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Column When the inner demons clamor, get on board a raft of
prayer
By KRIS BERGGREN
This spring in Minnesota has been perfect for ducks and gardens.
The gentle rain nudges lilacs toward bloom and helps settle the young
perennials Ive just transplanted. As long as the sun puts in his
appearance at least once a week, Ill take the rain.
Its easy to sing the praises of this kind of precipitation:
it nourishes backyard gardens, makes farmers happy and, best of all, offers us
all an excuse to lie on the porch and nap to its lullaby patter instead of
mowing the lawn. Its a gift from God, this springtime element that brings
forth all this juice and all this joy, to use a Gerard Manley
Hopkins phrase.
So I don waterproof boots and tote my umbrella to walk the dog,
who, perhaps wisely, doesnt seem to mind getting wet at all.
A rain in late spring holds not only the promise of full summer
but the inevitability of autumn. In one whiff of wet earth, I detect the whole
cycle of seasons. At once I know Hopkins delight in the newness of spring
and the innocence of young souls, jaded summer when promise peaks and autumnal
fading awaits its turn, then the silence of winter, and round again to the
merest glint of promise: If a frigid white February gets too oppressive, at
least spring is coming.
A friend and I just discussed turning 40; Im not there yet,
hes just faced it. He is somewhat disturbed that hes not quite
where hed imagined hed be at this age, though from my purview, he
is an accomplished man with many gifts and many friends, a clear sense of
values and an abiding faith.
Yet he speaks of groundlessness, a Buddhist concept
that there is no certainty, there will never be definite answers to all the
questions we have, from Should I give a buck to this beggar? to,
Is there an afterlife? Sometimes the inner demons will not be
placated.
Forget Rainer Maria Rilkes advice to live the
questions, I want a yes or no and I want it now. Because were not
in the spring of our lives any more: Its summer turning the corner to
autumn, a long glorious autumn though it may be.
But now, as my dog, Luna, and I splash through puddles, avoiding
low branches heavy with drops, I think, prayer. It is the only
answer to the ground shifting beneath us, an ark in the flood of personal and
world matters that can crack even the solidest foundation.
So I pray for people whove asked for prayers, people whose
whole life cycle is presented to them with each surgery, each round of
chemotherapy, each unforeseen turn of fate. I ask the God of life-giving spring
water -- who is the same God of frozen water driven by angry winds, snowfall
turned to avalanche, of too much water in flood and hurricane -- to be with a
friend dealing with cancer of the fallopian tube, whose first treatments seem
to have been effective but who is now dealing with recurrent, unidentifiable
pain.
I pray for a former neighbor and her husband, newly diagnosed with
bladder cancer, which seems operable. He is an artist, a heavy smoker, an
introvert. I pray for the people in Kosovo, and in gratitude for relief
workers, war protesters and people of conscience. I pray for strangers I
glimpse crossing the street as I imagine their troubles.
I pray to the God of holy water and tears about my own anger with
my perpetually tardy daughter, a plea for grace and patience when she simply
will not put one sock on after the other, the most banal of tasks that would
ensure her readiness to leave the house and get into the car to go to
school.
Ive talked with her teacher, who has independently noticed
the same phenomenon. When I say something dumb like hurry up, my
child looks up with a poker face, and deliberately turns back to the task at
hand, whether putting on socks or applying toothpaste to a toothbrush. The
teacher and I refer to it clinically as the slow thing. It is
maddening and it is hard not to hold this quirk against my daughter, to honor
her own pace that will not be hurried.
Spring rains and summer thunderstorms will come whether were
ready or not, never mind that weve scheduled a barbecue, an outdoor
wedding or a camping trip. Midlife comes, too, with all its self-doubts,
medical catastrophes and ongoing debates about such crises as changing
waistlines, hairlines, careers -- or socks. My prayers alone may not be able to
change the world. But maybe our collective prayers -- desperate or measured,
silent or voiced, formal, impromptu, liturgical, private, hesitant, practiced
-- are the boat that keeps us upright and afloat, and thats enough to ask
for.
Maybe the answer to groundlessness is to let go of the dock and
float downriver on a raft of prayer until the waters recede and you touch
Mother Earth once more.
Kris Berggren lives in Minneapolis.
National Catholic Reporter, June 18,
1999
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