PRAY THE LIST

The phone rang this afternoon. I picked it up and I said, "Hello, unknown caller." I was quite unprepared for the recorded message. "Press 1 for prayer. Press 3 to hang up." The deep voice sounded like Charlton Heston as Moses telling the Red Sea to part. "I pressed 3 and then wondered about 2 and hoped I hadn't hung up on God. Did I miss my hotline to heaven? I don't think so. But I am curious about the prayer I missed and the organization involved.

Last year I read the book praying for strangers - An Adventure of the Human Spirit. The author, River Jordan, has always been big on resolutions. But on this holiday she doesn't care. She can only think of her two sons getting ready to go off to war. Bam! She is in the kitchen and a resolution "dropped right down in her soul...New Year's resolution - pray for a stranger every day." Due to God's guidance, her days will never be her own, as she walks right up to strangers and asks if she can pray for them.

        "Schoolgirl young. I don't want to frighten her...I explain my purpose.

                She whispers, "Thank you."

            "Need a prayer for anything special?" 

                "My mom...she's bipolar and..."

           Her words trip, stumble and retreat back....I tell her I'll pray for her mom. Then I add, 

           "But you should know, I'll be praying for you, too." 

            Home is supposed be a safe place...she may walk through the door and find that things have                    changed during the day. I have friends and family members diagnosed as bipolar...There are                    seasons in their lives that are relatively peaceful and seasons without a blink of sleep or peace. 

            My heart bends a little as I pray for her...needing to be an adult before her time. To try to fix                    things, to keep things quiet and running smoothly."

            Praying for Strangers  by River Jordan

I wake up in the middle of the night. These days. The hours I truly toss and turn, awake. Anxious. Sometimes I sing hymns like The Doxology, probably the first I learned. All creatures here below. Praise. Not easy. The tune is 469 years old. That's a lot of praising by a lot of people going through the not so easy time. Or lying on my pillow, hearing in my head, the anthem The Majesty and Glory. I think of my father and our hallelujahs the day he almost died, not knowing he was just minutes from heart failure. But even the hardest. Became the best. Never alone.

Oh no. I haven't prayed the List. I try to before I go to sleep but sometimes I forget. Middle of the night I am awake, comforted, starting my List. I start with the parents and my cousin. Giants in my own life. Lord, watch over them and protect them and keep them safe. I visualize every person as I go down my list. And sometimes mid-prayer a memory pulls me away about a happy time and then that can send me down another path. 

Maine mid March, before complete thaw. The fall scenes I am familiar with are now whites and greys and sages and blues, purples, browns, silver. Moving into an apartment in December before we knew what we didn't know. A bright yellow sofa cheerful against a wall. Cozy. Standing in a cul-du-sac looking down the drive way at a pretty yellow house full of treasures. A plaid sofa in a welcoming room full of celebration. A cranberry room with coffered ceilings, tall, full of light, the smell of apple pie and potato soup just waiting for admission. Sunset over Colorado mountains. A lunchtime meeting at the airport. Two cousins dancing. The black and white kitchen floor of a seasoned home. The home of toddlers sufficiently decorated. A home of neatness and perfect routine. Precious in my mind. Every face. Every prayer.

In the middle of the night, I find hope. Hope is for the asking. Hope is walking on tiptoes across the floor in a striped blue shirt, color of the sky. Or the puffy bottom of the baby pool, stilled except for a summer bug skating across, it's outline in round, connected dots four or six. An exquisite silhouette against the blue. Hope is splashed remnants covering the deck as white blue hose water fountained over our heads. Even now hope is here.

I am amazed by River Jordan's ability to walk up to complete strangers and ask to pray for them. I do find myself looking but only praying silently for a stranger, not approaching them. I read somewhere those are like shooting stars. She kept her strangers in her mind and continued to pray for them. Amazing the load God helps us bear.

Pray The List. 

Let's put the tossing and turning hours to use. Pray The List. Before you go to sleep, Pray The List. Make your list. Add to your list. Add a stranger. Remember a cousin. Think about happy times. Before long, our prayers will be hooking up like a paper chains. If we all do this, think of the lives that will be touched. Our lives will change. Hope is out there as blue as the soaring sky. Be apart of something bigger than yourself. 

Pray The List. 

ALOFT

Car love. Color. Outside. Inside. Tires. Leather seats. Lift gate. Heated seats. Expansive windshield. Horses. Sunroof.  

Nine years later, I still love driving it as much as the first day. Reliability. Pedal to the metal. Could there be any new experience left to discover behind the wheel?

Driving down the road to visit my mother. Tom Petty’s Freefallin’ on the radio, a mesmerizing song which always changes my volume. She’s a good girl.

Freefall. You cannot say the word without the up and down it represents. Seconds of suspension hanging in time, unaffected by earth’s movement. Falling into what was.

First memorized poem – eight years old. Robert Louis Stevenson.  “Up in the air I go flying again, up in the air and down.” The magic.

I spend the night. We make the requisite WalMart excursion. Then to Oceans for Fried Catfish and shrimp and cry about ‘em fries. A good visit. Sally on Best Behavior Cat.

Heading home the next day. Eighty degrees. Running naked weather. Perfect. Big, blue ribbon sky. Bedraggled trees I will not kid you about the leaves.

I only open the sunroof on city streets – a decent breeze. But this day, I open the sunroof for the highway. And just for something new, the front windows too, all the way down. The sun on my head and arms. Even my short hair whipping around my face.

What a rush! Flying eighty down the interstate. Little traffic. Wind all around, rushing through the windows and up through the sunroof. The sun. The swirl. Wind lifts. It’s almost like flying, driving in the full sun and blasting wind. I yell like I’m riding the Himalaya at the Fair.

Driving down the highway. Radio cranked. Hoping for the notes and lyrics sung for thousands of miles. Notes which lift and exhilarate. Freebird and Frankenstein. Stairway to Heaven.  American Pie. Stayin’ Alive. Hotel California. Sweet Home Alabama. Jet Airliner. September. Bennie and the Jets. Bohemian Rhapsody. Let It Be.

Blue. Breeze. Heat on my skin. Fleetwood Mac. John Denver. We Are Family.

Free. Being there. Staying there. Summer 80. “How can they be that close? Just let me say for the record we’re giving love in a family dose.”*  Three dancing. Daddy twirls the Dancing Queen. Shuffle. I can see his smile. Anything to make his girls happy. Parquet dance floor. Disco Ball. Backgammon. Sunday. Employees. We are family.  

The freefall of memory. Hanging in the air, aloft. A minute of everyday halted, triggered by the notes of a song or a fragrance. Suspension. Earnest focus. Memory of touch. Obsession. The bright flash will not bring back the place or person. The world has kept on moving. Falling, stretching out the dance until landing back on earth into time already passed.

*Sister Sledge We Are Family  1979