Senate prayers
Catherine Marshall, the writer of the novel, Christy, also wrote the biography of her husband, Peter Marshall. He served as chaplain of the U.S. Senate from 1947 to the beginning of 1949, when he suddenly died. Catherine gathered copies of prayers he offered as a minister and those he offered in the Senate. They came out in a book in 1954. Somewhere in my wanderings I bought the book, probably at a yardsale. The edition I have is from Guideposts, copyright 1963. The book has been in a box for years. I got it out, thinking I’d donate it to the Little Free Library. Of course I opened the book first, and found where I had left a bookmark, in the Senate prayers. The bookmark is a piece of stiff paper with a star in a circle at the top, the sort that you’d find in a child’s Sunday School class. It’s roughly cut out, quickly and “good enough”. I found this bookmark, along with many other interesting bits of paper and flat objects, in a used book sometime. It’s historic, like the book itself.
I read through most of the prayers at some point; it was a challenge to stay focused. I don’t normally use set prayers to talk with God. Instead I have a basic format and the words come out as I’m talking to him, not reciting. Plus reading a prayer, even reading it aloud, doesn’t do it justice. Real prayer comes from the heart of the person speaking, to the heart of God. It has power that can’t be distilled or pinned to a page.
What’s more interesting, for the Senate prayers, are the background notes Catherine Marshall added. Most of the written prayers don’t have notes, and a large chunk of prayers were never written down at all and so are missing. But the ones that have notes tell of concern that God will help us listen and do what is helpful, humble, and honest. The notes give valuable context not present in the prayers themselves. Peter Marshall tried not to address specific Senate issues in his prayers; the result is a corpus of pleas to God that could come from any of us. I notice lots of asking God to remind us, comfort us, listen to us, help us do better; grant us discipline, forgive us, help us forgive and help others. I don’t read much gratitude.
In my own prayers I try to start with thanking God, always, before anything else. Dear Heavenly Father, we love Thee. Thank you for… all the things, all the people, all the places we have, our relationships, forgiveness, and time to try again. I try to be very specific: thank you for helping me get this specific bunch of errands done today. It bothers me that in Peter Marshall’s prayers in the Senate, he asked and asked, but only rarely thanked God. He tried for humility and grace, constantly seeking guidance, a sense of God’s care. He tried to keep the Senators, the most powerful men in the world at the time, humble; he reminded them in his prayers of all the things they were responsible for and needed to do better. But there was not much recognition of how blessed they were and how it’s thanks to God that they were in their positions.
