Sunday, August 14: Prayer for Children who are Hungry and Struggle to Focus in School.

Back Story:

At St. Mary’s, we love to eat. Most, if not all of our children, have plenty to eat, and if they skip breakfast or lunch, it’s a choice not a necessity.

In 2011, State funding for free/reduced price breakfast and lunch was cut $300–500 per child (speaker at Faith Summit, St. Martin’s Houston, August 11, 2011). In Cypress, Texas, approximately 25% of the elementary students are signed up for free/reduced price lunches (elementaryschools.org/texas/cypress.html).

Today we are invited to join with faith communities throughout Harris County to pray for children who come to school hungry because of their family’s limited financial resources.

DAY 1 Prayer for Children who are Hungry and Struggle to Focus in School

Did you know that many of the children within our community don’t have enough to eat? In 2009, 24.1% of households with children reported they did not have enough money for food within the last 12 months. While a School Breakfast Program and a National Lunch Program are available in a number of our schools, many children in Harris County do not participate because of the stigma associated with receiving free meals.

School breakfast is not only effective in reducing hunger among needy children, it is also effective in improving nutrition; preventing obesity; improving students’ attendance, attentiveness and achievement. With growing budget challenges facing our families and our schools, it is likely that more of our children will be affected.

Let’s Pray

Father, none of us would want our own children to struggle in school because of a lack of food or proper nutrition. And yet we know this is true for many of the children in our community.

First of all we ask you to help our policy makers to make the right choices for our children as they address this important issue. Give them wisdom and direction from heaven.

Jesus, when your disciples told you that the crowd of 5,000 was hungry, you said, “You give them something to eat.” (Matthew 14:16) Awaken your people across this city to be involved. Raise up advocates who can make a difference in the lives of children, families and schools. (Matthew 9:38)

Give us your heart of compassion for those who are hurting. Fill us with your wisdom, power and grace so that we, your people, can respond in tangible and practical ways. (Isaiah 11:2) All of this we ask in your name, the name of Jesus, and for the sake of the children of our city.

Can We Be The Answer?

Children at Risk wants to see the universal free school breakfast programs made available to every school that has at least 80% of their students living at or below 185% of the federal poverty level. Perhaps you can help. Other Resources Related to Hunger:

The Houston Food Bank: http://www.houstonfoodbank.org

Mission Centers of Houston: http://www.missioncenters.org

Cypress Assistance Ministries http://www.cypressassistanceministries.com/

One community decided to get involved – after hearing a presentation during the first Week of Prayer, a staff member from Sterlingwood Church, Melanie Ayers, went to the Galena Park ISD to lobby for Universal Free School Breakfast. Because of her voice, the information provided by Children at Risk, and all of our prayers, GPISD has instituted this program. Do you know other stories that you can tell about where people are making a difference.

Do you know other stories that you can tell about where people are making a difference?

How is God inviting us to share the abundance of our food with others?

Tomorrow, August 15, the Feast Day of St. Mary the Virgin, we will pray for children from disadvantaged homes.

There’s an app for that

I’ve been praying a lot lately for the families of St. Mary’s the suburban Houston parish where I serve. I’ve been particularly praying about how the parish can best serve them, and how I can serve them as their priest. Monday night I’d joined Momtime, a Monday night fellowship for mothers of all ages, and I came home with my mind busy with prayer requests and thoughts. Right before I was ready to go to sleep, something led me to pick up my iphone and go to the app for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas.

Even though it was past time to go to sleep (I left Momtime past 10, and I understand the conversation lasted into the hours of the next morning), I began scrolling through the various news items, and saw a notice for a lunch at St. Martin’s on Thursday, three days hence. What piqued my interest was that it was called a Faith Summit for a week of prayer and service for our children and youth. I went to the link that showed the prayer guide for daily intercession for the children of Houston, and I was even more curious.

The next day, I sent an email out to the moms of St. Mary’s and our prayer group, the Daughters of the King, inviting them to go with me. I knew it was short notice, but I offered to pay their way and to pay their child care costs. I wanted them to know that I was going on their behalf even if they couldn’t rearrange their schedules to join me.

This is the third annual faith summit and week of prayer for children and youth. Because of the tremendous cuts to educational funding in the state of Texas, this year all of the prayer power is focused on issues of children and education. Some local non-profits which serve children and youth as well as communities of faith sponsor this endeavor. What makes this prayer week different is that it’s focused on needs of our local community. Children at Risk, a Houston research and advocacy group, provides specific information of tangible needs.

I’m inviting all of the people of the parish where I serve to this seven days of prayer for the children and youth who are our neighbors. If we think these neighbors are far away, in the affluent area where I serve, the Cypress area, over 50% of the children served by Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District, the third largest school district in the state of Texas, are eligible for free lunch.

Don’t take my word for it. Go do a little surfing and pondering yourself. What I especially like about the prayer guide is that after it’s given us a prayer focus for the day, it gives us some specific facts about the needs for the children and youth in our area followed by specific prayers that we can use if we wish. What I like the best, however, is after the prayer is the response: Can we be the answer? We are then given specific ways for us to be the answer to prayer.

