Yesterday I had a long-awaited yard sale, the upshot of which was this: I never want to have another one. Of course, as with anything, there were some lovely moments.
Here’s a little story about one of those. A Pakistani woman showed mild interest in a stand mixer we had for sale, priced at $15. She asked if I could take less for this nearly new mixer. That was the nature of the sale, for the most part. Almost anything more than a dollar seemed to be above people’s budgets. Anyway, I said I could do $10. Her husband said, no. Five. What?! No. I already took a third off the price. Back and forth we went.
“I already took five dollars off!” I said.
“We are students,” he said. They looked very well dressed.
I said, “You have a better car than I do.”
“Oh, it’s 2011, nothing fancy.”
“But it’s red!” I replied. More back and forth. I suggested $8. No.
Finally, he said, “If you give it to us for five dollars, my wife will pray for you every day.”
“Really?” Stopped in my tracks, feeling all lit up inside, a big smile jumped onto my face.
“Yes,” she said, “every day for the rest of my life.” Wow. Every day? For the rest of her life?? I am healthy and safe and lucky already, but it sounded very nice to have someone out there in the world, praying for me every single day, when all I’d be doing in return would be taking a full two thirds off the price of a stand mixer.
“Promise?”
“Yes. What is your name?” I told her and she repeated that she would pray for me. Every day, for the rest of her life. She seemed like a lovely, sincere person; and even though it seems highly unlikely that she will remember to pray for me every day, forever, I suppose it was the offer that charmed me. (One might ask why the husband was not offering to pray for me himself. Does he not also pray?) And others might say, oh, they really played off of your need to see people as good. It’s true. I do want that, it’s true, maybe more than anything else.
Well. I think you have already figured out that I gave them the mixer, which my son had bought and which he already thought was priced too low at $15, and I gave it to them for $5. It would have gone against my nature to not.
It was the highlight of the day. It reminded me of the time I encountered “Ida.” You can revisit that letter here. If you don’t recall and you cannot spare three minutes to reread it (come on!), she was the woman who came over to me out of the blue, at someone else’s garage sale, and said, “God is telling me to pray for you.” That had a great effect on me, too.
So now I have two women I don’t even know—”Ida” and the lovely Lilah—praying for me (I hope). The irony is that I am not much of a one for praying, myself. So why do I find the idea of someone else praying for me so very touching? Well, it’s not as if I am against prayer. Maybe I will once again reevaluate the whole thing of praying. Maybe I can figure out a way to pray without feeling fake or finding myself back in the uncomfortable skin of the tiny, shy, fearful, uniformed 7-year-old Catholic school girl I once was. Hail Mary, full of grace, God is with thee . . .
Oh, I have intentional thoughts for people who need help. And whenever I hear a siren, I murmur, “Help them, help them, help them.” Minimal praying. I guess you could say I’m a minimalist pray-er. But I feel like these two encounters might be telling me something. We shall see. It won’t be the Hail Mary that I’ll be saying suddenly, with fervor, even though I can still partially recite it from memory. No, it will have to be something else. I’m told there are many ways of praying, after all.
The Summer Day - Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” - Mahatma Gandhi
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.” - Kahlil Gibran
“Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.” - Terry Pratchett
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” - Rumi
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Thanks for listening,
Kay
P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the "merry thoughts."
Thank you Kay. Lovely stories and inspiration.
Becki