Tuesday Evening

April 2008

On the first day of spring I walked, shuffled actually, my daily two miles up and down the gentle hills that cradle the rural neighborhood in the Hill Country my family and I have called home for the past 20 years . This daily discipline of walking two miles has become my prayer time, which means this is a half hour I set aside daily to work Step Eleven. On several occasions during the past two decades I’ve even experienced some rather profound epiphanies, one of which guided me to write a book on Psalm 23 and another which empowered me to surrender my daughter to none other than Mary the mother of Jesus. A year or so after this prayerful surrender of my worry regarding my once-struggling daughter, she graduated from college magna cum laude and went on to become the good and noble woman she is today. The God of my own understanding has found me countless times in the midst of working Step 11 on a dusty country lane named appropriately enough "The Old Road". And after each such encounter with holiness, I typically walk away blessed with the gift of at least a bit more clarity and always a great deal more hope.

Not surprisingly, the first day of spring summoned me once again to my prayer walk on legs made stiff and more than a little awkward by a cerebral hemorrhage that came precariously close to transitioning me out of this life. And I’d no more than begun the daily mantra of: “Create in me a clean heart O God and put a new and right spirit within me" when my precocious Westie, Rosa Blanca, demonstrated a most unhealthy curiosity in a small, bloody bone that lay crushed in a shallow rut. I studied the bone only long enough to decide it was the hind quarter of a cottontail. I refused to give much serious thought to this tiny bit of evidence to the harsh, even cruel, reality that we human beings have for so long imposed ourselves upon what was once a pristine habitat for some of God’s most beautiful creatures: whitetail deer, gray and red foxes, red squirrels and small bunnies . Likely, it was because I had entered into prayer that I paused to feel my spirit being tugged ever so gently by the cruel suffering of innocence.

What’s this really about? I asked myself. Am I becoming an overly sentimental fool as the result of the massive stroke I suffered 15 months ago? "Remember", I whispered to myself, "You and old Pancho, Granddaddy’s border collie spent countless hours hunting cottontails in your childhood. So what is this?" I asked a second time. And as I moved on down the road with Rosa Blanca tugging hard on the leash, I heard someone, perhaps the wind or the Spirit or both simultaneously, say: “It’s the prayer. It’s the prayer.” But only after giving this seemingly mundane experience even more thought did I “get it” that by seeking conscious contact with the God of my own understanding through daily meditation, I was connecting my consciousness to that Power who joins everything, even crippled old men like me and tiny bunny rabbits, to Himself (or to Herself) for the great purposes of love. This bit of awareness brought tears to my eyes and my knees to the floor in yet another prayer. And there is no telling where this latest prayer will take me but wherever it summons me to follow, it will be the right place for me to be and it will be the locus of sanity and serenity where fear has yet to gain a foothold.

Bob Lively
boblively@mac.com

Bob Lively is on the adjunct faculty of Seton Cove Spirituality Center and is teacher- in- residence at first Presbyterian Church of Austin, where he teaches on Sunday mornings.

Each month on a random Saturday, you can read Bob's spiritual message on the Faiths and Beliefs page in the Life and Arts section of the Austin American Statesman.