Imagination in prayer

At Mass last Sunday, we heard the story of the Prodigal Son with intro parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin. (Luke 15:1-32) These stories introduce us to at least nine (9) characters:

1. a shepherd whose one sheep has strayed
2. a woman who lost a coin
3. the friends and neighbors who rejoice when the sheep and coin are found
4. a man who has two sons
5. the older son
6. the younger son
7. the pig farmer who starved his workers
8. the father’s servants and
9. the older son’s friends

Nine different personalities inviting me to step into the stories and imagine myself in each role.

All week, I have engaged in imaginative prayer with the scenes in this Scripture, placing myself in each of the roles portrayed, letting the scene play out and looking at how I am like the person or how I am different.

For example, when am I put myself in the place of the shepherd, I wondered if I would be willing to leave what I have in search for something lost. It is a risk to leave the safety of the known, and I wondered if I would take the risk.

My opportunities to take risk don’t usually involve sheep, but as I let this image play out, I thought about the safety and security of my circle of friends, and I wondered if I am willing to take the risk of inviting someone into my circle of friends or even just to reach out to someone who seems to be on the outside. Do I tend to play it safe or am I willing to stretch beyond my comfort zone?

The woman who searches for something precious that has been lost is an easy one for me to imagine because I frequently lose things (mostly earrings, which is why I had an extra hole pierced in one ear so I can still wear the remaining earring). I tend to tear the house apart and retrace my steps looking for a lost earring. But what about other things? Do I persevere or give up? Do I persevere in prayer? In hope?

How am I like the forgiving father? The rebellious son? Or the dutiful son? When am I like the servant who has to prepare something for others to enjoy while I just look on? Or like the local pig farmer who cares more for his pigs than the people who work for hm? How do I react when a friend complains about unfair treatment from a parent?

Each of the people in these stories help me to see myself in relation to God and to others. Each invites me to imagine myself inside the Scripture passage and learn something about myself, others and God.

On my walk one day, I realized that each person represents a different character trait, and it reminded me of the words stenciled at my neighborhood school—incoming messages through different avenues.

Living excessively

My daily walk includes a path through a park along the shore of Lake Saint Clair, a lake so large I cannot see the opposite shore. The other day, the sky was overcast and the lake a dull gray, when, all of a sudden, the sun broke through the clouds, shining on the water, and the water shimmered. Where seconds before there had only been dullness, now the water sparkled, and I stopped to look.

Three words popped into my mind: Think BIG thoughts!

Vast is the sky overhead and the water at my feet, inviting me to be expansive, to live in the abundance that our God offers us. It was a mystical moment.

Our culture encourages people to think big thoughts about success, possessions, money—building financial portfolios, expanding business, growing wealth—all with an eye toward more money and bigger things—houses, cars, etc. Excessiveness is a word we tend to associate with wealth and the way wealthy people spend their money—mansions, yachts, elaborate vacations, expensive clothes.

But what if we focused our big thoughts on building, expanding and growing love, forgiveness, acceptance and compassion. What if we were excessive with kindness, gratitude and mercy? What if we focused our wants on others instead of ourselves? What if we thought big thoughts about goodness, curiosity and generosity? Pie in the sky? Perhaps.

As I walked home from the lake that day, I passed the elementary school near my house and noticed words stenciled on the sidewalk. The school district has a character-building program focused on developing positive habits in the children and more than a dozen sidewalk blocks had words on them.

I remembered back to the beginning of the pandemic when children wrote messages of hope in sidewalk chalk.

We all need daily reminders to develop positive character traits.

What does all this mean for me? What BIG thoughts am I meant to be thinking? What positive character traits am I meant to be developing? What can I do that will help spread the message of Jesus to love, forgive, accept, hope, trust, persevere?

Be seen and heard

Shh.

Be quiet.

Don’t speak.

Be seen and not heard.

Make yourself small.

Cower in the corner.

Become invisible.

Keep the little girl inside you little.

This is my beloved Son; listen to him, God said of Jesus.

Did God say of me, This is my beloved daughter; listen to her?

But who can hear me when I am being quiet?

How can you listen to me when I am not speaking?

If I remain tucked in the corner, trying to be invisible,

how can I spread God’s message of love and forgiveness?

God whispers to me.

Think big thoughts.

Speak up.

Make yourself seen and heard.

A mother’s love

My mother died in June. She was ninety-five years old and died at home—her one wish—after only two days in bed. She had an indomitable spirit.

A friend recently asked if I ever wished for the kind of mother I needed. She knew the complicated relationship I had with my mother and of my years in therapy to overcome my low self-esteem and body dysmorphia.

