September 2011

I had a chance to see a preview of the movie Courageous, which premieres on Friday, made by the same team that created Fireproof a couple of years ago.

This one’s about a group of Georgia cops and how they see their roles as dads. I’m not a big crier at movies, but the tears started rolling about halfway through. Maybe because Courageous showed some things you don’t usually see in movies.

Answers to prayers come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes when you’re not even aware that you’ve said that prayer. Maybe it’s something you wished for, something you held in your mind.

My wife, Carol Wallace, is a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile and I come pretty close to it. Lately we’ve been watching the British TV series Downton Abbey, all about a British earl, his family and his American heiress wife in pre-World War I England.

Jesus said a lot about prayer and showed even more by his actions, like praying all the time, especially when he was busy. One of the most helpful lessons to me comes in a parable.

First a confession to make: I can get stuck in a mental loop of self-congratulation and it can seep into my prayer life. In some rare quiet meditative moment I’ll start comparing myself to others. An image will flash through my head, a person’s name might flit by and I’ll say, “Well, at least I’m not that bad.”

How to pray when you can’t pray? A couple of us editors were discussing this problem when someone brazenly said, “You know, I think if you’re trying to pray it is praying. To try to pray is to pray. You can’t fail.”

Perhaps prayer is the only human endeavor where trying to do it is doing it. I mean, if God is God, he’s got to hear us no matter what, even if we don’t feel like we’re praying when we are. We don’t feel all peaceful and in touch with something beyond ourselves.

Here’s a prayer from Bob Hostetler, author of some 26 books. I’m a big fan of his prayer blog.

This prayer is a good example of what we all feel like when we try to cut something we’ve written and love maybe a little too much. The phrase “kill your darlings” is attributed to William Faulkner, by the way.

Must I Kill All My Darlings?

People have asked me what I remember about being in New York in those days after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

I remember the beautiful weather and the poignant posters up all over with photos of the missing: “Have You Seen?” But mostly I remember how kind we all were to each other, the kindness that knows pain.

Lord, take me where you want me to go.
Let me meet who you want me to meet.
Tell me what you want me to say,
And keep me out of your way.

It’s not my prayer. It’s a prayer that came from the Franciscan priest Father Mychal Judge, who was killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center when he was ministering to a fallen firefighter.