Monday Manna
A Tale of Two Prayer Quilts (and see you later this summer)....
Good morning, friends, and summer blessings to each of you ~
Today is my final post before my summer sabbath pause, and I want to send you off with a reminder of prayer’s tangible power. So to begin, two tales of two prayer quilts…
When I was in my senior year of college, I experienced a complete watershed of plans. I think I’ve shared the bones of that story here before, but I had planned on going to law school, and then God’s Spirit made it very clear I was not supposed to go to law school. At least not then. What I did end up doing was going to live in Taipei, Taiwan and volunteering with a church there.
Before I left, my home church in South Dakota gave me a prayer quilt as a gift of blessing. The congregation had a quilting ministry with a team of faithful people who made the quilts, and in each quilt, they placed numerous small pieces of thread. On a Sunday morning, the many threads were tied into small knots as people from the church knot them in prayer for the person who would receive the quilt. In this case, me.
I can vividly remember looking out my rain splattered window as my plane descended into Taipei in the dark of night. The sky was illuminated with neon signs, none of which I could read. I came to the sudden realization of just how foreign everything felt and was, and wondered, what have I done? When I got to the small room in the pastor’s apartment building in which I would live, I remember closing the door, kneeling down beside my bed, and weeping with overwhelm. It was then I pulled out the prayer quilt made by my church family, laying it across my bed as a spread to sleep under, covered by the love and prayers of people who promised to pray for me. That quilt remained on my bed for the entire nine months I lived in Taiwan, and is still with me now.
Story two…
Seven years after I lay beneath a prayer quilt in Taiwan, my dad had a sudden relapse of cancer — a diagnosis we didn’t realize would take his life in less than two weeks time. I remember the sticky August morning when the hospice team had been at the house to review medication changes, make orders for a hospital bed, and set up the oxygen tank.
“It will probably be about a week until the supplies arrive,” Krissy, the hospice nurse, said as she packed her bag. “Maybe a few days.” We didn’t know at the time my dad would be gone in less than six hours.
A friend had invited my mom out for lunch and I encouraged, nearly pushed, her out the door, saying it would be a refreshing break. That Dad and I would be just fine.
The house was still, quiet, peaceful, but my dad struggled. Because we did not yet have a wheelchair, I pushed him in the black swivel office chair to his living room recliner. Situating him in the plush, green chair, I grabbed his prayer quilt and draped it over his lap, tucking in the edges around thin legs. The same church with the same quilting ministry had made one for my dad that week. His pastor had brought the blanket just one day before – a beautiful tapestry of trees and tiny pieces of yarn, all tied into knots by the church’s prayerful hands. It reminded me of the Garden of Eden – God’s original home of wholeness and peace.
“I’m covering you with the prayers of your sisters and brothers in Christ, Tom,” Pastor Charles had said as he bent over my dad, blanketing him with the quilt. And it was under that quilt, held by those prayers, that my dad would take his last breath on earth and his first in heaven, later that afternoon.
I share these stories of the prayer quilts because for me, prayer is a palpable, powerful thing. Prayer did not suddenly make me at home (or fluent in Mandarin) during the year I lived in Taiwan. Prayer did not keep my dad from dying. But the prayers of people who loved us were a tangible shelter that gave me comfort and courage, embraced my dad in his final hours, and connected us to the Source of all love. Prayer is welcoming in the presence of God, and allowing that presence to transform in ways beyond our imagining.
What better gift could we give someone? Could we give ourselves?
I mentioned in last week’s brief post how I had the blessing of going to my favorite monastery for a couple of days — a divinely timed gift before entering the intensity of the last week of school. The days at the monastery with the sisters are guided by a rhythm of prayer…morning, midday, and evening prayer services, along with two times of contemplative prayer where we would sit in silence for twenty minutes, solely focused on surrendering ourselves to God’s healing and transforming purpose.
Near the end of each gathering, the sisters led us in a time for sharing specific needs and people to pray for. We held all the heaviness and placed it in the heart of God. One of my favorite ways to pray for people is to imagine holding them in the warmth and light of God. Even more so than words, that image is what I keep before me.