This friend asked if I ever wished for a mother who would have given me what I would have needed to live a healthier life?

The truth is that God gave me that mother in the form of my friend, Dorothy. We met after I graduated from college and started teaching Sunday school at Dorothy’s church—two of her teen-aged children were in my class.

Our friendship seemed unlikely to me because Dorothy was a proper Southern lady who lived temperately, while I was still in my wild times, trying to find my way in life. We met just a few years after I had been sexually assaulted, and I was still healing from that experience. In that healing process, issues from my childhood had come to light, revealing the depth of my wounds.

Even though I was in intensive therapy, I was still living out of my pain and trying to figure out a path forward.

Dorothy entered my life at the exact moment when I was open to see how a mother could be.

At first, she did not know my mother-history or my self-esteem issues. She only knew what her children told her, and they thought highly of me because I invited them to engage in conversations about their faith. They thought it was amazing that I allowed them to share without censure or judgment, that I gave them space to explore who God was for them at that time in their lives, to question church teachings, to wonder about their faith and to challenge the status quo.

From them, Dorothy learned that I was a good teacher who listened to them and valued their opinions.

As our friendship grew and Dorothy came to understand how damaged my self-image was, she acknowledged what I believed about myself, and then she gently painted a different picture—the image she saw of me. Dorothy affirmed and encouraged me; she did not criticize me or judge me.

Over time, my relationship with Dorothy helped me gain perspective and understanding on my relationship with my mom. Dorothy showed me a mother’s love in a way my own mom was not able to do.

Knowing how complicated and conflicted my relationship was with my mom, Dorothy often commented on how lucky my mom was to have my help in her last years. I don’t know that Dorothy realized that it was her love that had healed what was broken in my mother relationship and made it possible for me to care for my mom at the end of her life. I was twice blessed.

Claim your treasure

Every Monday, I look forward to an email in my inbox from Shola Richards with a message about positivity. Confronting fears was the theme of last Monday’s email, and the message spoke directly to me, especially the opening quote:

“Inside the cave you fear, lies the treasure you seek.”

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I have a fear of caves, so the very idea of stepping into the darkness of a cave made me shutter. But the idea that the treasure I seek is hidden within made sense to me.

“The only way past the pain is through the pain,” came to mind as I pondered entering a dark, fearful place like a cave.

What I fear won’t go away on its own; I need to confront it and move through it. I need to step into what seems ominous and threatening. The only way to find the treasure is to enter the cave.

I had an insight into this truth a few weeks ago. I was talking with someone about being a rape survivor, and I said the name of the man who raped me.

Two things happened almost immediately.

The first was that I had not realized that fear had me in its grip, but as soon as I said his name, the fear dissipated and was replaced with a sense of power. Instead of standing outside the cave, fearing the darkness, just saying his name sparked a light.

The second was something from the Harry Potter books. The main adversary in the series is an evil character commonly known as “He who must not be named.”  In that instant of speaking the name of the man who raped me, I realized how much power I had been giving him all these years just by protecting his name.

Why had I been protecting him? Why had I not spoken his name? As in the Harry Potter series, once Lord Voldemort is named, his power is diminished. Fear is replaced by freedom.

When I relayed these events to a friend, she quoted scripture, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:38).

Fear can be crippling. It can keep us stuck in darkness, giving up our power and limiting our potential.

Naming our fears can break the spell, and we can reclaim our power and our freedom.

I invite you to step inside the cave and claim your treasure.

Being healed

Do you want to be healed? Jesus asked the man sitting near the pool (John 5:5-15).

Reading that passage, I thought, “What kind of question is that?” Who doesn’t want to be healed?

Can you imagine someone asking you if you want to be healed and you would say, “Hmm, let me think about that.” Rather, I think most of us would answer without hesitation, “Yes, I want to be healed.”

So why does Jesus ask that question?

Perhaps because we may want to be healed in theory, but in reality, we get some benefit from being unhealed. Maybe it is sympathy for our suffering or a familiarity and comfort in our identity as one who suffers. Perhaps it is just that we don’t even know that we are holding onto something that needs healing, let alone how to let go and be healed.

The answer to Jesus’ question might often be a “Yes, but…”

Yes, I want to be healed, but I also want to hold onto some of the identity associated with what ails me, to stick with what feels comfortable.

Yes, I want to be healed, but I do not want let go of all of my anger, resentments and fears.

All kinds of things can cripple us or bind us—old hurts, low self-esteem, insecurity, grief—things we need to work on or through.

That work can be challenging, and the changes might not be evident for a long time. Not every healing happens the immediate way it did with Jesus.

