For Wilshire Baptist Church
Where do you see God? How do you find God? Those questions have been stuck in my mind recently, thanks to a young neighbor and my penchant for chasing musical rabbits.
This story is really LeAnn’s to tell: She was planting spring flowers in the front beds recently when a little girl on a bicycle engaged her in conversation about when she first began riding without training wheels and her late January birthday, which LeAnn and I both have as well. That news seemed to thrill her and she couldn’t wait to tell her daddy. And then she told LeAnn her name: Prudence.
That’s an interesting name, an old-fashioned name really, and not a name attached to anyone I have ever known. But I’ve heard it, and when LeAnn shared that with me, I said, “Oh, like the Beatles’ song, ‘Dear Prudence.’” I hadn’t thought about or heard that song in a long time so I listened to it again and read these lyrics:
Dear Prudence
Won’t you come out to play?
Dear Prudence
Greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It’s beautiful, and so are you
Dear Prudence
Won’t you come out to play?
It sounds like a song tailor made for a little girl on a bicycle named Prudence. But then I read that John Lennon wrote the song after the Beatles and their friends went to India in 1968 to study transcendental meditation (TM) with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Among them was Prudence Farrow, sister of actress Mia Farrow, who Lennon explained later in an interview had sequestered herself in a hut to practice TM. “She’d been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else,” he said. “They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us.” Farrow confirmed that story in another interview and admitted she was more “fanatical” than anyone else.
So, where do we see God; how do we find God? I think sometimes we can try too hard, like the Prudence in the song who separated herself from the world and attempted to conjure God through extreme concentration and focus. I have nothing against spending time in focused prayer, meditation and even fasting. I’ve done that myself as a youth at camp, an adult on retreat or even in the quiet of my room. I can attest that it can help block out the noise and clutter of life and direct the mind and spirit to more important matters. I especially feel the pull toward meditation when I see a labyrinth; I want to set everything aside and go walk it.
That’s OK for a while, but I believe God created us to live in community. I’m a confirmed introvert and enjoy my alone time, but I also know that we experience the love of God most readily and completely in fellowship with each other. And maybe more important, we can’t share that love unless we “come out to play.” Even Jesus, who went into the wilderness to pray and focus, always returned to his community.
And if you’re an introvert like me, you can relax because “community” doesn’t have to be a crowd of people. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a little girl on a bicycle.