VII

Songs From the Mountain, Songs in the Night

My words are tied in one
With the great mountains,
With the great rocks,
With the great trees,
In one with my body
And my heart.
Do you all help me
with supernatural power,
And you, day,
And you, night!
All of you see me
One with this world!
from a traditional Yokuts prayer

Late in 1981, an orthopedic surgeon, not too many years removed from internship and residency assignments in one of the country's busiest trauma centers, attended to injuries I received during an armed robbery. Eventually, following surgery over a year later to reshape my heel after overzealous bone regrowth, one day during an office visit he intimated he had not expected me again to walk unaided considering the severity of the damage to my foot and loss of a significant amount of calf muscle. By the time he voiced what had been a serious concern for him at the beginning of his treatment of my injuries, I had put aside the crutches for a second time and continued with an active life involved motherhood and six children, church commitments, part-time employment, and any number of other interests. Although I continued to struggle with constant pain for further twelve years, I knew I had much to accomplish, decisions to make and a future in which to invest myself as energetically as ever I had before my world had been abruptly altered physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Until this dark night where I groped through deeply shadowed canyons almost impenetrable with emotional and physical pain and with considerable uncertainty about relationship and goals, I had struggled with a constant sense of aloneness, isolation from almost all other people. Although I had begun to make some progress towards a healthier attitude about my self-worth during the six years before this time, my spiritual growth was severely hampered by a continuing sense of unacceptability. The evolving goodness and my emergence as a more connected, healthier person from a horrendous, ugly moment was due, I am certain, in large part to the prayers offered for me and from my own intensified prayer life.

I have no doubt my physical healing was enhanced and quickened by the powerful effect of love and concern from many friends and family members as much as it was by my determination to get on with living. I did not hear many of the love songs sent on their way towards God's heart in my behalf, but I knew their effect in the positive outlook through which laughter provided a lightness of spirit and better medicine than any pharmacist could prepare. In my vulnerability and through the emotional and spiritual maelstrom the injury instigated, I began to realize I could allow others to reach into my darkness with the music of their love for me, bringing light and warmth, healing and wholeness.

It is not possible to overstate the priority prayer has in my life, particularly when I recall the difficulties provoked by my experience at the business end of a gun. Prayer provides a frame of reference from which I am able to focus my feelings, to assess my needs and prerogatives, and to reorder values and purpose. The voice with which I sang the love songs of my prayers had been pleasant enough, true enough to pitch until the crisis that the robbery provoked. I would not begin to imagine how I could have worked through all the pain and confusion ensuing from that one night had I not learned the value of prayer long before, had I not already rehearsed the score and memorized the lyrics.

There is one contrapuntal melody, by God's unfathomable grace, I began to play in the concerto of my prayer life. Only now, many years later, does its beauty begin to resound with haunting, ethereal loveliness as I more fully understand the composition of its score. I cannot list all those who have asked me about the man who pointed a weapon and granted me a life of increased sensitivity and deeper spirituality. Although I was fearful for some time following my injury, I have not been able to be angry at the man. I see his face still and, even more poignantly, I feel his hand holding mine as he apologized for hurting me. Because I found God's forgiving love and grace are stronger than my anger as I allowed the man to take my hand, I could not then, nor ever, harbored ill will towards him.

There is a reality weaving its way into the melody of prayer offered in complete honesty before the Creator Spirit who knows better than we ourselves what it is we pray. This truth, this glorious symphony is, through our open, deliberate involvement with the Sacred in our lives by whatever communication we can achieve, we hear the majestic melody of God's love, forgiving, redemptive and unconditional.

