Fist Bumps, Jesus, and Prayer

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During a recent meeting, a client shared with me about how she sometimes ends her contemplative prayer with Jesus. Timidly, she said: “I give Jesus a first bump!” I must have looked startled or at least a bit surprised. “Is that ok?” she added. “Am I being disrespectful? I really don’t mean to be.” “Are you kidding?” I responded. “That is human, and no doubt downright enjoyable for Jesus, just as it is amusing and even comforting for me to hear.”

“Well, I have more to add,” said the woman. She proceeded to tell me that during a workshop on prayer held in her parish the group was divided into small groups of three with a leader who was to move participants into prayer after a short discussion.  While the leader was praying in my client’s small group, she stopped and said, “I’m seeing in my mind’s eye, a fist bump being given. I don’t know to whom or from whom. I just see a fist bump.” My client stiffened in fear but told the group that she might be causing this phenomenon. She relayed that she often gives Jesus a fist bump at the end of her prayer. No sign of the cross. Just a fist bump. The leader of the group and the other members were astonished. 

A couple of years later, my client attended another talk on prayer. The talk was in a different church, and to a different assembly. She did not recognize the speaker who turned out to be the woman who led the small group she had been in years before where she confessed about the fist bump. This main speaker then told my client’s story. She regretted not remembering my client’s name or where she lived, but the story had remained with her about the power of prayer and connection. Immediately, my client raised her hand and identified herself as the woman who gives Jesus the fist bump! You can imagine the plethora of questions that followed. 

Diarmuid O’Murchu, a theologian and priest of the Sacred Heart, is a thinker who presents challenges to us about evolution, creation, time, and the para-normal in many of his works. So, I dipped into a few of his books looking for guidance on this topic. In an essay, Beyond the Boundaries, O’Murchu writes, “Nothing makes sense in isolation anymore. Rigid boundaries stifle rather than protect the truth.” (p.120) Praying with self-imposed boundaries such as believing we must treat Jesus as a royal God or a spiritual mandrake who answers our pleas only by our increased protestations or our promises to do severe penance to get what we need, we are, then, praying within rigid boundaries. Worse yet, when we look askance at persons who praise God differently than we do, or not according to centuries’ old forms, good as they may be, we are judgmental about what is the right way to pray to a God who loves the simple prayer from a simple heart. Does God want or expect prayers with rigid boundaries? Does a prayer formula have more appeal to a God who wants to hear from a loving, often desperate human heart? A heart that utters a prayer coming from deep within like the prayer of the tax collector standing in the rear of the temple asking for mercy for his sins. (Luke 18:9-14)

Then I came across a friend who shared a prayer that involved her recently deceased husband. Her sons could not find pins for bunk beds they needed to assemble after Dad’s death. She and her sons looked everywhere. They took apart the workbench and the many toolboxes Dad had in his workshop. They tore apart the basement and garage where the husband stored hardware. No pins. My friend finally said: “Let me text Dad.” “C’mon Mom. This can’t work. The pins were accidentally thrown out.” She texted her deceased husband anyway. And then she thought: What about that tiny red box over there in a shadowy corner of the basement? My husband never used that little toolbox. The pins were there! She texted a thank you to her husband. The sons were now in awe that Mom had made a prayer through a text! 

Another client of mine was on retreat using a hermit cabin and descending into the depths of the presence of God. She went into the woods with her cellphone and turned on the app for music. Suddenly, the Ink Spots came on. Remember them from the 40’s and 50’s? She began to dance to their engaging music—alone in the forest—at 92 years of age—raising her arms in prayer and singing joyously, “I Don’t Want to Start the World on Fire,” with the Ink Spots while picking flowers and throwing them into the closing twilight of a day. “Was this a prayer?” she asked. “A prayer?” I responded. “It was liturgical dance, song, art, and love all in one. It was a symphony of prayer!”

Reflection

When we pray with a full heart spontaneously letting our feelings explode, we will draw beauty to us or we will see it where we may have missed it before and when we raise our soul in gratitude through a prayerful fist bump, text, or even a secular tune, we are praising God. And God must be smiling at our abandonment to something so effortless and yet so beautiful. God is with us at a wedding of sorts: Fist-bumping guests, dancing with everyone to favorite songs, texting to find out when the food will arrive. Oh my! God is having a great time! So, why not join God often with an out-of-the-box kind of prayer? However your heart is moved to connect with others and with God, do it. Not only is God waiting for our humanness to be part of our prayer, but those we love who are now on the other shore are ready to help us as well.

When have you experienced a unique result of a heartfelt prayer?

Do you believe God can show you special insights and provide a gift through creative prayer?

May each of you, my faithful readers and my Anonymous Angels, enjoy fist bumping, texting, and dancing with our ecstatic God!