prayer in the night

i love this book prayer in the night by tish harrison warren (who also authored liturgy of the ordinary).  the subtitle is "for those who work or watch or weep".

if we can't sleep, are traveling, working, grieving, or in any way keeping strange hours, we're not alone. 

i'm keeping strange hours the last couple of days, tending a slow-to-heal sore ankle and a sudden bout of what is turning out to be food poisoning (i know better than to eat spinach dip that's not sitting on a bowl of ice at an hours long holiday party, but i digress).

and i had to laugh out loud because, after the book sat on my nightstand unread for several weeks, i happened to pick it up last night (or this morning, i can't remember which) and the bookmark happened to be on the page in which harrison writes, "...i wonder if we might meet this same grace in lesser crises...can God be found among the more mundane miseries of sprained ankles and stomach bugs?  could these small 'warnings from the reaper' (of our mortality) not be mere tedium to be endured, the potholes in our well-paved roads of success and autonomy, but instead become a way our bodies tutor us in reality?  can our lungs and toes and wrinkles instruct us in humanity and humility?  we are frail.  none of us are the sum of our achievements.  all of us are creatures who stink and sweat and wear out and are utterly loved.  knowing this brings freedom."

i read about her thoughts on supernatural beings, the surrendered vulnerability of sleep, and how our bodies (though ultimately mortal) heal themselves.  these were all things i had been thinking about--isn't it wild when it feels as though a book speaks directly to your thoughts?  

and she's funny.  as a priest in the anglican church, a campus minister, and an associate rector working with addicts, she's developed not only depth by way of her own suffering, but a sense of humor along the way.  she reminds me that Jesus really does understand our quotidien lives.  after all, he spent several unchronicled decades making furniture.

so the next time you're awake at an odd hour, not only are you not alone, you're in good company with over half the world of mortals.  as the grip on our self-sufficiency falls away, we find ourselves held--minute as we are--in the palm of the cosmos.  trish gives a nod to mike cosper's book recapturing the wonder, who calls us to consider the realm beyond material understanding--larger than what we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.  the universe is enchanted.  "to endure the mystery, " he writes, "we have to learn to surf the teeming ways of wonder."

and that, my friends, is why i'm up eating pancakes at 2:21 in the morning.