A life centered by the anchor of prayer becomes one of honesty, clarity, and purpose. Prayer changes those who pray, in all probability, more than the prayers change those for and about whom we pray. While the old adage, prayer changes things, is true; the fact is prayer changes people even more. The night spent in prayer beside my critically ill son, the months of opening my uncertainties and anguish before God following the shooting, the years of seeking wisdom to make prudent decisions regarding a marriage little more than soul-deadening, all the prayers allowed me to examine motivation with veracity, to judge myself and my values without sentimentality or self-deception. I stand before the God who knows my thoughts, hopes, desires and dreams and make no effort to hide from such Love or from myself. While this does not ensure always judicious decisions or prevent me from making colossal errors in judgment and behavior, regular prayer does assist my effort to remain clear and to keep my priorities in order.

Through the course of a weekly prayer workshop during a recent winter I gave considerable time and attention to the effects of prayer, not only in my life but also as the process of conversion affected those with whom I shared the series of meetings. As is often the case, the honesty prayer demands, if it is to be a face-to-face encounter with the God who loves and knows us, discouraged a few who were not prepared for the journey. While I value the time I spent with those who continued and completed the workshops, those who chose not to play the concerto through to its completion evoke more concern. Their love songs seem somehow incomplete, the chords empty of those notes meant to fill out the harmony with richness and resonance. I wonder at the music yet to be played in their lives. It is for them and for the many others with whom I have shared a few steps on the trails in and out of the canyons, up the mountainsides, around the ridges, I pray, for whom I sing love songs as gift of a loving God. I recognize the difficulty of the trail up the mountains into which prayer leads our way.

Because I understand the struggles, the occasionally daunting requirements of mountain hiking, because I comprehend the power prayer has to cause us to look deeply into the crevasses of our souls, I sympathize when I meet with those people who step off the trail. There are many peaks surrounding and including Mt. Baldy in southern California I have not yet achieved, not from lack of desire so much as lack of experience in mountaineering, lack of adequate equipment, lack of time before I left the area.

Those who move away from the trail of prayer, who stop beside a tumbling creek as it sings down the mountainside to drink from the clear, cold water, who view the steep path with frequent switchbacks and shudder at the merciless demands such a trail makes are, perhaps, recognizing there is no room for the faint-hearted or ill-prepared, either in the conquering of difficult hiking trails up steep mountains or in the reality of a focused life of spiritual integrity. We look up the sides of the canyon, around the huge boulders we must somehow manage to climb and doubt our strength; we hear the music from some quiet place so deep within our souls that we are afraid to allow ourselves to listen all the way through the symphony, fearing we will not play our part, our instruments are not tuned or the strings are broken.

However, the reality of such fear, the feelings of inadequacy or belief one lacks ability are perceptions, not necessarily based so much on actuality as on misunderstanding of one's self and of one's value as a beloved member of the eternal family. There is also the possibility, once we begin to play the sonata of prayer we find we must allow the music to weave its way into our lives, to create new harmony and elicit new melodies awakening feelings we previously had not allowed ourselves to experience. We meet the Sacred in our lives through consistent, frequent prayer and we know, because that time of meeting allows no pretense and opens our eyes to the burning bushes surrounding us, we must play new scores, sing new songs.

We fear the demands will be greater than our strength, will evoke more effort than we think is comfortable. We know with certainty the music will change our hearing, stretch our vocal chords, use all the air in our lungs, and we are not convinced we want to or can accept the challenges. All of these are expectations of change, and many of us fear the alterations because we do not know what further will occur. We would rather play the music we know, repeat the songs or not allow any music to find its way into our lives; we fear prayer will ask more than we want to give and do not realize the rewards are greater.

During the writing of these last pages I have spent considerable time walking the trail along the Sacramento River, observing the changing patterns of blooming flowers, listening to the birdsong and chatter, reveling in and being drenched by a sudden thunderstorm. I have been watching spring as she laughs with the fragrance of Scotch Broom, the joyful abandon of orange and yellow poppies, the kiss of lupine. I see evidence of her progress as she matures, soon to become summer. I remember the seasons of change on the mountain during the year before I came north. I recall most vividly one hike up the fire road to Sunset Peak, a day of fog and mist, ethereal beauty and stillness. I think of the many hours of prayer, of waiting and listening, of seeing possibilities appear in changing circumstances out of the mists and uncertainty.

