A Prayer for Protection (Learning to Fear the Right Things)

Prayers for protection are ancient and good in the Christian tradition. And there is a lot in the world that might lead us to seek out protection. But from what? And for what? 

These are not just a philosopher's questions. These are questions that matter for how I will learn to talk to my children. About God. About fear. About the life that is life.

Our answers to these questions reveal our most dearly held priorities and, in turn, shape our prayers for protection. But at least one significant challenge to making reflective space to consider these questions is the sense that there's no time for that. The threats are at hand! Just get the protection in place already. Some days we get up and live lives of largely unreflective reactivity, performing fears so old we don't remember where we learned them.  

But whether we take the time to explore them or not, these questions will linger and share invisible, unnamed space with us. They will haunt us. Haunt us until we turn to them and discover, in the faith, the alternative to reactionary fear that God has revealed in Jesus and opened to the people called 'church.' 

Stephen Colbert recently quoted the poet Robert Hayden in an interview with Dua Lipa, 

We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us.

So I was delighted the other day to stumble on this new-to-me hymn from the 6th century church, which paints the alternative to prayers for reactive protection to unnamed fears by its engagement with the invisible questions - from what? for what? - to sketch understanding of the harms from which we rightly ask God's help to save us. Sharing it with you and, maybe also, with my kids:

Now that the daylight fills the sky,
we lift our hearts to God on high,
that he, in all we do or say,
would keep us free from harm today:

Our hearts and lips may he strain;
keep us from causing others pain,
that we may see and serve his Son,
and grow in love for everyone.

From evil may he guard our eyes,
our ears from empty praise and lies;
from selfishness our hearts release,
that we may serve and know his peace;

that we, when this new day is gone,
night in turn is drawing on,
with conscience free from sin and blame,
may praise and bless his holy name.

To God the Father, heavenly Light,
to Christ, revealed in earthly night,
to God the Holy Ghost we raise
our equal and unceasing praise.

Hymn no. 3 in the Hymnal 1982, Latin, 6th cent.; trans. Neale, Scagnelli, Coffin, and Chandler.

The Art of Understanding: Collaboration, Curiosity, and Removing Old Couches

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

A prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, as found in the Book of Common Prayer, p. 833.

A friend and colleague recently turned me on to the Hidden Brain podcast, where Shankar Vedantam "uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships." The podcast now owns a regular place in the lineup I enjoy on my morning and evening walks. 

This past week, each of the three episodes I chose, mostly at random, brought to mind in different ways the above prayer of St. Francis and especially that phrase woven in among so many beautiful and challenging others, "to be understood as to understand." Each of the episodes explored different aspects of understanding others, the work it takes, the errant assumptions we often make, blind spots, and tools that serve the work. Most of us have known either the experience of having felt understood or, conversely, the pain of not feeling heard/understood. Most of us having experienced varying levels of success in our attempts to communicate understanding to others. Anyway, I was super grateful for the emergence of the unintentional theme. Here's the episode list, in case you'd like to listen or check them out:

• What Makes Relationships Thrive
• The Obstacles You Don't See
• Our Noisy Minds 

In a nutshell, the first episode seeks to establish understanding as an ingredient every bit as important as even more high profile possibilities, like love, in relationships of all kinds. The second begins with the story of a wildly popular furniture maker that initially struggled, despite the popularity, to complete sales. The company tweaked prices, improved product, pulled their hair out. Nothing worked. The eventual solution? Offering to remove the old furniture for customers when delivering the new furniture. Sales skyrocketed. A lesson in perspectives, positions, and understanding. The third episode begins with the story of CEOs at insurance companies, who errantly assume that the variability among their agents in offering premium prices, etc., is about 10%. A researcher comes along who determines that the actual number is more like 55%. A big deal in insurance, and also in sentencing and incarceration, where the assumption that most people, like judges, see the world and make judgments in ways similar to our own perspectives and judgments is, generally speaking, wildly overestimated. The variability between us is a gift (potentially), but only if we are honest about the extent to which it exists in the first place. Which brings us back to understanding, a challenge complicated by the fact, says the third episode, that we seldom fully understand ourselves.

Against the backdrop of this week of walks with this unintentional theme, my family has been planning a memorial for my wife's grandfather, who died this past December. I thought the world of Grandpa Baker and thoroughly enjoyed him, his presence, his thoughtfulness, and our shared conversations. (I was delighted to learn early on that we shared an affinity for the work of Robert Farrar Capon, a theologian and Episcopal priest whom a mentor once confessed "a guilty pleasure.") More than anything, there was in Grandpa Baker a curiosity that opened space for others: other ideas and other people. "Maybe so!" he would frequently respond to a thought or opinion in opposition to his own. "Tell me more about that," was an invitation found in most every conversation.

Sometimes when loved ones die, we discover things about them we didn't know before. Some things just never come up, for whatever reasons. I knew Grandpa Baker worked in education, and that he had done so in pioneering ways. I remember lots of stories, but they were usually one-offs. It was only in reading correspondence occasioned by his passing, from colleagues he had worked with and/or who continued his work, that I learned about his formal contribution to the work of understanding; he and a colleague pioneered the process that became known as The Seven Norms of Collaboration, a pillar of education so foundational that is now simply for granted, but only because they discerned it and wrote it for the rest of us. I share it at the end here.

Collaboration, understanding, is an art. And maybe, says Shankar Vedantam, a science, too. Both. Also a discipline with practices that require our submitting to each other. "Tell me more." And, "It sounds like you're saying _____. Am I hearing you right?" It's good work at the heart of relationships between individuals, communities, and every nook and cranny of life. And I'm so glad for the space these conversations and discoveries from this past week's worth of walks occasioned for me to explore the work from difference angles. 

So. A post full of what have been tools for me. But what for you? What aids have you discovered for the work of understanding? What helps you better live the prayer? Asking not a preacher or exhorter, but as one who is curious. If you are willing, tell me more about that.

I appreciate you, friends.