Allison Campbell Jensen

Gray clouds above promise more snow to white fields below. Spotting green through the windshield, I head for the grove of conifers. And stop. Sigh. Whatever was I doing on my own, tooling around the wintry countryside looking for birds?

Then, alighting on a deep-green branch: Brilliant red body, crested head with a orange beak poking out from black mask—the male cardinal, resplendent, suddenly appeared among deep-green branches. After a moment, he flew away.

“Thank you,” I said aloud.

Then I thought, “Who am I thanking? Who am I talking to?”

At the time, benighted by certain vague ideas of religion—to pray would be to plea for help from a distant bearded male God armed with lightning bolts (how I wish I were kidding)—I did not recognize this conversation as a prayer. Now I do.

There’s plenty to written about prayer, sometimes numbered, like Anne Lamott’s delightful Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, or categorized, as in The Book of Common Prayer that we Episcopalians use: “The principal kinds of prayer are adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession and petition.” Lofty language yet helpful, once translated from church talk: oblation, for example, means to offer oneself to the purposes of God.

But for me, sometimes, prayer simply consists of conversations. One-sided? Not entirely. During a prayer vigil on the Maundy Thursday before I was baptized, I experienced this scene: many cold braided streams rush by me, yet I stand on solid ground.

Naturally, that was in my mind’s eye; “the ear of the heart” is the extra -sensory perception that St. Benedict refers to in his compassionate Rule. To discern another realm—avian or divine—I turn up the attention dial. On my knees in the garden, I see a shadow of a large bird; pretty sure it’s a hawk, although I’d have to look to see which kind. In conversation with a friend, I hear a sentence that seems simple but an unseen shadow accompanies it—a God-nudge, perhaps, to ask a follow-up question.

Hearing the tree-top high pitches of Cedar Waxwings, my eyes follow my ears. Walking and talking on the phone, is that a poke? Although he hasn’t said a word, I look down at a man in his wheelchair. His machine is starting to slip in the slushy snow. I hang up and begin to push. As it turns out, a motorized wheelchair is heavy; more people come to help.

God involved a couple more in that conversation—and, every Sunday and often during the week, conversation—prayer—brings together my faith community. In my church, we together confess we have sinned “by what we have done and by what we have left undone….”—and that’s powerful corporate prayer, a preacher from another denomination told me. Yes—and the effect is like that of the small, square door called nijiriguchi, or “crawling-in entrance,” that guests must use to enter a traditional Japanese tea house: everyone, for a moment, is at the same humble level.

For me, seeking on my own is not the way; together is.