As I stood recently on the bridge over the river, watching the changing patterns of ripples along the surface of the swiftly moving water, I could not help understanding the corresponding moving of change through my life. Something within me had reached a place where the prayer-filled longing and waiting, looking ahead towards becoming, had come to a place of truly understanding the present moment, a place of being in unity with Creator Spirit, ready for what might come, but at peace with the now of life.

My grandfather remarked twenty-five years ago on my then-emerging pattern of often significant change in my living, observing the reality of what occasions my decisions to act and to move forward. His affirmation has remained with me, true today as it was then, his statement attesting he may not have understood what prompted some of the bewildering movements, but he knew I was following what I believed was the guidance of the God who loves me. Prayer is my trail map, the always new score of my symphony. Some of the music has required learning to play new instruments, putting new lenses in the glasses to see more clearly the chords my fingers barely seem able to reach at times.

Specifically, I have thought often of what has appeared to many others to be astounding transition and wondered at the temerity I have exhibited. I released my hold on expected results to prayers for clarification; I threw myself onto the unmarked snowbank to make a snow angel, not knowing how deep was the snow or if there were boulders underneath its pristine beauty. In learning to launch into the unknown of God's love, I have realized all I need to know is God's love. My adventure in prayer, the singing of my love song, my hike up the mountain has demanded stamina, learning, growth and constant change. I have reached the peaks of a few small mountains, increased my lung capacity, strengthened my leg muscles and looked around the top of the mountains where I have stood long enough to see there are higher mountains up ahead.

Throughout my childhood, into my teens and even during the year in the convent I often heard faithful, prayerful people speak of mountain-top experiences. After a year of living on a mountain and extensive hours hiking the trails, using the physical effort of climbing the rocky, often steep paths as time of prayer, I view those peak experiences quite differently. While the feelings of exhilaration, the highly charged emotions accompanying breakthrough moments of growth, of successfully achieving significant goals are undoubtedly summits of joy, I find I view the process as more significant than the result.

Recently, I participated with the local symphony choral group as we sang a medley of songs from a popular movie, the closing selection for a family concert. The evening of the performance was one of adrenaline-rush moments with feelings of satisfaction and sheer joy; however, the many hours of rehearsal in the weeks preceding the twenty minutes of public performance, the making of new friends and the delight in learning I could sing higher and better than I had realized before has left greater sense of pleasure and paved the way for future musical involvement certain to outlast the one evening. I believe there is appropriate analogy to the process of prayer and its results.

Certainly, all of us pray expecting answers, although many of us forget the answers may not be when or in the manner we wish or expect. In some respects, I wonder if we continually focus on the results, we risk missing the moments of insight, the almost inaudible cadenzas in the symphony contributing to its beauty while not standing out as solo performances. There were three ending chords during our performance, including the singing of a high D flat, notes I had not previously attempted. For a soprano or tenor, high C is often the ultimate test of vocal ability and achievement. However, very few are required to enhance a production and, in a chorus performance, even fewer are appropriate and those are sung by only one or two vocalists.

Singing that one note is the result of years of rehearsal, vocal training, dedicated effort and care for one's physical well-being. Singing that note lasts for only seconds. I did not sing those three D flats until the night of the dress rehearsal and then sang them again during the performance, nor did I focus on the thought I would sing them at all until the appropriate moment. Those notes just happened, gift and result of all the work, pure joy of being. Answers to prayer are gift, sacraments of our meetings with the Sacred in the moments of our lives when we cherish the time together without concern for the final note of the song.

I wonder if we miss the gilly flowers along the trail up the mountain if our eyes are fixed towards reaching the peak, so much so we do not stop to look among the rocks along the trailside. Do we hear the music of the stream as it dances around the boulders and over the rocks, or are we pushing ourselves upwards with such determined speed we hear only our labored breathing? Are we so focused on the goal, the future, we miss the magic of the present moment, we do not see the ladybug on the leaf beside our knee?

