Category: prayer

life, prayer, religion

Dispatches From the Desert

I woke up from a nap the other day feeling more normal than I have in years. I was afraid to get up. But children call and if I don’t make dinner, people will starve. And they’ll wait until bedtime to tell me that they were too stupid to feed themselves. So i got up. What was missing, I realized later was the sense of hope and dread that has been my constant companion for quite some time. See, everyday, sometimes all day if I’m not careful, I’m waiting for something good to happen. Like a game changing something good to happen. A turning the corner something. Life has been so miserable for so long that all I or anyone I know can think is, “something’s gotta give soon.” But nothing ever does. I try things that fail. My husband waits for months on end for a promised raise. My kids swear they’re doing school work that never gets done. A spiritual deluge to bring peace back to my poor, starving heart would do the trick. I’m really not that hard to please. Day after day, I wait for something good that never comes. It’s an awful way to live life. The only thing worse, I suppose, would be giving up hope altogether. Continue reading “Dispatches From the Desert”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter7 Comments
life, prayer, religion

Retreating to the Desert

I’ve always prayed a lot. Mostly because no one else wants to talk to me much. And I can only talk to myself so much. So I pray. And if you spend a lot of time praying, after a while you decide that maybe you should stop just chattering and try to listen. And if you let the Spirit lead you as you try to listen, it will show you to a place of still and quiet where the Spirit in you hangs out. I’ve described it before like finding a faint channel on the radio dial that if you can be quiet and sit still and get the antenna just so, you can tune into. Sometimes if you sit and listen, you can tune into God. Other times, there’s just a sense of something meant for you – an image, a song, a feeling. For a long time there was this joy waiting for me there. In the middle of everything, if I could just get my mind to quiet and my feelings to settle, it was like opening a spring-loaded door that let in this golden light of joy. It was hard to hold onto and once my mind wandered or my feelings intruded, it was gone. But I could get there if I tried and just bask in it for a moment or two. (Yes, I know I sound crazy. So what? If people knew what went on in your head, they’d probably think you were crazy too!) But then the joy went away. And was replaced by . . . nothing.

For a while, I would quiet and settle and reach this nothing and be so upset to find that my joy was gone and God wasn’t there and there was just nothing waiting there to comfort or sustain me that I would quickly withdraw in anger and frustration. Sometimes I would try and sit and wait, wait, wait and look, look, look for something – anything to hold onto. But it was just so, so empty. This is what has been fueling most of my crabby, woe-is-me anger the last couple of months. Everything else that’s going on, I’ve mostly let go of. I can’t make everything I own quit breaking and I can’t make money appear and I can’t make people like me or fix everyone’s issues, so whatever. I’d be quite happy to just draw from that inner place where God’s joy and peace and hope are placed and live off of that. But it’s empty. I’m just SOL. Continue reading “Retreating to the Desert”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter16 Comments
prayer, religion

Whatcha Praying For?

Do you want to know what you really look like to God? Pull out a piece of paper and make a list of the things you have prayed for most fervently. What’s there is the sort of person you are presenting yourself to God as. Who have you told God you are? Someone who wants things? Someone who wants people? Someone who wants comfort and ease? Someone who wants God himself? Who do you want God to know you as?

Let me be a blessing to you, Lord.

Be careful what you pray for – asking God for something is a bit like telling the genie in the lamp your wish. He may take you at your word.

Let my heart love and desire nothing and no one more than it loves and desires you, God.

Pray a prayer like that at your own risk Continue reading “Whatcha Praying For?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
enjoy life, prayer, relationships, religion, thoughts

Allow Me to Screw Up Your Sex Life a Bit

“We monks do not try to repress our sexual passions . . . Woe to those monks and nuns, who shovel into their subconscious their sexual passions. . . There is no spirituality in that. What happens, and what we aim at, is the transmutation of erotic energy from earthly attractions to God.” – Father Maximos quoted in The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality by Kyriacos C. Markides

