Help! I need somebody! Lindsay McKay March 25th, 2018

John 12:12-16 12 The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord— the King of Israel!” 14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written:

John 12:12-16 15 “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” 16 His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

Hosanna

Excerpt from Anne Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow [Imagination] is from God. It is part of the way we understand the world. I think it’s okay to imagine God and grace the best you can. Some of the stuff we imagine engages and connects and calls for the very best in us to come out. Other imaginings disengage us, and shut us down. My understanding is that you get to choose which of your thoughts to go with. Imagining God can be so different from wishful thinking, if your spiritual experiences change your behaviour over time. Have you become more generous, which is the ultimate healing? Or more patient, which is a close second? Did your world become bigger and juicier and more tender? Have you become ever so slightly kinder to yourself? This is how you tell.

Help. A lifelong friend, a staunch agnostic, has asked me to pray for her daughter, Angie, who has young children and a diagnosis of aggressive lung cancer, the kind that continues to grow tumours in the midst of chemotherapy, I close my eyes and say in silence, “I hold this family in Your light. I pray for them to get their miracle, and to have stamina, for them to be okay today, for their love and amazing senses of humour to help them come through, although if You have a minute, I’d like to know: What on earth could You be thinking? That prayer and my friendship are pretty much all I’ve got to offer. I wish I had a magic wand and could tap Angie on the head with it, and the cancer would be gone and her kids would get to grow up with a mother. Even better, I wish God had a magic wand. I’ve never seen evidence of it. But as I’ve written in various other places, I have seen miracles, although they always take too long to make themselves known, if you ask me.

Also, I’ve seen grace manifest as spiritual WD-40, as water wings, as ribbons of fresh air in tight, scary rooms. And I’ve witnessed the intervention of goofy angels, the poor short-straw angels who seem to draw me. I have seen many people survive unsurvivable losses, and seen them experience happiness again. How is this possible? Love flowed to them from their closest people, and from their community, surrounded them, sat with them, held them, fed them, swept their floors. Time passed. In most cases, their pain evolved slowly into help for others. The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. / I awoke and saw that life was service. / I acted and behold, service was joy.” -Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Let’s start a revolution Why do we find it so difficult to ask for help?

A Mirror is Harder to Hold You could stay a while longer We could stay up and talk about last summer We could go down to the water Watch the sunset going under

A Mirror is Harder to Hold It’s not that I’m a stranger to lonely moments I’ve had my share of those Please don’t go, please don’t leave me alone A mirror’s so much harder to hold

A Mirror is Harder to Hold I could try and point the finger But the glass points in my direction Sure you’ve got your sharp edges But my wounds are from my own reflection

A Mirror is Harder to Hold You’ve got nothing I could ever hold against you I got fatal flaws to call my own Please don’t go, please don’t leave me along A mirror’s so much harder to hold

A Mirror is Harder to Hold I met a man who’s looking for perfection Said he never met a girl who’s good enough His eyes are getting old like they’d love to love again Such a lonely man, such a lonely man

A Mirror is Harder to Hold It’s not that I’m a man who couldn’t love you I know what these arms are for Please don’t go, please don’t leave me alone A mirror is so much harder to hold Please don’t go, please don’t leave me cold

Final thoughts Brene Brown

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things.