The stillness of my apartment is deafening. I wake to the sun beating through my blinds and the drone of the air conditioner echoing my loneliness. My day feels as empty as my insides. I’ll reach out, call a friend, run some errands, do some work. But the path is solitary. The grief is mine and mine alone.
When my young son asks me what God looks like, I want to tell him what he will probably only understand much later, that for children especially, God looks like the people in whom they vest their trust. God can be merciful or terrible.
One day a friend of mine called a classmate from college with whom she had not talked in years, only to learn that the woman’s 7-month-old baby had recently died. Resisting her impulse to end the conversation quickly, my friend was inspired to ask what the baby was like. She must have been the first person to ask this question of the mother because her simple question released a flood of memories and they talked for a good, long time.
"I'm gonna have to check on that."
Lite jazz, then "Mail room, this is Jimmy."
"Um," I stalled, conjuring his face from the Midwestern twang of his greeting. He had a mullet and cranked the Allman Brothers and was one of the few people on earth to whom you would unreservedly loan money or confess besetting sins.
"Hello," he semi-drawled, radio in the background.
Advent always opens me up. Just when I think I am in control of my life and ministry, I am confronted by the challenges of a new liturgical year. The prophets get under my skin. The gospels splash my soul to surprise and awaken me.
Act I. Enter Extreme Poverty. Much wailing and grinding of teeth. She falls to the ground and crawls offstage. Enter Jon Denn. Much pacing and wringing of hands. He sits down at his computer and creates CountingPrayers.org.
Act II. Enter Minister and Congregants. All turn toward audience and pray, "The world now has the means to end extreme poverty, we pray we will have the will." Repeat one billion times.
It's 11 p.m., and 31-year-old Tara Turner is wearing cotton pajamas, lying on her bed, deep in prayer. Her hands aren't folded; they're clasping a pink Game Boy.
As she digs to the center of the earth, attacking monsters en route, Turner communes with God.
"I pray as I play," she says. "When you've got your fingers and your eyes focused on this little critter on the screen, then your mind is more open to hearing God."
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