RA, Round Two

I got back yesterday, and in a flurry of pent up enthusiasm, I started making Moody home again.

I made the bed.

I did laundry.

I washed dishes.

I restrung the lights.

I cooked in the kitchen, and washed some more dishes.

I hung up five new nametags for my three newbies and my two who have been abroad.

I prayed for them.

I made an announcement board and rehung some decorations and wrote a mandatory reflection and took a pill for anxiety and visited Katie and stared at the ceiling in boredom and trepidation.

Everything is about to begin, but for now, it is just very, very quiet.

It's rather like the fluttery feeling a cast feels before a play begins. They have rehearsed for weeks, memorizing lines, testing blocking, learning the set and each other, over and over again, but they have not yet performed for an audience. And the question looms: Can they pull it all together with everyone watching?

My question is the same sometimes.

But it is silent in the hallway and I need some of that stillness, some of that calm before the storm, so I pick up my laptop and settle on the floor outside my doorway, tapping keys like a small child sucks its thumb. Sometimes putting words to paper is the best way to stay in touch with what's happening around me, before it sweeps me up and carries me away.

I told God today that I struggle to pray over it all, this life of ministry. I struggle to pray over all the meetings and people and interactions and requests. It's an overwhelming amount, and I'd love to be able to assure everyone that I've been praying for them since the day I heard of them, like Paul said of all those churches long ago, but alas. I haven't been.

At least, not like I've wanted to. Lately, it's been the steadiness of liturgy that grounds me, reminds me where my anchor holds, and I'm getting better at those trendy "breath prayers" some people talk about, the saving grace of the busy, praying person. On my way through the tunnels, I tried to make the jumble in my head fit into those little sentences: "Lord, make the floor a place of love. No, comfort. Make it a place where we comfort one another. Or maybe that's just what I want for myself. Well, alright then, make it a place where I am comforted."

So, okay, I'm still working on the breath prayer thing.

The one girl who's already back just stumbled upon me in the hallway and gave me a funny look, like isn't-it-just-as-quiet-in-your-room, and suddenly it doesn't feel quite so still out here, but I didn't just come for the stillness. I came for the inspiration. Here, where I can feel the pulse of the floor, catch the lingering scent of the women I live with, here I can pray for them with my fingers on the keys. And thus what follows is my hasty attempt:

A Liturgy For the Second Semester

or

A Liturgy For the Stillness Before Community Comes

O Lord,

You are a God

of peace,

of order,

of comfort.

We are prone to chaos, Lord,

  prone to wander,

  prone to get out of sorts,

Especially here.

You know every tear that will fall in this place,

every hard phone call,

every day of depression,

every night without sleep.

You see already every friendship forged,

each moment that peace is extended,

order brought forth,

comfort given.

You are the giver of these gifts,

And the giver of grace in our pain.

So meet us

in these rooms,

in these halls,

in these beds,

in these closets.

Meet us

when we cry,

when we fight,

when we hide,

when we lie awake.

Meet us when we feel we are alone and when we feel we are surrounded.

Make a home for us, Lord, as only you can,

And make yourself at home here, too.

Amen.

_______________________
This post was inspired by Douglas Kaine McKelvey's Every Moment Holy and Caroline Kolt's Instagram post on Epiphany.