To bring this important piece of response home, one speaker talked about the importance of God’s people to be faithful in prayer. The speaker reminded us that when we got up off of our knees (either literally or metaphorically) at the end of prayer, we were then standing . This is the posture to go and be an answer to our prayer.

So if you are willing to be an answer, will you join me in prayer this week?

Two men of St. Mary’s, being an answer to prayer as they resurface St. Mary’s playground, a place to play for St. Mary’s children as well as the children of our neighborhood.

How is that rhythm thing working for you?

For this blog to make any sense, you have to read last week’s. I was on an unexpected retreat at Camp Allen as the “chaplain in residence.” I was intentionally exploring the difference between a balanced life and a life lived in rhythm with God.

I was living mindful of being as Spirit led as possible–praying about the people whose lives would intersect with mine as I traveled about Camp Allen, praying about when and what to eat, when to rest and when to walk, when and what to read and to do. It was blissful.

Then. Ahh, the dreaded then. I’d been having some problems with my teeth, and as I wisely cared for them, I’d been praying for God to heal anything amiss. Friday morning, I’d just prayed for healing, and decided to snack on a banana. A banana! I took a bite, and began to chew, when I felt something big and foreign mixing in with the banana. Turns out that a bridge made up of a crown attached to two healthy molars had come loose with the two molars breaking off at the gum line.

That it didn’t hurt was a miracle. The dentist called me back right away with kind words. She gave me a prescription for a healing rinse, and since I already had an appointment for my six month check up on Tuesday, I was set for the next four days of Memorial Day weekend.

But the bliss was gone. For my final thirty hours at Camp Allen, rest had met reality. The rhythm of retreat had taken a most discordant turn. As much as I’d loved for the joyful, peaceful give and take of the past two days to continue, if I couldn’t dance with God when I didn’t like the music I was hearing, I wasn’t much of a dance partner.

Back home this week, one morning as I was walking, I heard a lovely prayer on a podcast I enjoy, On Being. A wise woman (Sylvia Boorstein, a celebrated Jewish-Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, mother, and grandmother) had been interviewed and talked about her practice of metta or loving kindness. Her metta is a time of breathing and stillness as she prays first for herself and then for a variety of others:

May I feel safe. May I feel content. May I feel strong. May I live with ease.

As I’ve followed the rhythm of God this week, this is the beat of the dance God and I are doing. I have some expensive visits to the oral surgeon and then the dentist over nearly the next year. In the meantime I get to go to Austin and dance with my daughter on her birthday and then dance the airport shuffle as I fly to dance with my grandson and his mom and dad. The beat of the rhythm of God for me today is the breath prayer:

May I feel safe. May I feel content. May I feel strong. May I live with ease.

May you feel safe. May you feel content. May you feel strong. May you live with ease.

Moving on to the Fifth Week of Easter

I’m pondering a midlife correction. I was inspired by a column in this week’s Christian Century by Martin Copenhaver called, “In praise of an unbalanced life.”

I’ve taught and preached for years about leading a balanced life. For several years the diocese had me come and do a presentation that I called Sabbathkeeping for the newly ordained clergy.

After reading Martin’s thoughts, I’m rethinking this. Based on his words, I am no longer sure that Scripture tells us to live a balanced life or that Jesus lived a particularly balanced life. The metaphors that Martin uses are that keeping work/rest/play/study/worship balance is like seeing how long I can stand on one foot or how far I can walk with a tray full of glasses before dropping one of them and breaking it.

What we read about in Scripture and see Jesus doing is living fully into the rhythm of life. The Bible tells us to work six days each week and then to cease from working. Scripture sets days for feasting and other days for atonement, and many other days to live the ordinary.

What I see Jesus doing well over and over again, is being in rhythm, as he is fully present wherever he is, for as long as he needs to be. He spends an evening teaching his disciples five chapters worth of last things. Then he spends three or so hours on the cross, three days in the tomb, forty days meeting and greeting and eating post-resurrection, ten days of absence, before day fifty when come fire and wind on Pentecost.

It seems to me today– to be on Jesus’ way, to live a Jesus life, to know the Jesus truth, to ask Jesus to help us do even greater things than he did–knowing he’ll say yes every time that we get our lives lined up with his–it won’t be about balancing on one foot. It will be about being in Jesus rhythm; it will be more like a dance than a balancing act.

Sometime awkward.

Sometimes slow.

Sometimes feeling alone.

Sometimes with a partner.

Sometimes all night long.

Something only tapping our feet.

There will be lots of dancing rooms–

Ballrooms and restrooms. Kitchens and closets. Gardens and offices.

As God would have it, this week I have an unexpected four day retreat at Camp Allen, our diocesan retreat center. Each week they schedule a “chaplain in residence,” clergy or lay, to pray the daily office of Morning and Evening Prayer in All Saints Chapel. We are to be on call for other needs, but my experience has been that for an hour of liturgical prayer, I get twenty three hours of rest and recreation in a cabin by the lake. I’ve decided to take these four days and ponder living in rhythm rather than balance. As I left yesterday to travel here, I grabbed Macrina Wiederkehr’s Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully through the Hours of the Day. I’m using it as my retreat guide these four days.

Balancing or dancing? Some of both? Or something brand new? I’ll let you know.