Yeah, Basically my Life has Always Been this Weird.

Memories can provoke a whole assortment of responses. Bad memories can depress or frighten and good memories can bring comfort and a smile. Then there's that category of mysterious memories. Today one of these broke to the surface while I was praying and I was moved to an equally mysterious sense of gratitude for God's presence in my life.

The story: as I remember it, it was a warm time of the year, and given how I remember my visual perspective at our side door I imagine I was about 4 or 5 years old. So, we're talking early 1970s. My brother (who would have been about 8 or 9) was playing outside. Now, we lived on one of the busiest roads in our city of 140,000, so there was always all sorts of traffic, including pedestrians. As my brother played, a young man stopped and talked to him and (my brother told me later) asked him if there were anyone else at home with him. He told the man yes, that I was home too. He fetched me, and we stood outside on the sidewalk. In my mind's eye I remember this young man as looking like a hippie. He had longish curly hair, and he was dressed in white or light clothes. I don't remember anything at all the man said, but he prayed with us. And then he walked on by, and my brother went back to playing, and I stood there for some moments, watching the young man walk on down the street.

There have been moments when I've wondered if he hadn't been an angel. It's more likely that he was a "Jesus Freak" as they were called in those days, those who were saved from the hippie culture and wandered about as spiritual troubadours. But it always struck me that he came to my house and basically sought for me to pray for me.

Right around that time, my mother was divorcing my alcoholic father, and the life that lay ahead of me for the next few years was not to be filled with happy memories. But throughout my life God has driven these pegs of awareness that people I did not know prayed for me. As if, you know, God had a hand in it or something.

And now, as a Carmelite in formation, I am learning to pray as God leads. May I never discount the odd one-off prayer here and there for a stranger or for someone God brings to mind. A humble act offered in love God can use to fulfill plans that we cannot begin to comprehend.