Lighting Candles and Saying Prayers in the Darkness Together

Lighting Candles and Saying Prayers in the Darkness Together

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,’ darkness is not dark to you, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.”—Psalm 139:11-12.

At the five o’clock contemporary service every Sunday night at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, the darkened nave is lit only by tealight candles on the altar before a large icon. After the usual Prayers of the People with a Leader and a Congregational response, the celebrant invites members of the congregation to come forward and light a candle before the altar as they offer a silent prayer of intercession. Tonight’s pianist plays music from the Taizé community or the Celtic tradition as almost all members of the congregation come forward. 

While I remain seated behind my harp, I experience the scene as a Spirit-filled synthesis of corporate and individual intercessory prayer. I watch men and women, and sometimes children, walk silently to light their tapers and place them in an enormous earthenware bowl filled with sand. I know a few prayers that may be on some hearts. There are many people I do not know, much less what they are praying for, but I see faces showing heartfelt emotion and sometimes silent tears. Even when I do not perceive their prayers, I can feel their power and perhaps even their connection. There is a stream of people connecting to God in prayer for others, and sometimes for themselves. 

The light from the many candles now brightens the church’s nave. The scene has become its own icon, teaching us what happens when we pray. Prayers germinate in the darkened nave and are born to transform darkness into light. I remember that C. S. Lewis once wrote that he “prayed not to change God, but to change himself.” These silent prayers, carried by candlelight, are changing the church’s appearance and the pray-ers, and indeed, they are changing me.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Letting Go and Turning Each Day Over to God

Letting Go and Turning Each Day Over to God

“Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”—Romans 8:26.

In a past post on this Daily Lectionary reading from Romans 1, Trent Palmer reminds us how this passage from Romans changed his prayer life. He is learning to wait for the Holy Spirit to lead him in prayer, knowing that God is doing far more for all of us than we can pray for or imagine.2 I need to hear this from The Daily Lectionary, Romans, The Book of Common Prayer, and Trent each week.

My prayers, especially for others, help me step out of my own orbit and recognize that something more significant than my mind, my feelings, and my world is unfolding. The space I inhabit is only a minor part of God’s world, perhaps like a grain of sand. Yet the God who loves us so much cares deeply for us, each grain of sand, each hair on our heads, and loves us beyond what we can imagine. It is comforting to know that, regardless of what we pray for, the Spirit is present to guide our prayers. Sometimes I try to remember this by leaving a period of silence in prayer, followed by a few sighs of my own, hoping they will catch up with the sighs of the Holy Spirit!

Friends tell God, “I turn this day over to you for your care.” I admire them. I take more than nine words to turn over my day and those I care for and pray for. That is why intercessory prayer has become so important in my life. Of course, I aim for the shorter versions, but I am praying in long division today.

1Trent Palmer, “Morning Reflection” from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Monday, July 9, 2018.

2 “Prayer for Those We Love,” Book of Common Prayer, p. 831.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Frederick Buechner's Thought on Life After Death

Frederick Buechner’s Thoughts on Life After Death

Guest Writer: Larry Burton

“So, what do you think about life after death?”

  As an Episcopal priest, I’ve heard that question, or others like it, more times than I care to count. I’ve come to think the Resurrection may not answer the question of what happens when we die as I once thought it did. “But,” a friend said, “that was Jesus. This is me.” Fair enough.

A group of us has been reading Frederick Buechner’s A Crazy, Holy Grace. Buechner, who died at age 96 in 2022, was a prolific author and theologian whom many of us greatly admire. In part of this book, he imagines a conversation with his beloved grandmother, who has been dead for more than forty years. She tells him that death is like stepping off a trolley car. However, life doesn’t stop but instead continues toward a deeper understanding of God’s grace and love. That imagined conversation stopped me in my tracks.

For most of my life as a theologian, I have thought (and taught) something similar, but it was far more abstract and ultimately unsatisfying. Buechner has his grandmother put humanity on my abstractness and offers an image of continuity in God that, as I said, stopped me flat. Did I believe what I had been teaching? Yes. No question. But now the abstract has taken on a form that both challenges and delights. 

So I had my own conversation with my preacher father and stepmother. Both are dead now, but they were delighted to talk with me. “Sorry you had to wait so long to understand,” Dad said after I told him about Buechner’s book. (My father was a Buechner fan, so he was way ahead of me.) My stepmother added her two cents: “I always thought I’d suddenly ‘get it,’ but it didn’t happen that way. There are always new layers or new heights, and my heart! My heart just continues to open wider and wider.”

My words in their mouths? Or their words in my mouth? Buechner’s grandmother challenges her grandson, as I am challenged. Buechner’s central point is that memory can be an incredible portal into the wonders of God. So, what do I think about life after death? I am more convinced than ever that, as a beloved child of God, I have access to the reality of God’s love, which is far more cosmic, mysterious, and wondrous than I had imagined. It is more than Resurrection; it is a continuing transformation moving toward God’s very heart.

Larry Burton

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Frederick Buechner’s birthday was this week July 11th. (Also, Stuart Hoke’s birthday. Also, the Feast day of St. Benedict)