Undercover Nun read this essay with great joy.  THIS! I thought.  This is SO TRUE! And it is, very true.  This is something we don’t think about often, especially when we most need to.

We all have seasons when faith rings hollow and prayers seem tinny and meaningless. One such season for me came years ago as I was finishing seminary.  At the time my seminary experience had become an almost exclusively intellectual affair. I learned a lot, but not much about praying or living in Christian community—at least not as much as I had hoped. …

I had a very wise priest. When I asked him for permission to take a brief sabbatical—perhaps six weeks—from church, he said he had seen this sort of thing before and all had turned out well. He told me not to panic. He not only gave me permission to take a sabbatical but granted it with his blessings.

Every Christian has these Desert Times.  We have our Mountaintop Times, too, and they are wonderful.  We need those mountaintop experiences — what Ignatius of Loyola calls consolations — to sustain us through the long slog through the desert, our desolations.

What really sang out to me from this piece was the twofold meaning of having someone pray for us.  First, we ask someone to pray for us, to pray for our health, our welfare.  Second, we ask someone to pray for us, to pray on our behalf when we find prayer unfulfilling or even impossible.  I know that when I am at my most disabled — whether from depression or from chronic physical conditions — this is when I feel my least able to pray.  Some of these times, I can pray for everyone else in the world, just not for myself; this is when I ask others to pray for me, and I become aware of their prayers sustaining me when I don’t feel able to sustain myself.  And some of these times, the only prayers I’m capable of praying are single words like “Please!” or “Help!” or “God?  ENH!!!”

It is good for us to read pieces like this because it’s good to be reminded that we are not alone in our desolations.  While I have my own slog through the desert and you have your own slog through the desert, it happens to both of us.  Our journeys are not the same, but we both know the desert.  It’s also good to be reminded that when we are on the mountaintop, others around us are in the desert, and vice versa.  I don’t need to tear you down from your mountaintop; rather, I can see your joy and find consolation to sustain me through the desert.

It is also good for us to be reminded how important our prayers for each other are.  I may not know when you’re in the desert, but you know that I’m praying for you, always.  Sometimes, it’s all we can do to settle into the hammock of prayers, to feel ourselves surrounded and supported by the prayers of others, woven together for us.

It’s okay to be unable to pray for a time.  I know it’s upsetting, but making yourself feel guilty for being in the desert is not helpful.  No, give yourself permission not to pray.  Give yourself permission to ask others to pray for you.

You are loved.  And it is okay.

I have a stack of Christian Century magazines that I’m behind on reading.  I just finished the 11/2 issue (that’s right: three months ago, for a biweekly publication), and the “from the editors” column made me want to cheer.

It’s a short one, so I urge you to go read it now.  It’s okay, I’ll wait for you.  Here’s the part that most amazed me, an astounding statement from David Beckmann of Bread for the World.

Soup kitchens and other charities aren’t sufficient, argues Beckmann. Only political action can address people’s needs. He reports that when he asks Chris­tians how they help the hungry, most claim to contribute to food charities. But when he asks them how many have contacted their elected officials to urge support for food stamp programs and school lunch programs, very few people raise their hands.

If Congress were to increase current federal food programs by a mere 6 percent, writes Beckmann, it would match the amount of food aid contributed by all food charities combined. Likewise, if it were to trim the food aid by 6 percent, it would be the equivalent of wiping out all the food charities operating in the country.

Six percent.  That’s it.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Food Stamp (SNAP) program costs about $56 billion per year.  Yeah, that’s a lot of money!  With a population of 330 million in the US, it comes out to $170 per person per year; that’s just under 50 cents per day per person.  If you add 6 percent to this, it comes out to $59.4 billion per year, or $180 per person per year.  Still less than 50 cents per day per person in the US. Would I put two quarters into a jar each day to feed my neighbors?  You bet I would!

Why aren’t we asking Congress to support food stamp and school lunch programs?  Why are we allowing Congress to cut off the inalienable right to life for those invisible 45 million Americans?  How can Christians countenance this? 

Jesus says very clearly that when we feed the hungry, we feed Jesus himself.  And when we ignore the hungry, when we push aside the homeless, when we refuse to see those who are stricken by poverty, then we are ignoring and pushing aside and turning a blind eye to Jesus himself.

Poverty scares us.  Hunger frightens us.  Homelessness terrifies us.  We know that we’re only a couple paychecks away from disaster ourselves.  There, but for the grace of God, go I, we think.  And we need to get over that fear already, and live into the abundant life that God promises us.

There IS enough food to go around.  And there IS enough money to go around.  So why are we so afraid to share it?