In the old pagan world, sex and religion were all tied up together. Temple prostitutes and depictions of group sex on ancient Hindu temple walls and all that. Christianity has too often taken the opposite tact – sex as being so unholy that for a while it was considered a sin even in the context of marriage by the Roman church. Which led to possibly the most dysfunctional set-up ever; putatively and sometimes actually celibate priests being told each time a parishioner had sex with their spouse. What could be the problem with that, eh? Although the actual rejection of sex by the Christian church has varied wildly from place to place and time to time, the reality is that a lot of people continue to see sex and God as inevitably belonging in two separate spheres of our lives. To the extent that God and sex intersect, it is in the parsing out of rules for sexual conduct. But when actual sex takes place, well if our guardian angels could please exit the room, that would be great. And surely God has the good manners to turn his head for a few minutes. Wouldn’t want to be caught in flagrante delicto by the creator of the universe. That would be too weird. Continue reading “Allow Me to Screw Up Your Sex Life a Bit”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter9 Comments
enjoy life, life, prayer, relationships, religion

Loving Yourself, Loving Your Neighbor

Several years ago, I had an odd experience while in prayer. I don’t remember what I was praying about, and I’m afraid my explanation won’t do it justice, but the essence of it was God showing me what he loves about me. This wasn’t a generic “love of God washed over me” experience. Rather it was quite specific; God was showing me the particulars of how I am “fearfully and wonderfully made”. These were things about me that are precious to him and that he has purposed into me. Not only would I not be me without those things, but God would not be able to use me according to his purposes if I did not possess them. But here’s the rub: all of those things God showed me have caused me a great deal of difficulty and pain. I had often wished I could change or even be rid those things altogether. Or at least have them be less-so. And as he showed me these things, it was the gap between God’s love for how he has made me and how I felt about it that really struck me.

At the time that this happened, I had a spiritual advisor who I met with monthly. When I shared this experience with her she murmured, “the touch which reveals desolation.” Yes. That it was. (I forgot to ask her where the phrase was from and have never been able to find its source. If anyone knows, please do share!) You would think that having God show me these things as what he most loves and finds precious about me would have changed how I felt as well, but it’s never quite that simple. (My infuriating complexity would be one of those things God pointed to, of course. “You have hidden these things from the wise and learned” indeed.) Instead, what that touch did was say, “this is my view of you. I want you to learn to view yourself the same way as well.” Continue reading “Loving Yourself, Loving Your Neighbor”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter5 Comments
prayer, religion

A Prayer for Easter Morning

Father God, We come to you today as a family of the broken, the humbled, the weak and the victorious. We have walked down dark paths and through dark places. We have been wounded, we have been lost and we have been foolish. Yet no matter how hopeless or empty our spirit’s dwelling places have been, Easter morning is always there speaking victory to us. … Continue reading A Prayer for Easter Morning

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter1 Comment
prayer, religion

I am. God is. Are you? Zen . . .

I am.  That’s our goal.  I am.  We are children of I Am.  Made in his image.  I am.  Are you?  Ha!

Part of our problem is that we are convinced that I am – whether it be God, ourselves, or our present circumstances and surroundings – is something to be suspect of, probably terribly boring or terrible bad or terribly not me.  Like the God whose main building tool is explosions is going to want us to stand around all day humming melodically.  Seriously?  (Sometimes when people talk to me, this just pops into my head.) 

But we resist I am.  If we didn’t we’d have to learn to slow down and be present.  We’d maybe even have to let ourselves be irreperably imperfect.  We’d have to face things we didn’t even know we’d be running from.  And that would be uncomfortable.  We’d have to do things the people around us might not approve of.  It might be too hard.  It might even drive you into the arms of God, no?  Because it’s not easy to learn to just be.  I would never want to have to do it on my own. 

When you are determined to learn to embrace I Am whether it is the I Am God or the I am Rebecca or I am going through an unwanted divorce and I’m really embarrassed at what the people I’m related to will think of me because of this, then you will reach a place that I call zen – although it’s probably a terrible abuse of what the actual word means.  To me zen is just a very deep acceptance.  It’s when you can let go – even for just a few seconds at a time – of your emotional need for reality to be different than it actually is.  It’s not letting go of desire – wanting something is part of reality, and acceptance of reality is what living with and in I am is all about.  One of the differences between real zen and the Christian version, donchya know.

