Good Morning everyone. Our next story about prayer is, again, taken from Taking Flight: A Book of Story Meditations by Anthony de Mello, S.J.
This is about a hardworking cobbler who is having trouble fitting in his morning prayer time. Please listen mindfully to this story.
“A cobbler came to Rabbi Isaac of Ger and said, “Tell me what to do about my morning prayer. My customers are poor men who have only one pair of shoes. I pick up their shoes late in the evening and work on them most of the night; at dawn there is still work to be done if the men are to have their shoes ready before they go to work. Now, my question is: What should I do about my morning prayer?”
“What have you been doing till now?” the Rabbi asked.
“Sometimes I rush through the prayer quickly and get back to my work – but then I feel bad about it. At other times I let the hour of prayer go by. Then too I feel a sense of loss and every now and then, as I raise a hammer from the shoes, I can almost hear my heart sign, ‘What an unlucky man I am, that I am not able to make my morning prayer.’”
Said the Rabbi, “If I were God I would value that sigh more than the prayer.”
What do you hear when you listen to this story? When I listen to it, I hear a dissonance –the cobbler’s understanding of the form and the function of his prayers working against each other. Like him, sometimes, I think that my prayers must have words, even if they are not said, in order for them to be a proper prayers. I need to realize that, not only was the cobbler’s sigh a prayer, so was his life – he was living his life to help the poor! We may not see these things as prayers…but God does.
I was going to ask you to join me in a “wordless” prayer, but I realize that’s not a very practical idea! There are many reasons why we might be called to pray without words. Like the cobbler is could be time or we may just at a loss for words. Please join me in listening to a very powerful message about a “wordless” prayer by a man whose heart was so broken he could not find the words to pray, and please remember it when you seem unable to find your own words for prayer.
