Morning Prayers

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One thing I have asked of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple.

Who is it that you seek?

Gosh, good question. I mean, the Book of Common Prayer answer is We seek the Lord our God and yes, that’s true, but I confess that sounds a bit scripted. Not scripted in a bad way necessarily, but at times a script can feel hemmed-in, confining, too shaped and that’s the way this feels today, like there’s not room to add an and or a but.

When I watched my mother prepare for church on Sunday mornings, I would detect someone shaping the many disappointments of her life into a stance, an attitude toward God that was dutiful, if reproving. God, on occasion, was a disappointment to her.

—Barry Lopez, Resistance

Last night I caught the tail-end of Field of Dreams. I’ve long loved that movie, but hadn’t seen it in several years. And there’s that scene at the conclusion where Costner’s character (Ray) pauses to peer at the catcher taking off his equipment and the catcher looks up and its Ray’s father as a young man still so fresh, not yet worn down by the weight of living, not yet locked out of his own life. I’d not seen that scene in several years, not since my dad died. And that scene hit me like a tonna bricks, unraveled me.

Who is it that you seek?

We seek the Lord our God. And I’d sure love to see my dad too.

See (and forgive me if I’ve told this story already), back in the early days of the pandemic my dad got COVID and his oxygen levels bottomed out so the ambulance whisked him away to an ICU where we couldn’t visit him for the two weeks he was there, couldn’t sit by his bedside, couldn’t hold his hands, couldn’t pray with him and watch him nod his head and hear him say amen, couldn’t be a part in all those family-gathered-by-the-bedside scenes you construct in your head, you know, the way it’s supposed to go. Well, I jetted back to Colorado to quick get Meredith Lee and then make our way back to Arkansas, and in route we learned dad needed to be put on a ventilator (wait, what?) and as they tried to intubate him dad went into cardiac arrest (wait, what?) and as we pulled off at a Toot’n’Totum in Clayton, New Mexico my brother told me over the crackly cell phone, “John, he’s gone.” Wait, what?

Dad died in February. The Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays prior to that we made the decision (urged by “authorities and experts”) not to travel back to Arkansas to see family, so when he died I’d not felt my father’s embrace in a month of Sundays.

I’ve still got some residual anger over how all that went down for our family and countless other families. For a long while, I felt it wasn’t fair. Some days I still feel that. But I saw another move not too long ago—Calvary. One of the characters (Teresa) is a young wife who suddenly lost her young husband in an accident. In conversation with a priestly character (Father James Lavelle) later, he says something about how unfair it all was and she corrects him:

…that is not unfair. That is just what happened. But many people don't live good lives. They don't feel love. That is why it's unfair. I feel sorry for them.

Something shifted in me that night when I saw that scene. A small shift, but a shift nonetheless. My dad lived a good life. He felt love, knew love, loved and was loved in return. If he had lived eighty years and died without knowing love, then yes, that would have been unfair. I don’t quite have Teresa’s peace of mind yet, but I’m working on it, working on easing my pain.

Who is it that you seek?

Yeah, that still feels a little too shaped. I’m off-script this morning, so how about—

Where is the refuge for my bewildered heart?

Sure, maybe the answer’s the same. But I’d add I’d sure love to see my dad too. Amen.