Teach Me To Pray

I write at a kitchen table.  There are days when I'd love to have a writer's desk with an old Tiffany lamp perched just so and fountain pens in an empty soup can and copies of The New Yorker strewn about the edges and...but that would be someone else's story.  I write at a kitchen table.

As I wrote yesterday, I could see him.  Then he'd disappear.  Then I'd see him again.  Rising. Falling.  Rising again.  You see, his backyard has a trampoline, like our backyard does.  I watched him turn flip after flip after flip, I bet twenty in a row, his eyes closed.  He was poetry. Our trampoline has a black safety web that feeds our abandon.  His does not; he jumps without a net.

The lights in his house stay on all night long and the windows are always, always open, every last one, and people are always yelling or screaming or crying or hollering.  Sometimes, when I'm writing at the kitchen table in the wee small hours I see the lights and hear the sounds. Sometimes I stop writing and pray.  There used to be a daddy in his house, but now he's gone. There were rumors about, well, they were rumors.  Now there's a boyfriend in his house and rumors of marriage.

Sometimes I stop writing and wonder about him.  It used to bug me that the lights stayed on all night but then I thought what if that's because a daddy loved darkness rather than light?  That was the rumor.  It doesn't bug me so much now, after that thought.  And I used to wonder why he would spend long stretches of time doing flip after flip after flip.  But then I thoughtsometimes even a new boyfriend can't put humpty together again and maybe he asks God to make him a bird so he can fly, fly away but God doesn't listen, so the closest he can get to the sky, to being untethered by the things of this world, is to barrel outside and close his eyes and spread his wings and jump without a net.  

If I had that writer's desk like I mentioned, it would probably be tucked away in some corner of the house surrounded by books that reached to the ceiling.  If I had that desk, I couldn't see Icarus; I wouldn't know how to pray.  

14 comments:

  1. I always appreciate your glimpse into the ordinary as it lures out the sacred. The Holy Spirit puts his eyes in our heads if we are willing to abandon the things we lust and long after.

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  2. This was so timely for me right now, John. You sure don't need a fancy desk to write into my spirit.

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  3. I glimpse God at work in the neighbor at the kitchen table. Urging him thru prayer to put a needy family's hand in God's hand. I'm glad you write at the kitchen table.

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  4. one day, John, the faces of all those you have touched from your kitchen table will be shown to you ... at least that is my hope.

    and my face ... my tear-stained face ... will be one of them.

    i believe in Christ Jesus in you, John.

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  5. I love that your table faces the world... but I love more that your eyes see past what seems to be, and that the lenses of grace and love are polarized against fear and disgust and judgment.
    I know what it is to be, but be unseen, to live in a state I couldn't describe, and couldn't protest. I wish you'd been my neighbor.

    -vern-

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  6. John,

    Thank you for your words. It's good to hear from you. Grace all over you and yours.

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  7. Gretchen,

    Yeah, the fancy desk thing is probably a pipe dream...but I may try to start wearing fancy socks. Thoughts??

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  8. Colleen,

    Thanks for stopping by and leaving a thought-filled trace.

    I appreciate your words very much.
    John

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  9. Laure,

    I thought to myself just the other day, "I haven't heard from Laure in some time..."

    I hope you are well. Your words stopped me in the course of my day and encouraged me...they were very timely, very timely indeed.

    John

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  10. Vern,

    We probably need to get together some day and have tea and scones and talk about The View or something...better yet, we might just sit and listen to mountain bluebirds and sip on hot coffee and bask in the Grace that keeps this world.

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  11. YouMJ,

    Thank you very much. I hope all is well with you and yours and Arkadelphia and...

    John

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  12. Ugh. I hate being late on reading a great post and for some strange reason when I clicked on your latest post, I saw that I hadn't seen this one (run-on much?)..


    My goodness. My heart aches for Icarus. I hope he soars and I'll pray that he will...because I once hoped for the very same thing, so I get it.

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  13. Fancy socks are okay. Just not to be worn with the mandals. Socks and shoes or bare toes and mandals. Don't mix it up, man.

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