[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 116 (Friday, July 29, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1451-E1452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                59TH NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST--PART III

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. PAUL C. BROUN

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 29, 2011

  Mr. BROUN.

       My first job was in Nashville at a theme park, managing a 
     live show that featured barnyard animals playing musical 
     instruments. I'm not making this up. I had a piano playing 
     pig, named Pigarace. I had a duck that played the drum named 
     Bert Bachquack. You can imagine how proud my parents were.
       I had my embarrassments and my setbacks, but I kept 
     writing. I moved to Los Angeles. I got an opportunity in 
     television. I married. We had two beautiful sons. I had 
     purpose in my life, and I worked like I'd seen my father 
     work, with pride and with passion. I'd won a multi-year 
     contract with a thriving company. I bought an old home and 
     remodeled it; I was promoted to producer. Except for an 
     occasional mishap with my tie, life was sweet.
        Then the Writer's Guild went out on strike, which caused 
     the company I worked for to void its contract with me. The 
     strike went on forever, and when it was over the company was 
     barely there anymore. I was out of work, my savings were 
     gone. No one would return my phone calls--I'm sure that's 
     never happened where you work.
        I kept trying, of course. I was always good at trying. But 
     one day I was sitting at my desk and I was staring at 
     nothing, my stomach in a knot, my hands trembling, and I 
     realized I was breaking down, as my father had. I feared I 
     had failed my father, and my mother and my grandmother. And 
     my greatest fear was that I would fail my sons. I was afraid 
     they would see me come apart, as I had seen my father come 
     apart, and it would be something they could never forget.
       I got down on my knees; I had nowhere else to go. And I 
     prayed a simple prayer. I said ``Lord, all I care about right 
     now are those boys. And maybe they don't need to grow up in a 
     house with a tennis court and a swimming pool. Maybe they 
     need a little house with one bathroom, or no bathrooms at 
     all. Maybe they need to see what a man does when he gets 
     knocked down, the way my father showed me. But I pray, if I 
     go down, let me go down not on my knees, but with my flag 
     flying.''
       And I got up and I began to write the words that led to 
     ``Braveheart.''
       Great writers like Robert Frost and Jane Austin have said 
     that an ending that does not surprise the writer won't 
     surprise the reader. When I wrote about William Wallace 
     standing on a battle field ready to die for what he believed, 
     I felt it and when I came to the end I wept.
       Was that moment of prayer the single determining factor in 
     the arc of my whole life? Of course not. My teacher and 
     mentor in college, the great Thomas Langford, of Duke 
     University, once told us in class that no decision in our 
     lives stands alone; the trajectory of all other decisions 
     we've ever made points our direction for the future.
       Our lives are unfolding stories, they are moving pictures. 
     If we took a freeze frame of Golgotha, on the day that Jesus 
     was crucified, and showed that picture to anyone unfamiliar 
     with the story and asked them to judge who the victor was in 
     that scene, they'd be unlikely to say: ``The one hanging on 
     the cross in the middle.''
       It was from that cross that Jesus cried, ``My God! Why have 
     you forsaken me?''
       That cry does not amaze me. What does amaze me is that 
     while one of the two thieves hanging on either said of Jesus 
     mocked Him, the other acknowledged the justice of his fate 
     and asked Jesus for help; and Jesus, in the agonies of 
     crucifixion, told him, ``Today you will be with me in 
     Paradise.'' That does more than amaze me. It makes me believe 
     that any power that could enable Jesus to say that, then, 
     could do anything.
       And it seems to me that Jesus' response is the answer to 
     every prayer that thief never prayed. If God is God, then God 
     knows our prayers whether we pray them or not.
       So why pray the prayers? To me, it's not because God needs 
     to know my prayers, but because I do.
        Prayer sifts us like sand. Take any moment of our lives; 
     take this one. Here, in a room resonant with power. Did we 
     come this morning because we want to feel a closeness to 
     power? Do we come before God because what we truly want is to 
     use the ultimate power we imagine God has? Or do we fall to 
     our knees to admit the truth of our weakness--and stand 
     again, in the strength of that truth?
       Jesus said the truth will set us free, and He said the 
     truth is: God is love.
       It seems to me that the prayer that comes from Love is the 
     prayer that goes to God.
       My father once told me a story of a man drowning in the 
     ocean. He cried out, ``Oh God! If you save me, I will spend 
     the rest of my life in serving You!'' A few moments later a 
     boat appeared and he was pulled from the water, and on the 
     way back to shore the man lifted his eyes to heaven and said, 
     Of course You do understand that I meant ``in

