2010
The fat belly moon rises between the Petersons’ barn and our woodpile. It is as wide and large as you see in doctored photos, a pale orange. Fat belly because a student published a cruel story about her father, calling him a “fat belly man” and this moon, this month of January feels like the obscenity of an old man bellying into my space, so close I can feel the hollow of his belly button and man hair. I smelled the Fat Belly Moon’s odor like rotted grain rattling through augers at the mill.
I was rattled by the time I walked into a meeting I dreaded, where old wounds opened—that I’ll never, ever be recognized for my teaching, that maybe I’m mediocre, doing the same thing again and again, and no good for my students. I couldn’t stop interrupting people who are speaking. Others couldn’t stop interrupting me. When I said something, others said something better.
That night when I lay down for sleep, the tears come. Bruce rolls me into his arms, and I feel safe, but my back stiffens and I can’t stay. I get up. I come back to bed. I grieve for how my skin has thinned down, rubbed raw. I grieve for how empty I am, how I have lost my ground to stand before my students. I would have swapped out books but could not think of anything better than the Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World. I’ve used the same assignments across two semesters. My grammar sheets are the same. I believe the work of my class goes on when the students write and I edit them and they revise. It goes on in group conference where they edit each other’s work. I ask them to think about their souls, and wisdom. I ask them to read something dry as the Dalai Lama because I want them to think about how to be happy. I remember his insight that it’s our perceptions that can cause our suffering. If they are based in fear or anger they narrow our focus, we forget the wider picture. (I forget that students ask to take my course. One said my teaching saved her life. Another said writing his story helped far more than therapy.)
The Dalai Lama does not fit what my colleague thinks I should be teaching. I’ve guessed she thinks I ask too much of my students, who in her mind can only write well about their hard lives. She is furious that I have asked why her tutors tell my students that I don’t know what I’m doing. And now I believe I don’t know what I’m doing. I have spent twenty years writing my novel only to have agents and editors say no. I have come so close so many times it has broken my heart. I have nothing to show for it. My writer friends graciously exclude me from their critique group.
I cry so hard my heart tightens. I imagine gun metal pressed against the back of my throat. I hate myself, the feeling a tightness and a rage that feel like my body’s chemicals gone sour. It’s what I call “at the end of my rope” and I am dangling, my hands, burning, wrapped around the jute.
I am the enemy, and I remember the Buddhists start their compassion lessons with blessing yourself and move you slowly to blessing your enemy. I have learned to bless my enemy. I pray for my colleagues that they will be blessed. I know this prayer will slowly unhook the tugs that have hooked us together. But now I am the enemy, hitched to my self-hatred, so I ask the Lord to bless me.
I close my eyes and see a death’s head so I breathe in, breathe out and say the Jesus prayer, inhaling, “Lord have mercy”, exhaling, “on me a sinner”. I ask the Lord to tend to people I was supposed to pray for because I don’t remember who they are. And way back, way deep in my mind, the refrain from a hymn about the beatitudes: “Blest are they the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of God. Blest are they full of sorrow, for they shall be consoled. Blest are you who suffer hate all because of me. Rejoice and be glad, yours is the kingdom of God.”
The New Agers have it wrong, they say that anything that doesn’t smack of joy, joy, joy is not of God. They say shame is not good. Fools. Even John, Jesus’ best friend here on earth, buckled his knees, smacked the ground when he saw Jesus dressed up in glory. And Isaiah, that prophet who foretold “gentle” Jesus coming screamed, “Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips. I come from a people of unclean lips.” And Daniel, one of the best, most whole, men in the Bible fell down as one dead when God showed up. So maybe I am closer to God than I can ever imagine right here, right now, in this intense humility that I’m not supposed to claim, in an age that says if you don’t love yourself you can’t love others and others can’t love you. Does anyone hear how that cuts a person off from what they most need? Practicing love for others as an act, letting them teach it to you?
I do not sleep more than an hour because many tears are like drinking a liter of Mountain Dew. I look out the window. The moon is bleared and smeared over. It doesn’t even reflect off the barn roof because a honkin’ big snowstorm is headed our way. It would take our neighbor’s front end loader to clear our yard.
