“You’ve Got to Get In to Get Out”

The world will impinge into your need

for silence, into your prayers. In the hardest seconds

of your life, your neighbours will be drunk,

booming hip-hop through thin inconvenient walls.

At the lighting of your candles, in the moment

you need to focus – the apex of your flame,

the voice of the Holy Spirit, someone

will be vacuuming, talking, ringing up change,

a bin wagon bleeping as it reverses, builders

swearing into the distance you put by pulling into

yourself. It sounds like they are calling your name.

~ John Siddique, Recital, Salt Publising, Cambridge, England, UK, 2009

THIS IS MY PRAYER LIFE!

Rarely does a poem capture the essence of one’s experience and one’s vocation – one’s calling. John Siddique caused me to stop – to literally stop, go into myself and completely relate with what he is saying in this short powerful poem.

In our community, where calling means incarnation amongst the world, not cloistered away in a monastery, though to be honest – we sometimes envy the monks! To love people, give yourself away; to be Christ in a world of noise, of distraction, of so much need; to be a people who are ourselves often irreverent to piety in the American religious experience, we find ourselves too busy, over committed and demands of life pulling on us from every direction.

John froze me in my steps – brought me face to face with my reality. I love my world, I love my calling, I love my community, and the many people with whom we journey to discover God beyond religiosity, beyond institution, beyond “ought to’s”. John put the tension into words – things I’d felt at the conscious and unconscious level… caught the essence.

The trick, as Brother Laurence addressed centuries ago is to be with Him in, amongst, while the world goes on around you. This is hard and something I have made progress towards, yet feel so immature and needing to grow further.

Thanks, John, for giving voice to the feelings I did not have words to even begin to define within myself, much less to others.

Note: I want to encourage you to consider this book, Recital. John Siddique puts into words the human experience on so many fronts. He addresses the harsh realities with a gentleness, acceptance, making peace with the disharmonious realities and complexities with which we must come to terms. From death, to parents and children, to love, life and living life, he captures our contemporary reality with a classic depth and reflection not often found today in our cheap veneer culture.