ago, February, we drove northeast for a hike along Hemlock Falls. It was my idea of the perfect hike, slow ascent, umbrella shaped Rhododendron arching over the trail. Towering Georgia pines. And a river skipping down the mountain on one side.

Halfway through the hike, I slipped my hand into the pocket of my anorak and discovered a cross I had left there the year before. It’s a clinging cross, ergonomically correct, designed with grooves for our fingers to grasp.

We are an embodied people and when we pray that way, our bodies become doorways to prayer. Through high school, I’d pass my mom’s room early in the morning on the way to the bathroom before school and see her kneeling at the blue couch, Bible open. When I attended an Orthodox church, I learned how the smoke of the coals of an incense burner would automatically focus my attention on prayer. And now in the Anglican church, settling my knees into a cushioned kneeler signals the time for confession. Our posture or just our senses can position us to engage the Holy with our full attention. Our bodies, not just our souls were meant for prayer.

This month in the Presence Project, grasping a tiny wooden cross as I take a walk has become a way to stay attentive to the Presence of God. Last month I learned bringing my full attention to my sense of touch can reconnect my brain to higher reasoning in my prefrontal cortex and strengthen by ability regulate emotion. And here’s what I’m sitting with these days: As I grasp the cross and draw my attention out to God I’m reminded that He and I are attentive to the same present moment, the same present experience. I can jump from present moment awareness to prayer through the single act of clinging. This hike was an example.

That warm February day, my three kids and husband spread out along the trail leaving me in the quiet of the woods. I heard the muffled voices of the boys making forts in the rhododendron ahead and behind me Andrew and Madeline aimed a camera at moss on a downed limb. Between them, I walked alone listening to the chirps of migrating birds. And with each step fingering the cross.

 

On that day, what I was really grasping for was a quiet heart and mind.

 

 

I am a product of a people addicted to technology and productivity. During busy seasons with its constant stream of text messages and notifications, I practice the presence of my smart phone

We are all practicing the presence of something.

As I squeezed the hard resin of the clinging cross, I remembered a simple prayer question, a way to become alert and listen for God’s voice:

“Jesus, what is it You wish to say to me through this experience right now?”

 

 

In her book, Listening Prayer, LeAnne called Jesus “the Word always speaking.” Richard Foster says that paying attention is the greatest need of this generation and if he were to rewrite his spiritual classic, Celebration of Disciplin,e he would have included attentiveness as a necessary spiritual discipline. Prayer has become an even greater struggle in a world of beeps and buzzes, and easily-attainable information. Sometimes staying present information to the voice of God takes an intentional grasping, a clinging.

There are umpteen things you can use as a reminder of the Presence of God but here’s what I love about the cross.  He didn’t just die for sins on that cross, he elected to carry all the suffering and pain of the world.

At the end of Kenyan Eucharistic liturgy and before the blessing, participants are invited to turn toward the cross and say these words making a large gesture toward the cross with each phrase:

All our problems,

We send to the cross of Christ!

All our difficulties,

We send to the cross of Christ!

All the devil’s works,

We send to the cross of Christ!

All our hopes,

We set on the risen Christ!

 

As we grasp the cross, we practice giving Christ what’s impossible for us to bear on our own.

 

 

During the hike I kept fingering the clinging cross, and asking that question: “Jesus, what is it You wish to say?”

 

I waited.

 

Sometimes as I wait, I don’t hear anything. I don’t force connection through words. I experience the silence as an invitation to lean in…to companionship.

 

That particular day as I waited my mind focused on the sound of the river tossing from rock to rock.  It may be one of my favorite sounds in the world. Memories lifted into my conscious mind. As I hiked I began remembering waterfalls of my life. Ever since that makeshift waterfall in the creek through our side yard, I’ve been seeking them out. By now, there’s a half lifetime of waterfalls, and that February day as I sat with the question of what God may want to say, these waterfalls suddenly seemed as intentional as ticks on a spiritual autobiography, an arc along a storyline.

 

 

I remembered a waterfall in north Carolina. The same year Andrew and I did our Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at Duke Medical school, we strapped 30 lb packs on our back for a four day hike around Linville Gorge. We staked our tent right up to the river next to a waterfall and listened to the water’s surge all night long. Another fall spurted out of the rocks across the river in front of the tent. We had come exhausted after caring for those suffering of body and the families, suffering in mind. A makeshift stick cross had been stuck into the gravel next to our tent location and left for us, the next campers, to discover, a visual reminder He was present even in the unexplained pain of the world.

 

 

Another waterfall memory. During January-term of our last seminary year we took Ordination Exams and then drove southwest the next morning. Seminary was a dry and confusing time for me. My faith was scraped away with one question after another and I had been left raw. It took me years to recover a deeper faith, to remember He was enough and He held it all.