When I am at “zen”, I find that I have all the patience in the world when I need it.  There is peace.  There is joy. Things make much more sense from the point of zen than they do any other time.  If I’ve ever said something that was so obvious that it made you feel stupid for not having thought of it that way before, it’s something that came from being in zen.  Continue reading “I am. God is. Are you? Zen . . .”

Unknown's avatarRebecca TrotterLeave a comment
life, prayer, religion, thoughts

It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told

Suck it up, kid. You'll get a better one in heaven.

A friend recently sent a note in which she commented on the lack of “why me?” talk on my blog.  Silly girl – I was raised Catholic.  I can think of at least 100 reasons all of this is my own fault right off the top of my head!  That, plus the fact that life has been handing me inexplicably little help for as long as I can remember means that I let “why me?” go a long time ago.  There are only two answers: “you’re doing it wrong” or “because this is the way you need to go“.   Either I’m screwing something up and should fix it – hence the Catholic guilt – or this is one of those things that will only make sense later.  Frankly, Catholic guilt gets a bad rap – it’s downright empowering in light of the alternative!

This was a tough week.  It was one of those weeks where an emotional rough patch and a life rough patch collided and made a mess all over the highway of my life.  (I keep telling God he needs to pave the damn thing.)  And just to make sure that all of this doesn’t get to be too routine, my wonderful parents were visiting, so I had an audience.  (My poor parents; I’m glad and grateful that they were here, but I know it’s only marginally more fun to watch someone you love go through things you are helpless to do anything about than it is to go through it yourself.  I have to remind myself that God must have his reasons for asking them to walk a path which includes me and my mess of a life.)

If you read my book The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress, you will remember that I first met God in a fit of enraged blasphemy.  Which means that I’ve always felt free to itch and moan and be as upset as I want to be in prayer.  Besides, Jesus was said to have prayed with “loud cries and tears” himself.  So by the end of the week, my prayers had devolved into demands: “I can’t do this.  I’m not going to do this.  You need to fix this.  Not just spiritually, but for real.  In the real world.  Continue reading “It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
enjoy life, prayer, relationships, religion

The Emotional God

A couple of years ago, I was sitting on my front porch steps after dinner, watching my two oldest daughters playing and complaining to God in my head.  I don’t remember what it was (nothing too serious), but the qxh (quasi-ex-husband) had done something to chap my hide.  As I wound down my complaints and let the whole thing go, I asked God in an almost off-handed way, “do you ever have to deal with people treating you like this?”  At which point I’m pretty sure all of heaven burst into hearty guffaws.  But soon a funny thing started happening: as I dealt with people in my life, often some parallel experience between God and people would pop into my head. 

Sometimes it was something little, like calling someone who did not answer their phone.  How often does God try to reach out to people who ignore or reject the call because they are too busy, inattentive or just don’t feel like it?  I would ask one of my boys to load and run the dishwasher only to discover at dinnertime hours later that we had no clean pots, plates or utensils.  Suppose God ever asks people to do things that don’t get done?  Ocasionally, I would have to deal with someone who insisted on talking over me, refused to listen to my perspective or treat it with respect.  Yeah, I’m sure God never has to deal with stuff like that, right?

By the next summer a variety of calamities, traumas and disappointments had hit my family full force.  As the qxh started to dissemble and then turn on me, these parallels became more pointed and poignant.  Loving someone who is being supremely difficult, unreasonable and hostile turns out to be something that God is intimately familiar with.  Continue reading “The Emotional God”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
prayer, religion

The Theology of Poop

My dream throne.

Would it weird you out to know that I do much of my praying on the porcelain throne?  In my house, the toilet is one of the few places I can have some hope of being left alone for ten minutes at a time.  My daily devotional book and my favorite bible have pretty permanent spots there.  It may seem odd, but really, it’s quite apropos.  Allow me to explain.

In the bible, the words of scripture, the words of God and Jesus – the word made flesh – are all compared to food.   Continue reading “The Theology of Poop”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter9 Comments