The fragrance on the breeze of all the spring flowers, the sudden upward thrust of the yucca, the unexpected lemony-vanilla scent in the crevasses of the bark on the Ponderosa pine, the unbelievable sweet melody of the Anna's hummingbird in full song: all these miracles of beauty are the visible, audible reminders to be fully alive to the moment, to meet the Divine Presence at the switchbacks is to stop in the headlong rush of daily living for a moment of prayer, a few seconds of contemplating the sheen of light on rain-refreshed leaves and seeing with appreciation the touch of the Master Artist in the loveliness surrounding us. We may reach the mountain peak of our striving, but will it be that one of spiritual renewal where we touch the face of God? Will we recognize the answer when we receive it or will we see just another turn in the trail, another steep incline to conquer?

Few of us enter blindly into relationship of depth and purpose. We know we will grow and change through the experience of allowing ourselves to touch the life of another in honesty and intimacy. Our ideas will be challenged, our emotions engaged, our perspective of ourselves altered through our involvement and responses. Indeed, it is the hazard we perceive intimacy to be inhibiting and even destroying many relationships. We pick up the score to a new opera, see the demanding range required of the role we would sing and lay it down after one brief attempt. The music is strangled in our throats by fear, stilled by lack of faith in ourselves and our ability to meet new challenges. We hesitate to open our souls fully to the possibility of a prayer-centered life because we know we will forever be changed.

One absolute of living and loving avers everything changes. Change is process and without it we die. To stand before Great Spirit in the open honesty of prayer is to invite that Spirit of restless creativity to move within our souls, to challenge us and to lead us into more growth with expanded clarity of vision, renewed hope, to expand vocal chords towards greater strength and range to sing longer passages in new languages. As we open ourselves to the experience of loving relationship, whether with another human person or with that One who is Love, we find we wish to become more loving, more generous, more openhearted and forgiving. Thus, we become more and we are more fully alive. To build relationship with the Sacred is to open ourselves in an attitude of prayer, to become involved with living our spirituality more fully, to see the burning bushes of want and pain, to reach out and touch with healing love.

Life, bound and framed by prayer, becomes a tapestry of intricate beauty, woven into the interdependent, universal wholeness of life with all of creation. We begin to learn, if there is pain detracting from life, we feel it; if there is brokenness creating inability to function completely, we are disabled. We meet Black Elk, Shaman of the Oglala Lakota, in his words regarding peace and unity, fruits of loving relationship. Black Elk spoke in 1948, saying the first and most important peace grows within our souls when we comprehend our oneness and relationship with the universe and all its Powers, when we know at the center of the universe is Wakan-Tanka (Great Spirit), and the center is everywhere and within each of us.

Prayer leads us in search of that touch of the Divine who heals our wounds, who breaks the chains of our self-imposed prisons of fear, whose truth is a Klieg light of glory in the darkest night. Our desire to find our home within the loving acceptance of the God who creates and sustains us is invitation for God to enter into fellowship with us in living our moments and days. Without that invitation, coming from the freedom of our inviolable birthright, Creator Spirit will not move.

Our requirements for medical intervention and assistance in physically or mentally threatening illness or injury often will be met only when we seek attention from the appropriate specialists. We must recognize the need for healing, seek the treatment providing the opportunity to begin the process, then follow through with whatever medication, changes in behaviors, and other forms of therapy to positively affect our well-being. We are free not to recognize our illness, not to seek treatment, free to allow ourselves to deteriorate further if we wish.

In just the same manner, Shekinah, wise Mother who sees the symptoms of our spiritual illnesses, respects our freedom not to look deeply enough into our souls to see the often debilitating conditions hindering our full functioning. When we seek God's face in the shadows of our limited understanding, when we give time to examining our choices in the light of events ensuing from those choices, when we are courageous enough to question our motivation, when we meet the Sacred Presence with honesty in prayer, we see our limits and our wounds, our illnesses and brokenness.