I felt bathed afresh in my love for prayer and my belief in its power during that time. Even though I have written a book of prayers, I have had many a time when I felt too down, too distracted, or too tired to pray. My time at the monastery renewed in me my hunger and love for it, grounding me again in the way I want to pilgrimage thorugh life.
And so, my deep desire is to make this summer a season for deepening prayer, and I invite you to join me in it. To help us, I’ve made a little list of some things I know will support my praying, and I hope it helps you too ~
~ Breathe….Taking short pauses to focus on the breath brings me back to stillness, and stillness — even for a moment — reminds me God is here.
~ Set some alarms…this past spring with all of the ICE raids, I joined with many others in setting an alarm on our phones for noon each day, pausing at that time to pray for an ending to the devastation and for peace in our country. I’ve kept the alarm, and since then added another for 3:00 p.m., right in the middle of the afternoon. While listening to church bells toll for times of prayer is much more beautiful, a phone alarm does the same thing. It draws me back to God’s presence, here and now, and prompts me to hold in warmth and light the people and places I want to send love toward.
~ Use some apps, or books (or your Bible!!) to give you a launching spot, or resting place…I listen to either Pray-As-You-Go (lectio divina style) or Lectio365 most mornings and find both of those to be a meaningful and centering way to begin the day in prayer. I also love prayer books (obviously 😍). Let me know if you want some recommendations.
~ Prayer journal…Though I am not consistent in writing in it, I’ve kept prayer journals over the years in which I’ll write down specific prayer requests on my heart, or things that come up for people I love. It’s a good way to follow through with the promise when you let someone know you are praying for them. I’ve really liked Rob Bell’s phrase of “carrying people in your heart,” and this is a way to do it.
~ Follow Jesus’ prayer model…Shauna Niequist has a really beautiful chapter about this in her book, “I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet” in which she describes the way she models her own prayers after Jesus’ prayer in John 17. The four things he specifically prays over his followers are union, protection, joy, and sanctification. I have appreciated this trellis on which to hang my own prayers for others.
~ Breath prayers…The beautiful simplicity of breath prayers is a wonderful place to return as an anchor, bringing stillness to the mind and to the body. The idea is to have a short phrase that you repeat as you inhale, and then say as you exhale. A simple example…
Inhale: I am held…
Exhale: in God’s light and love.
If you want more guidance on this, @Sarah Bessey had a post about this somewhat recently with lots of lovely breath prayers.
~ Silence instead of continual input ~ One thing I immediately noticed during my early hours at the monastery is how easy it is to fill the silence when we are alone and going about our days. Podcasts. Music. Phone calls. What if we start doing more things in the quiet, with less input, so we can be present to what it is we are doing and where we are?
~ Along those lines, paying attention and being mindful ~ One of my favorite books is “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, and within it, there’s a line from the character Shug who says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.” Paying attention is prayer and pure devotion, friends.
What if connection with Jesus is your center this summer? What if this summer was a time to tend to your prayer life? To be mindful and present to the power of prayer, and to cover those you love with prayer?
For those of us with kids coming home from school for the summer, we may need need to pull some Susanna Wesley moments. As mother of the famous Wesley brothers (who founded the Methodist church and wrote hundreds of famous hymns) Susanna raised her large family (nineteen children!!!) in a rural area with few resources. There are stories of her sitting down in the chaos of her home and pulling her apron up over her head to create her own kind of sanctuary and space to pray. Her children knew that when the apron was over her head, they couldn’t disturb her.
Susanna once said, “Help me, Lord, to remember that everywhere, I am in Thy Presence.” She knew the loving presence of Jesus was with her wherever she was.
As you deepen into prayer this summer, think of who you might blanket and shelter with your prayers. Your prayer is powerful, and at all times, God hears and holds.
Together, we can make a quilt of prayer to cover the world.
A Prayer
Life is always full of surprises and fears, and I know this summer will hold that too. Those moments are good prompts to press in and pray. This is one of my favorite prayers from my book, Ash and Starlight: Prayers for the Chaos and Grace of Daily Life, Second Edition.