 

When we approached the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico, the water was invisible. All we could see was a giant scar cut through flat land, an exposed fault line. My husband warned me I’m not allowed to tell you where we find our fish, but I can tell you we parked above and then accessed the river by walking down steep trails into the canyon a few hundred feet below. No one would have known there was a paradise, water slipping over rocks, in the middle of the desert.

 

A few years later, our marriage was tested by a four day trip down river in a two-seater fly-fishing pontoon. I was early in the second trimester carrying our first. Day two, our boat found the only class 3 rapid on that stretch, a giant wave. We had the spot carefully circled in red on our map but still managed to locate it in real life. When we saw the strange bend in water, we steered her straight and then popped out the other side, wet and laughing from adrenaline. A few years later we struggled out of the stressful early years of a new parish and three babies under the age of 5. Diapers and little sleep. Our marriage survived the stress but not before being tested. We’ve now learned to trust the weight of our love through transitions and pass quicker into grace.

 

 

But my mind was honing in on one particular waterfall. Just out of College, Andrew and I traveled to L’Abri, Switzerland, a collection of chalets on the side of a mountain. At L’Abri wise tutors carry on Francis Schaeffer’s work, creating a place of hospitality for the spiritually questioning. That spring we hiked to a handful of waterfalls but there was one I claimed.  Down a 10 minute path between Huemoz and Villars, the water poured out of the mountain over the rocks. It was loud and gave me cover to sing or lament. I wasn’t just questioning God that spring, I was angry. I wondered how He could have allowed abuse into my life when I was a young teen. I wondered if I hadn’t love Him enough, if I hadn’t pleased Him enough. I wondered why He hadn’t protected me. I wondered if he was good. Years later I learned suffering is often a consequence of that great gift of God: free will, others and our own, but that summer I yelled, I wept, and I worshipped in a furious unloading of pain.

 

 

As I thought of the waterfall, I fingered the cross, trying to grasp the Word starting to bubble up. I clung to the cross and held tight to the question: “What is it You wish to say?” For a moment I just walked silently, waiting. I thought of Switzerland and the original confusion of a woman unsure she could trust God’s goodness. I remembered the original tangle of lies and the constant companion of shame. And just for a moment, in my imagination of that memory, the risen Christ sat down next to me on that rock. And just His Presence shifted the memory. Because If I’ve learned anything as a healing prayer minister, I’ve learned that when the Light of the World walks into dark places, He transforms them. I could feel tears rising to the surface.

 

“Summer, do you see how your suffering has been redeemed?

 

Your wounds have become the path through which you minister.

 

Nothing has been lost. Do you hear me?

 

Nothing has been wasted.”

 

 

In that instant, in the hike to Hemlock Falls, grasping onto the cross, all of my brokenness shifted over into meaning. There was an arc to the story. Although my pain had been caused by the consequences of human brokenness, He had not allowed it to swallow me. He had not allowed it to be the end of the story. My greatest pain had become the source of God’s flow of ministry through me.

Others say similar things. When I share my pain, my story gives them permission to touch the tender places of their soul and struggle through to accept God’s healing. But sometimes, it takes the voice of God to bring the truth from our head to our heart. I clung to the cross and tears fell hot, tears that tasted of gratefulness. A long awaited release. I had finally moved from the cross to resurrection. And nothing had been wasted.

 

 

 

Find a tangible reminder of the Presence of God you can carry with you. Walk into a store asking God to help you hunt for a sensory reminder of His Presence. Sounds like a perfect excuse for a Target run. Maybe you’ll buy a clinging cross off of the internet or slip a tiny stone cross into your pocket. Perhaps you’ll wear a bracelet soaked in oils or carry a rope prayer bracelet and finger the knots.

As you touch your reminder, bring your mind to the truth of God’s Presence. Dallas Willard said, “As a child of the King, I always live in His Presence.”

Remember, friends, our God is always Attentive. Always Responsive. Always Engaged. Always delighted to share time with you.

Maybe as LeAnne Payne, you can simply say the words, YOU ARE HERE.

And then as LeAnne Payne teaches us, ask God if He has something to say. “Jesus, would you like to say something to me right now?”

 

Quiet yourself to ask a few questions:

 

As I quoted earlier, Richard Foster says, “Distraction is the primary spiritual problem of our day.”

 

When or where do you find distraction derails you fastest these days?

 

Often I find I seek distraction out as a way to self-sooth.

 

Does your desire for distraction it come accompanied by an emotion? Boredom, sadness, weariness?

 

Tell Jesus about it.

 

Ask Jesus if He has an invitation for you to draw you out of distraction and toward practicing His Presence.

 

(Dear Friends, it’s an incredible privilege to journey with you. Subscribe on the right to get the Presence Project transcripts and weekly project notes slipped into your inbox.)