Touching The Hem Of God's Garment

Bestselling novelist, Pat Conroy, wrote that “Writing is the form that prayer takes in me.”  

This is certainly true for me too.  I’d also add that I don’t write to express my thoughts as much as to find out what I’m thinking.  That is a strong corollary to the prayer aspect of writing for me.  

Often times I sit down to write about one thing and discover that I am really writing about something else entirely.  So too with prayer.  

The impulse that prompts me to begin has served its purpose once I’ve begun.  After that, my task is to trust the process, (writing, praying, fill in the blank for yourself) and not cling to my reason for starting.  To allow myself to change and be changed.  Or, as I like to picture it these days, to be open to the deeper currents and impulses that carry me through life.   

On a practical level, what that means more often than not, is scrapping most of what I’ve written except a paragraph, or even a sentence.  And starting over again there.  A frightening and demoralizing prospect.

The most important skill any of us can develop is to recognize the pearls our efforts produce and honor the process that produced them, even if it means twenty pages into the waste can.  

Those twenty pages is not wasted time.  You have finally touched the deepest part of yourself.  The place where you have brushed up against the hem of God’s garment.  This is who you are.  This is what you have been about all along. 

This works for congregations too.  Our congregation is in the process of discerning God’s call to us.  And how we should respond.  

Too often, we want to know where we are going before we begin.  Like writing, like prayer, the deepest truth may be that we don’t know.  This is no reason not to start.  

Pick an outcome.  It’s a starting point.  Its job is to get us going.  Just be ready to drop it for something better.  Be open to the process, hold expectations and outcomes lightly.  Where we start is never where we finish.

Praying is how we learn what we are praying, ministering is how we take God’s pulse and discover God’s purpose.   

A prayer, a program, a word that doesn’t change and transform us isn’t likely to do much for anyone else either.