Mustard Seeds

In my last post, I talked a lot about my sense of woeful underqualification for my job at L’arche. I basically said that I was grateful for this, since it causes me to be more teachable. Dr. Dan Deffenbaugh told me before I left that a year of service was a good method for doing some unlearning after college. Indeed, things are as he said; I have some unlearning to do. I had originally thought that my unlearning and relearning would be areas such as good thinking and theological praxis. While I won’t deny that there is some unlearning taking place in those areas, the real action is happening in areas that I, of course, didn’t expect. These include human communication and, most notably, prayer.

First, communication. This is a good one. Kim, as I’ve said, is an elective mute. Judging by the reports that I’ve heard from other assistants, months can go by without Kim having said so much as one or two whole words. Even so, she will often hold out her hand in an attempt to communicate non-verbally. When she does this, the appropriate response is to simply grasp her hand for a moment; extension, reception. Kim will do this to say a variety of things, but it usually means, “Hello,” “Thank you,” “Good on you,” or “I like you.” Kim is a silent mover as well, and she goes everywhere at about a snail’s pace. Her hand gesture, therefore, will often simply materialize in front of my face, as if a specter had suddenly been incarnated before me. Likewise, she fancies forcing people to smell the Marmite (concentrated yeast extract, usually spread over toast) at breakfast. This morning, Brenda got a surprise when she turned her head only to be accosted by the Marmite jar, which suddenly blinked into the existence of her right visual field. The shock was good for a laugh. Kim thought it was hilarious, anyway. (Actually, so did I.) Point being this: The fact that we can’t ever really hear Kim makes it vitally important that we understand her own methods of communication. We have to be visually vulnerable to the presence of Kim where, otherwise, such would only be possible aurally. Even so, we encourage Kim to use words whenever possible and we try to create an atmosphere in which she will feel comfortable enough to speak. In my own way, I’m a lot like Kim. I realized last year that, since beginning my foray into academic religion and philosophy, my personal lexicon has grown rather substantially. This is true to such an extent that I actually now have difficulty communicating with people on an ‘everyday’ sort of level, especially with my father. It’s as if we speak two entirely different languages. In the past, I had always assumed that it was my responsibility to “dumb it down” for everyone, so that I could be understood. But that’s, well… dumb. Instead, I ought to be vulnerable to the depth of other people’s communication. I’ve been throwing my academically primed vocabulary out there in the same way that Kim extends her hand: though I know that it’s inadequate, I expect everyone else to get the gist. I force others to kowtow to me. Of course, I’m also deeply appreciative of anyone who actually understands me, but those encounters function more as litmus tests for my peers than real attempts and building relationships. More often than not, other people are forced to treat me the same way that we assistants have to treat Kim: “What do you want? Use your words please. I don’t understand. Show me.” Far from being superior and powerful, both Kim and I usually just end up frustrated. Still, it’s always nice when someone helps me along by creating the kind of environment that’s conducive to more simple forms of correspondence.

Beside communication, next comes prayer. Thank God I know nothing about prayer. I have to confess that this has long been a point of serious consternation for me. I really don’t know how to pray, though I always thought I did. Here at L’arche, we do prayers daily (or nightly, to be more specific) and each house has a prayer table; a designated space for our sacred time. Nothing else beside worshipful things are allowed to go on the prayer table: no TV remotes, no drinks, nothing. When I read Christine Pohl’s book, Making Room, last semester, I recall reading her statement that ignoring limits and boundaries can be a form of arrogance. I think she was right. Having limits is the first step toward hospitality, which, if you read my undergraduate thesis, is the first step toward Ethics, and maybe even the first toward God. With our prayer times in L’arche, this sense of limit is true in a double sense. We keep the sacred space sacred, but we also keep things simple. Folks with intellectual disabilities are generally confused or bored by anything that goes longer than a half-hour or involves more than a few sentences. Ignoring those limitations would indicate a serious sense of arrogance on our part as assistants. In this way, I’m learning how to pray by going back to basics. To pray in L’arche is to do so as honestly as possible while kicking out all the stuff that’s too big or that has too many widgets to fit. Kim, for instance, doesn’t say anything really, but she usually manages to mutter “Amen,” so we all just say, “Amen,” and that’s the prayer; the whole thing as one word. Considering her difficulty with speech, however, I can’t think of a more honest prayer in Kim’s world. If you pray fake in L’arche, everybody knows that it’s fake and there are usually at least a few people who won’t put up with your bullcrap.

For me, then, I’ve been greatly wounded in this area of prayer. One thing I hate is the “daddy” language of so many Evangelical and “low-church” prayers. It sounds completely idiotic. “God, we just…Lord, we just…Father, we just…Oh, Daddy, we just…” blah blah blah. Get it out already! If you “just” desire one thing or another, then why not just say that one thing instead of going on and on? There’s insecurity in there that makes my skin crawl. There’s also insecurity, however, in a lot of “high theology” prayers. These prayers generally hit critical mass for boredom. “Merciful, heavenly, almighty Father, who is omnipotent in all ways and cares for each *insert Scripture passage here*…With your graces, please allow…” yadda yadda yadda. Lord, save me from thy ministers! My frontal lobes simply cannot withstand that kind of theological onslaught. As the saying goes, a rich man doesn’t need to tell you that he’s rich and the same thing is true for a faithful man. A certain amount of spiritual insecurity just can’t be tolerated in a faithful community. The prayer is simply too obvious for God to really be in there. Unlike in other areas of life, however, we normally don’t get corrected during prayer and, therefore, don’t learn very much. During college, I came up with a formula to circumvent these problems: something reverent, something appropriate, something powerful, something inclusive. As long as a prayer, regardless of its length, hit all four of those things, then I was happy with it.

Learning to pray is like building an airplane, but I was starting from scratch by bolting together a Leer jet. What I should have been doing was sketching lines on scraps of balsa wood. The truth is that I don’t know how to pray powerfully, not yet anyway. But, for the time being, L’arche is forcing me to come at prayer with only what I’ve got and nothing more. It’s basic and maybe a little awkward, but at least it’s stable and comes with a measure of spiritual security. Before I left home, I was convicted that God’s calling was one into deep poverty. I’m still convicted of that. A friend of mine, Anna, who is currently in Taize, France, spoke to me about a kind of poverty that I had never heard before: spiritual poverty. That is, like material poverty, but involving the deeper bits of the Self. We come to God with what we can muster. And, no, it’s not enough. The fact is, it’s never enough, especially for God, but it is what we have nonetheless. I’ve thought about material poverty before and, as the years go by, I’m becoming more used to it (little by little). I feel my need to compulsively purchase new things growing progressively fainter. In this, I think that I am gaining a measure of material security. Spiritual poverty, however, opens up new wounds and hits me in new ways. Perhaps in time, the training wheels will come off, but that’s not how God’s provoking me right now. I have to start small. I guess that I’m just planting the mustard seed.