I have wounds that go way back to my childhood—and then additional wounds on top of those. Some are more traumatic than others, and some have been healed just as new hurts occurred. It seems to me that healing is the work of a lifetime.

Jesus desires that we be healed. He showed that many times throughout the Gospels, from healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever (Luke 4:38-41) to the paralyzed man lowered through the roof (Luke 5:17-20) to the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years (Mark 5:25-29). He healed people of all ages and from different backgrounds. He brought Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:22-42) and Lazarus (John 11:1-44) back from the dead.

He wants us to be healed and live full lives. He wants us to leap up like the man healed by Peter in Acts 3 so that we, too, are “jumping and praising God.”

Oh such joy! Who wouldn’t want that?

Maybe Jesus would ask follow-up questions like, What is stopping you from receiving healing love? What is blocking the path to living more joyfully? What is one thing you can let go of that will make you freer to give and receive forgiveness?

I have been thinking a lot lately about seeing people as God sees them, and I believe God sees each of us as our best self, and God’s desire is that we grow into that image, to become the person that God created us to be.

Written on my heart

I recently signed up to be an advocacy speaker for our local domestic abuse shelter, sharing my story of being a survivor of sexual assault and the help I got after I was raped.

While pondering my own story, another story I hold came to mind—of a woman I befriended after she had committed a heinous crime in my community. I recently came across a bundle of her letters and realized I carry a part of her story that no one else knows.

This woman had a mental illness and heard voices inside her head. One day, she obeyed the voices that had been telling her to do something shocking, something that would make people take notice. Her actions made no rational sense, but the mental illness jumbled rational thought.

In the weeks and months following the crime, I prayed for the victims of her crime, their families and our community; and I prayed for her.

God placed this woman in my heart, and I kept seeing her as God’s daughter, a woman God still loved despite what she had done. I did not excuse what she had done, and I understood the anger of my community toward her because I, too, felt that anger. Yet God kept inviting me to look beyond what she had done to see the woman who was ill and in need of compassion. God wrote her name on my heart and asked me to see her with the eyes of my heart (Ephesians 1:18).

Eventually, I got to know this woman, and we became friends. Although I have not seen her for a long time, I still carry her in my heart.

She is not the only person God has placed on my heart, and over the years God has invited me to look at people and situations through God’s eyes, to see beyond the external facts to a deeper truth.

It can be a great challenge for me to look beyond what people do—the pain they inflict and the damage they cause—to see them as God sees them. It helps to think of my own actions that have hurt others and my desire for God to see beyond what I do, my hope that God still sees me as a beloved daughter.

On my own, I would get stuck in anger or fear; it is only possible for me to be compassionate because of the grace God gives me.

Reading Chapter 31 of Jeremiah, I wondered what God is writing in my heart now. Where is God inviting me to look beneath or beyond actions to see the need for understanding and compassion?

What is God writing on your heart?

Hand in hand

Was I blinded by my pride?

Had I fallen into a pit dug by my humiliation?

The betrayal stung,

and the sting lingered.

He professed his innocence, saying

I had misread the situation.

Had I?

Perhaps.

Or perhaps not.

Could I trust him again?

Could I feel safe with him again?

Years passed, and I tried to relax into his embrace,

to remember the times I had felt safe with him,

to forget the hurt and humiliation.

His persistence and affection eventually seduced me,  

and one day

I took his hand and

we walked together again.

Forgiving and being forgiven

I learned long ago that I am better at asking for forgiveness than I am at forgiving. Like the younger son in today’s Gospel, I can easily come to my senses and see that humbling myself and admitting my mistake is the best course of action. As much as I like to be right, I can admit when I am wrong.

But when I am the one who is asked to forgive, I can become like the older brother who kept score of every good thing he had done to make sure he came out on top in the contest with his sibling. When I feel wronged, I can hold a grudge and be stingy with mercy.

But with God, there is no contest, and there is no scorecard. Keeping track of our brownie points and holding grudges destroys relationships; compassion and mercy build community. God delights in clemency and invites us to do the same.

(This reflection was originally published in Villanova University’s Lenten Reflections and is based on the readings for Saturday of the Second Week of Lent: Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Psalm 103; Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32)

Surprised

How could I have been so blind?

I missed the meaning in a look, a touch and

whispered words.

My heart had informed my senses,

and it had become dulled to nuance.

My world was as gray as the winter sky,

clouds so thick that the sun could not break through.

I was sad to think you might be leaving me,

but the signs were there,

small changes creeping into our lives

ever so slowly.

And when you said, “we need to talk,”

I thought,

“This is it.”

Braced for the brunt of goodbye,

I sat still and listened.

“Let’s get away,” you said.

“I think it would be good for both of us.”