Usually, I listen to music or news in my car; the exception is early Sunday morning’s commute to church. The silent drive provides me a fitting time for prayer and homily rehearsing. One Sunday while preparing to leave I was streaming Breakfast with the Beatles through my phone. (I know: you’re all shocked!) The windows in my car needed defrosting, so I started my car, placed my phone on the front seat, and walked down the driveway to get the papers. I returned to what I intended to be a silent car, but my Bluetooth mode was enabled, and it started playing Blackbird. I went turn the music off, but the song quickly evoked the memory of a beloved adolescent survivor of sexual abuse. This song and metaphor had provided her with hope and courage.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly … take these sunken eyes and learn to see … all your life you were only waiting for this moment to arise … to be free.
Paul McCartney cited the civil rights movement in our country, a time of deep and violent struggle, as the inspiration for this song. I then realized that the song was my prayer, not to God, but from God. What I once prescribed for another was directed to me amid personal and pastoral struggles.
I turned the radio off at the song’s conclusion with the awareness of God’s presence in struggles – mine, our church’s, our nation’s. Blackbird was calling me to acknowledge those struggles to God and recognize them as opportunities to arise, to see, to be free, and to fly, through the darkness, through our woundedness.
It’s not that God speaks through the Beatles. God speaks through everything (and everyone) we truly love, if we are listening! I thought I was getting into my car to pray, to listen to God. What I hadn’t realized was that before I got into the car I was already at prayer! When we try to pray, or move toward prayer, we are already praying. Often the distraction, which rattles our sense of control and moves us to let go, is the prayer or its direction.
(See: https://stbrigidsnaz.org/reflections/praying-with-the-Eagle/)
Richard Rohr puts it perfectly: “It’s not like I went to pray, but prayer was happening, and I was there!” (The Naked Now, p102 )
Every moment provides an opportunity to listen to God, to be present to the Divine Presence. Such moments are neither fanciful nor antiseptic. As moments of inner truth, they often disturb before, or even if, they comfort. They urge us to arise when we would rather slumber, turn and see, rather than remain blind.
We need not wait for a moment or for a special time. We need no book, no words, no church, no priest. We need not change ourselves beforehand; those moments will transform us. The time is ever NOW, anytime and anywhere, to be in touch with God, to be aware of a pervasive, loving presence, to be fully alive.