This is an excerpt from my unpublished memoir, Winter to Winter where I describe how the Jesus prayer saved my sanity. Later when that horrible litany, “You suck. You suck. You suck” trotted through my mind while I stood in front of resistant students, I remembered Tom Little, an optometrist called to help people in Afghanistan see (get glasses) had been killed by bandits. He’d preached at my childhood church, saying “it’s more important to be faithful, to do the work, than it is to be successful.” He knew he wouldn’t be notching souls into his Bible belt even though evangelicals have said that’s the only way to please God. I taught another five years and was awarded “best teacher award” but that’s a story for another time.
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner” gave me footholds to climb out of the pit, a way to hold onto mercy, while being burned in the consuming fire that is God, so when Paul Kingsnorth suggested we read it and promised he’d look at our reviews, I took him up on reading The Way of the Pilgrim, an instruction manual for this prayer, written by an anonymous Russian peasant in the 19th century.
It’s the story of a young man, who lost his wealth, lost his wife and sets out to practice what it means to pray without ceasing after an elder tells him to, “Sit alone and in silence, bow your head and close your eyes, relax your breathing and with your imagination, look into your heart; direct your thoughts from your head into your heart. And while inhaling say, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,’ either softly with your lips or in your mind. Endeavor to fight distractions but be patient and peaceful and repeat this process frequently” (19).
His spiritual director tells him to recite the Jesus Prayer—”Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner” 6,000 times. When he masters this, the elder tells him to recite it 12,000 times until it drives down to his heart and becomes a continuous prayer. When his elder dies, the pilgrim buys a battered copy of the Philokalia and sets out for Siberia.
This is a story of a man who is utterly poor. He owns the Philokalia, a Bible, a knapsack and bread, but as he journeys, he meets a variety of people, and his needs are met. One time he was hungry, afraid he’d starve. “But as soon as I began to pray with the heart, the fatigue passed. I resigned myself to the will of God and once again I was happy and at peace” (25).
He finds joy in a simple hut and prays himself into joy when he can he is suffering. “What joy, peace, and consolation I experienced the moment I crossed the threshold of that hut, which seemed to me like a magnificent royal palace full of every comfort and luxury. With joyful tears I thanked God for this solitude and thought: Now in this peace and quiet I should apply my self conscientiously to my study and ask God for understanding” (29).
He ministers to people but then keeps walking, valuing the joy of saying the prayer over human company.
At first I was troubled by this single-minded focus to keep walking and praying. The pilgrim’s radical solitude is hard for me to understand because I know how painful loneliness can be, how being with people can heal that. After all we are a sociable species.
Early on, a pastor invites him to stay with his church and minister, but the pilgrim begged leave and continued walking. I thought why are you giving up a secure place? Aren’t you supposed to love God and love people? Isn’t God’s face reflected in our neighbor?
But maybe turning to prayer, the quiet prayer—Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Be merciful to me a sinner…is a work of ministry. I have heard it said when we say this prayer, we are calling down mercy on the world. It’s a simple way to intercede for people. Lord Jesus Christ be merciful to my friend with cancer, my friend with an abusive boyfriend, my friend looking to relocate. Maybe cultivating that quiet is a gift we can offer the world. Careful listening, without judgement, maybe even without trying to help, is a rare gift, that people crave, that I crave.
I think of what Olivier Clement says in Transfiguring Time “…Those who make even the least gesture in the name of the Lord have more impact on the destiny of the world than any assembly or army. The saints are the true masters of the world: It cannot be overstated how many times the destiny of the world has hung on the prayers of an unknown saint.”
Maybe we’re the saints shaping the world’s destiny. Maybe our prayers will hold back what feels like a world galloping towards a cliff like a reinsman’s hands on the lines, his voice breathing hold up, hold up. Maybe our prayers will snip the authoritarian noose wrapping around the world.
The pilgrim’s dedication to God by saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner” allows his cry for mercy to sink so deeply into his heart that his view of the world is transformed. “When I began to pray with the heart, everything around me became transformed, and I saw it in a new and delightful way. The trees, the grass, the earth, the air, the light and everything seemed to be saying to me that it exists to witness to God’s love for man and that it prays and sings to God’s glory” (25).
Maybe my best work is walking down the road looking at the world, listening to my footsteps, hearing the wind in the hayfield or the birds chattering, my young dog walking companionably by my side and simply saying, “Thank you” because maybe our prayers aren’t always a cry for mercy.
If you want to read some of my additional thoughts on prayer, check out this post.
Bacovcin, Helen trans. The Way of the Pilgrim. New York: Image, 1978.
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