The staggering gracefulness of God's love and respect for us, revealed in our complete freedom to remain as we are and yet to be loved, opens us in those moments of prayer to the soul's physician, to the possibility of healing, to hope for growth towards wholeness and holiness. As we allow that healing touch to move our hearts, to open our eyes, we may know increased pain for a time. There may be some necessary spiritual surgery. The discipline of the spiritual answer to physical therapy may demand much energy and effort, but the improved strength and increased resources of the soul will reward our dedication.

From the darkest nights of my life, from the hours when I doubted dawn would break through the heaviness and anguish, from the many moments I have faced the darkness of my soul in which I have been unable to articulate the prayers with the possibility to bring a measure of release, I have found a clarity of light, the touch of love with its healing and peace. I know God who is, first and always, Love; and I attempt daily to live in a way exemplifying the beauty and power of One who Is.

The nights of our lives are not always or necessarily devoid of joy. While we cannot see rainbows at the times that light is limited, we can hear to quiet call on the night breeze, one possibly sounding much like the owl who lived in the oak tree above my cabin on the mountain. We may gather in the warmth and firelight of the old mountain lodge, sharing the peace of day's end, knowing the heart of God in the love and comradeship of friends and family. Without the distractions of day we may see in the dancing fire the reflection of our souls' fervor and beauty as we learn we need only to see one step ahead in the darkness to find our way home.

Songs in the night often convey a ring of haunting truth played in minor keys, veracity inspired by the shadows in which we may stand, protecting our vulnerabilities and still open wounds inflicted by the harsh realities of some of our days. Our prayers in the night echo those vulnerabilities, exposing the fears we have not yet released, perhaps not even fully recognized. There is a mysterious, inexplicable quality to the night air when the full moon has set and the only light is from the stars spangled across the vastness of the sky. The earth sleeps then and our spirits yearn for peace, relief from the harshness of the day's glare. Prayers from the night hours are love songs of growing faith, hope morning will come. We appear to agonize with greater intensity through the darkest hours of the night; our spirits reach through our pain for the touch of Love as we strain our eyes to see through the darkness of our human limitations. We face our realities, our weaknesses, our hopes and we sleep, dreaming of possibility, hoping for future. We see in the firelight, though, love assuring us of all for which we long.
 

Living In Love

You touched me, dearest Love, in the deepest recess
where my heart and mind meet in protected shadow;
you, who are Love, who makes all beauty,
united me to yourself and opened my soul with a touch.
Your touch called me to relationship
beyond that which I knew before
and suffused my every cell with beauty.

We have met in earlier days and you have graced my life
with understanding, knowledge and light
which are your generous gifts.
That glorious light of your knowing presence
has guided the path I have walked.
Again you met with me and blessed me with a gift
that startled and brought new awareness.
Then and now I understand and open my soul
to let you speak my prayer
when my full and overflowing mind can find
no words to sing my praise.

Yet, all through my life I know your Love,
even in those days I did not understand
how dearly you love me.
There are moments when the passion
overpowers and overwhelms me into incoherence,
and I can only gaze at you in tears.
Then you take me in your arms in gentle tenderness
as once I did with newborn child;
and I know the peace and mother love.
Your love is as my truest, best friend
who knows me well,
from whom I have no secrets;
and you accept me while opening me to change.

Your love is undemanding, yet you challenge me with love,
a paradox of such rich proportion.
I long to give you only all my best,
to be all I know that I can be,
yet your love accepts me as I am.
You created me from love and hold my very soul
and still, knowing where I fail,
you love me.
There is no sense of personal earning power
which deserves such love
within my mind or in how I live,
in how I respond to your love.
Love is always gift and choice.

Today, tomorrow, I live in love,
knowing you a little more
than I comprehended yesterday.
Your love calls me to yourself,
to seek your face,
to live in your love alone.

