Heather King - Holy Desperation: Praying as If Your Life Depends on It

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2017 Heather King

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotes marked (NAB) are from the New American Bible, revised edition 2008, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. Washington DC. All rights reserved.

Cover art credit: Edel Rodriguez (hand and cross), iStock.com/Matthew Hertel (grunge texture)

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8294-4515-2

Based on the print edition: 978-0-8294-4514-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930455

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The text from my priest friend, whom I call Fr. Damien, is from several taped conversations I had with him and is used with his permission. I chose to quote him at length, partly in homage to a man who has deeply shaped my own spirituality and partly because his take on the fruits of prayer-based actionand on the confluence of the twelve steps and the Gospelsstrikes me as original, moving, and spiritually true. Ive used a pseudonym so as to protect Fr. Damiens privacy and to avoid derogating the twelve-step tradition of anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.

The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.... And you have to start from the ground up.

Pope Francis

In the Flannery OConnor novel Wise Blood, a backwoods seeker named Enoch Emery steals from the county museum a shrunken mummy who he believes is the new jesus.

In the Authors Note to the Second Edition, OConnor noted,

Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them [protagonist] Hazel Motes integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author, Hazels integrity lies in his not being able to.

All prayer arises from incompetence. Otherwise we would have no need of it.

St. Thrse of Lisieux

I once did my best to edit a book on prayer that turned out to be one of the most disturbing, misguided documents I have ever read.

As I worked on this book, I kept thinking, How do you purport to know the mind of God, the heart of God? The really scary thing was that the guy whod written it presented himself as a spiritual director.

Finally I said, Do we really want to be telling people they will go to hell if they make a mistake in prayer? Do we really want to tell people God will punish them if they dont pray the right way?

I said, Youve left no room for the prayer that got me sober. Youve left no room for the prayer of desperation that brought me to God, then to Christ.

That first prayer of desperation was the Lords Prayer, said on my knees in the woods, beneath a pine tree, in back of a friends house in Nashville. I was strung out and half-drunk, and I had a cigarette in my hand. I was thirty-four, and it was the first time in my life I had ever sincerely prayed. I was sincere because I had just had what we drunks call a moment of clarity.

The moment of clarity can take many, many different forms and arise from many situations, but it is basically the moment you admit to yourself that all your obsessive efforts to manage and control your life and the people around you so as to engineer an atom of happiness have never worked, are not working now, and are never going to work. Its the moment when you realize that intelligence backed by willpower, the god of our culture, is not only not a god of any sort but also a deeply ineffectual organizing principle. For me, the moment consisted of the realization that if I didnt stop drinking, I was going to die.

So I prayed the prayer, like millions before me, of the atheist in the foxhole. I said the Lords Prayer, the only prayer besides Now I lay me down to sleep that I knew by heart from childhood Sunday school. I put particular emphasis on Deliver us from evil because part of my moment of clarity was the knowledge that I faced a power of darkness against which no human power could help me.

I knelt there for a moment. I didnt exactly take the prayer back, but I did start to feel self-conscious. I got up, dusted myself off, went back to the house, and mixed another pitcher of gin-and-tonics. But a few months later, my family had an intervention and shipped me off to a treatment center in Minnesota.

I stayed for thirty days. It took me another year to put down the drugs as well. But from that day to this, Ive never had another drink.

You dont have to call God by name. You dont have to believe in him. You dont even have to know youre praying. But if you get on your knees and ask a power greater than you for help, the help will come. It may not come in the form you want or the form youre expecting, but the help will come.

That goes for the drunk with the d.t.s, the prisoner in solitary confinement, the mother of ten, the missionary nun who feels suicidal, or the priest addicted to porn.

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you. That is Christs promise, and Christ never lied.

That is what Christ came for: to be with us in our brokenness and suffering; to help us do a little better. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Healthy people dont need a doctor; sick people do. I came to call not the righteous, but sinners.

So do not let anyoneno spiritual director, no teacher, no family member, no priest even, though we love and revere our priestsever tell you that you are not allowed to approach Christ exactly as you are, how you are, with every thought, every obsession, every fear, no matter how chaotic, angry, petty, lame, despairing, profane, or crazy.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).

Come, all you who have missed the mark, who are dying for lack of meaning, all you who are sick and anxious and lonely and afraid unto death. Come, you who are married to someone you dont love; you who are caring for a parent with Alzheimers while your siblings play golf; you whose mother is a raging alcoholic; you whose husband, son, or father is a pedophile; you whose daughter is a sex worker. Come, you who live in chronic physical pain, you who are perpetually broke, you who live under a totalitarian dictatorship, you who are pregnant with a baby thats not your husbands or boyfriends, you who have not been touched by another human being in years, you who live a life of hidden, silent martyrdom that not one other person sees or cares about.