Prayers Under the Dining Room Table

My mom tells me that she once heard me, at the age of about four or five, grumbling. Nothing surprising about that, perhaps. :-) But I was apparently hiding under the dining room table (a favorite place of mine) and what she overheard was a complaining prayer: "Jesus, everybody's bein' mean to me!"

I chuckle about that now, but sometimes I feel a little bit in awe of my preschool age self who didn't hesitate to go to God with a grumbling complaint, even a self-centered one. It not only speaks of an early trust and intimacy (that God was real, that he was listening and that he cared) but I think it teaches me anew that sometimes it's important to get those "dining room table prayers" prayed, even though they're not always the most eloquent prayers. I think of it almost every time I get to Madeleine's word about prayer on p. 24 of WoW:

"Before I can listen to God in prayer, I must fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands, the prayers of childish 'Gimmes,' of 'Help mes,' of 'I want...' Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing whether or not I truly want it. Unless I ask God for something, I do not know whether or not it is something for which I ought to ask, and I cannot add, 'But if this is not your will for me, then your will is what I want, not mine.' The prayers of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God has something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way."

Such wise advice. I haven't always followed it, but whenever I read it, I find myself realizing that I should. I need to remember to pray those dining room table prayers, those prayers of a childish heart, knowing and trusting that God wants to meet me there, he hears them, and he wants me to pray them. And that in praying them, I not only grow closer to him, but I work through my own "stuff" (from more selfish needs to real, practical needs on down) and get to a place where I am cleared out and in a better place to listen. I am really thankful to know that God doesn't look down on our "childish" prayers, and that he understands that we need words (our own and others) like a lifeline sometimes, even if they're inadequate in the end to convey our deepest heart's desires or our purest praise. Maybe when we run out of words or get to the end of them, we value the depths of silence more.

And of course, Madeleine also says that writing, like prayer, is discipline... something we should do every day if we're to faithfully serve and faithfully use the gift we've been given. More food for thought...

"A Box Marked Children Only"

Reading along in Walking on Water the other day, I was struck anew by this paragraph:

"The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns, and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a box marked Children Only."

What else goes into that box on a regular basis, I wonder? It seems like we're okay with writing beautiful stories and stories of wonder for children, but for adults we think it all has to be pragmatic and "realistic." I put that last in quotes because I think what Madeleine is reminding of us here is that we need to broaden our vision of what's real to include things that are unseen or only usually talked about in the realm of imagination.

And there's the connection between listening and vision again...which we talked about in the earlier post.

Words...

It comes as no surprise to me that such an accomplished writer as L'Engle should have strong opinions when it comes to the variety of words available to authors. "We cannot Name or be Named without language," she says. Even more emphatically: "I might even go to the extreme of declaring that the deliberate diminution of vocabulary by a dictator, or an advertising copywriter, is anti-Christian." (37)

I find it interesting that she expresses such a strong preference for picking up vocabulary from context rather than stopping to look words up - rather the way she mentions that she never tries to jot down her dreams in the middle of the night. It jerks her away from the immediacy. I generally find that I don't stop to look words up either - unless I'm reading something online and find I just have to dash off to dictionary.com to find out what that word means. More often, though, I just absorb words and find myself using them.

Reading this section got me thinking about vocabulary, and I started jotting down some of the more colorful words sprinkled throughout the book. Just writing them is reinforcement, looking them up moreso. Here are a few...

divertissement, interstices, pellucid, salutary, piosity, temerity, vagaries, vicissitudes, castigating, salvific, indigents, licensiousness, ousia...

And the one that really made me sit up and take notice: pusillanimous (contemptibly fearful). Now there's a mouthful!