A song of love, relationship built on the premise of mature love, a life focused towards realistic spirituality and awareness, all of these are deliberate choices, not happenstance or coincidence. These are not sentimental accidents occurring without thought or desire. Those for whom we care, to whom we commit our hearts and our lives, are ones to whom we give our best efforts, for whom we do the small tasks of daily living.

We write the song of love and sing it with our hands, with the hours of our days, with the folded laundry we put away week after week, or the time we spend repairing leaky faucets in the kitchen or worn brakes on the car. We spend hours learning those facts about the beloved in our lives enabling us to prepare those special meals or obtain the much-desired book to give as gift. We learn to listen and we are honest in our feelings and in the sharing of our pain and confusion as we work towards deeper relationship and stronger love. We sing the songs of love expressing our relationship with the Sacred in our lives with our committed, active attention towards protecting our physical environment, working towards human dignity and issues of justice and freedom. The time we spend in prayer, in meditating on scripture or the writing of those who guide us higher up the mountains, is time during which we meet the God of all creation and learn to look through new eyes, to see as God sees.

When our prayers lead us into new paths, when we test our growing awareness against traditions of our chosen faith, scriptures, our knowledge and experience in conjunction with the knowledge and understanding of others, we begin another love song, another overture to a new symphony. When we begin to live the in the freedom of knowing God's love, we may even begin to dance to the music of love.

My year of spiritual retreat on the beautiful healing mountain was one filled with waiting, challenge both physically and spiritually, growth both emotionally and in my soul, creative energy, hope and continual surprise. Prayer for guidance, on the day I found the cabin into which I moved, led me up the fire road towards my first climb of a mountain of any significance, encouraging me to believe in myself, to look beyond the tested, predictable paths towards the steeper, less used trail up rocks and scree to the summit. I danced a prayer of joy on the mountain top even as I looked across the canyons towards higher peaks and greater challenges. As long as that mountain stands in the shadow of lovely Lady Baldy, she will remind me we have only to believe in ourselves as God believes in us, the beauty of our spirits opens in response to the love we meet in a prayer- centered life of faith and possibility.

When prayer itself is a new adventure, it may often seem the trail up this particular mountain is impassable with frequent switchbacks up and through loose scree and over slippery rocks and huge boulders. We may believe we have wandered into a music store designed for the virtuoso instrumentalist or a Pavarotti or Scotto. The music is strange, in languages other than the one we daily speak. These are the moments when it is of primary importance to remember we need only take one step up the trail, there are fallen trees or rocks along the trailside where we may rest and regroup. We need not perform the entire score of the new opera before an opening night audience at Lincoln Center the first time we open its pages. No one expects any of us who are commencing the exploration of the possibilities of prayer to lead a Sunday congregation in St. Peter's Basilica in a liturgical celebration. We have only to offer our inarticulate longing in honesty to the God who knows our pain, our desires, our yearnings, asking us to learn the words as we go. The effort, not the result, is significant.

In a goal-oriented, production-focused, competitive society, prayer for the sake of itself seems almost a contradiction. Learning to wait in stillness and silence of spirit is counter to the style of living imposed upon our minds through every conscious hour in business, school and even through the entertainment media. Allowing ourselves to open our hearts to pray, is to sing a love song in response to the Sacred who calls to us in a whisper, a clarion call of truth playing a melody we hear in our dreams, on the wind, above the discordant clamor of today, directing our attention towards forever.

If we meet the God who knows every hair on our heads, who fashioned us before we were aware of being, what will we learn of ourselves? Might we not know, at last, we may rest, knowing love with no boundary, asking nothing, yearning for our joy and peace in unity of creative, eternal relationship? Those of us who believe we have no gift for singing, who are convinced we do not hear music, will, when we begin to pray, discover we sing the eternal song with a voice bearing a resonance heard across the universe, echoing with majesty and glory. The gift of our trust and hope in our willingness to pray is the gift of a love song.
 

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