Lord, Help Us

Themes seem to emerge into awareness while I am doing things other than looking for themes. Like peeling potatoes for potato salad for today’s Memorial Day meal to be shared with my sister, Janis, and my brother-in-love, Larry. Or while I was out riding my bike and meeting a breed of dog that looks a lot like a hyena (Korean Jindu). Sometimes when I stop doing and put my feet up.

Of course, everything is connected so last evening’s phone conversation with a Dharma Sister was already active in awareness. My friend had just attended a 10-day retreat where they were working with mindfulness of breathing. “Know the long and short breath.” She said it was not about the length of the breath but about what you think is a long breath or short breath. She went on to say that we are to know the whole breath body. You need to pay attention to the beginning, the middle, and the ending. They were also contemplating impermanence.

It seems impermanence is perhaps the only true constant!

This morning’s awareness was also shaped by my having listened to Tara Brach after the call with my friend. Tara was speaking about Inner Fire, what she also referred to as Spiritual Aspiration.

I noticed (and after number 2 I kept count) my friend’s repetitive use of a 3-word phrase: LORD, HELP US.

It seemed significant so I mentioned to her that she had used that phrase five times during our conversation. She had not been conscious of using it even once. I asked what the phrase means to her. She had no sense of connection to it.

Make sure you know this blog post is not a criticism of her, or even a comment about her personally. It likely is, however, vital to her and to all of us.

So, immediately following that conversation, it really caught my attention when Tara Brach (about 5 minutes into the talk) told of a man who was searching for something important and began to pray, “Lord, help me,” saying he would dedicate his life to service, he would be faithful, clear, true, strong – if God would answer his prayer. Moments later, the man found the item and quickly prayed again, “Never mind, God, I’ve found it.”

A search for the phrase “God, help us” produced an interesting post by Collins Dictionary: If you say God help us, you mean that you have negative feelings about the person or situation you are talking about.

Other ingredients in this mental stew include a draft I am working on for my next Insights article. The working title is “As a Child” and encourages looking at how experiences humans have while growing up shape beliefs that continue to operate long after they would not hold up to the light of day at an adult stage of our development.

I did find a reference online clarifying that “Lord” in the Old Testament merely refers to someone of a higher rank. Further down the Yellow Brick Road we may look more closely at that nuance.

Looking for an image of the phrase “Lord, Help Us” lead me to a sermon. Listening to part of the sermon, I heard how we sometimes wait a long time before we ask for help, staying in a problem that could have been been taken care of sooner, had we asked for help.

There may not be rock solid answers provided in this post, but these ideas touch me deeply today. Lord, help us may be an invitation for all of us to benefit from greater awareness.