When I’m surprised, scared, and need to surrender
Spirit of surprise
and faithfulness,
When I encounter change
I did not choose…
When life feels
out of control (my control!),
unpredictable,
scary…
When my normal coping mechanisms
aren’t available this time around…
When the overarching question is,
What do I do now?
Your reassuring, Spirit-filled wind
comes blowing at my back,
announcing I’m not alone,
that you will fill me with everything
I need to take on what’s next
and do the things I didn’t think possible.
You are the master Improviser,
and I will learn from my Teacher.
This is how you do it…
yes and yes and yes and yes…
Help me ride
the current of this
Pentecostal wind.
Use this change in plans
to be a change in heart,
that I might not move
forward with a dead soul,
clinging to what’s known,
yet no longer there.
Open my heart to what you will do in
this pocket of open space between
before and after
(even if this involves a lot
of blowing around and burning).
Today,
I say yes
and yes
and yes
and yes…
Amen.
Ruth 1:1–22 * Psalm 104:4 * Acts 2:1–5
“[S]uddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of
a violent wind… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…”
—Acts 2:2a, 4a
surprised, scared?
Something that nourished me recently…
*We marked the end of school! It was a challenging year in many respects, and had some big transitions. We celebrated the way we always do, with enormous cookies. Speaking of cookies, we learned last fall that my daughter has celiac, and that while I am not to her level, gluten doesn’t do great things for me either. So it’s been a time of adjustment, and we learned of and dove into this delightful cookbook (part graphic novel, part cookbook). I also came up with a simple banana cookie recipe which is filled with protein and fiber (something I especially need to pay attention to for my daughter). So I’m guessing we will be eating a lot of those this summer too.
Arianne’s Banana cookies (makes 12 because I make them huge)
500 g banana
100 g nut butter (almond or peanut)
150 g rolled oats
4 tbsp chia seed
3 scoops vanilla protein powder (I like Be Well By Kelly brand)
2 tbsp chocolate chips (I love the Equal Exchange kind)
Mash everything together and make enormous cookies. :) I bake them at 350 degrees for 14-15 minutes. Store in the fridge.
*I had the joy of meeting Erin Gleeson of the Forest Feast at her home — I first connected with Erin after cooking the whole way through one of her cookbooks some years ago, and she has since become a source of much encouragement and wisdom (she is the one who inspired me to print my artwork on clothes!). It was a joy to meet her in real life after electronic communication. Definitely check out her cookbooks and her newest watercolor book, as well as follow her substack!
*The focus of our church this year is “Building Beloved Community.” We shared this handout in last week’s church gathering. I would add that building beloved community is a form of prayer!
Ash and Starlight, plus other good things…
* MY ETSY SHOP ~ I just designed a couple new things for summer, including this T-shirt dress which I’ve been wearing and so comfy in!! Check out my Etsy shop for clothes, prints, pillows, and more. You can view the shop here . I send a portion of sales in my Etsy shop to Feed My Starving Children.
*MY CARDS AT LOST WILLOW BOOKS ~ A new array of my folded greeting cards are for sale at the lovely new bookstore in Wilmette, Lost Willow, on Central Street! Check out this beautiful store. Hoping to make some of these cards available later on my Etsy shop as well.
*SECOND EDITION OF ASH AND STARLIGHT ~ Find the updated edition of my book here at Chalice or at the Bookshop link.
*MONDAY MANNA ARCHIVES ~ Monday Manna each week is free! Supporting supporters of Monday Manna can view previous Monday Manna reflections here, or for the really old stuff, go to my website.
*WHAT DOES MANNA MEAN? ~ Check out an earlier post to learn how this little bit of “daily bread” got its name…
Wrapping you in prayer, friends. Blessings to each of you, and see you later this summer!
Love and Light,
Arianne
I love hearing from you! You are manna. Reply to this note to send a message directly to my inbox.
I need help making time for prayer. I need help getting started. Thank you for this post that is rich with ideas for both!
Thank you for your beautiful words.💕🙏💕