[[Page E1452]]

     an advisory capacity.'' But life does not give us the option 
     of Advisory Capacity.
       Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace that in a battle, one man 
     throwing down his weapon and running away can panic a whole 
     army, and in a panic, one man lifting up the flag and running 
     back toward the enemy can rally a whole army, and no one but 
     God knows what will happen, and when.
       What if prayer is the way to glimpse God's true 
     intentions--the divine purpose for each of us? I'm no 
     theologian. I'm not looking for logic; I'm only trying to 
     find an understanding for my experience that prayer matters. 
     Does it change the mind of God? I don't know. I can only tell 
     you that it changes me.
       When I was a boy we sang a hymn called ``Footsteps of 
     Jesus.'' Not everyone grew up as I did. I'm sometimes 
     described as a rarity, a filmmaker who might speak freely 
     about prayer. But really I'm not so unusual. All of us 
     dreamers in Hollywood are keenly aware of the falseness of 
     fame, the fleeting nature of beauty, the illusions of power. 
     And when I pray with or for my friends, my first concern is 
     not whether they follow the footsteps of Jesus, but whether I 
     do.
       If I've led you to believe my life is any example of 
     righteousness, then maybe you're not familiar with the 
     Tennessee talent for stretching the truth. And even if I 
     could have stolen Mrs. Carter's Bible, I couldn't have kept 
     it. You might own the pages but you don't own the Bible until 
     you've lived it.
       Some of you here lead nations. Some of you here lead the 
     world. All of us here have one heart inside us, and it is in 
     that one heart where the whole battle is fought.
       There are as many ways to approach the great questions of 
     life as there are people on the earth. But every one of us 
     must stand alone before all that made us, and all that we 
     have been, and that we might be. And dying in your bed, many 
     years from now, would you not trade all the days from that 
     day to this for one chance, just one chance, to open your 
     heart before God Almighty, and to tell Him, ``I will lose my 
     life, and I will find it by loving in all the ways You lead 
     my heart to love.''
       You have a prayer, pray it. Amen.
       Congressman Miller: Thank you, Randall. Thank you for 
     inspiring all of us. And now it is my honor to introduce my 
     President, our President, the President of the United States 
     of America. We have an expression in Florida that you can 
     walk shoulder to shoulder with someone even if you don't see 
     eye to eye. That's the prayerful spirit in which we gather 
     today. It is the genius of our founders that we have one 
     President at a time and it is the higher genius of the 
     Scriptures that we are to pray for our leaders that we may 
     all lead quiet and peaceable lives. Mr. President, first we 
     thank you for your attendance and the strong support that you 
     have given this event and all of the activities that surround 
     it. I speak for all members of Congress here and for millions 
     across our country and around the world, we pray for you each 
     day as you lead our country. Ladies and gentlemen, the 
     President of the United States, Barack Obama.
       President Barack Obama: Thank you so much. To the co-
     chairs, Jeff and Ann; to all the members of Congress who are 
     here, the distinguished guests who have traveled so far to be 
     here this morning; to Randall for your wonderful stories and 
     powerful prayer; to all who are here providing testimony, 
     thank you so much for having me and Michelle here. We are 
     blessed to be here.
       I want to begin by just saying a word to Mark Kelly, who's 
     here. We have been praying for Mark's wife, Gabby Giffords, 
     for many days now. But I want Gabby and Mark and their entire 
     family to know that we are with them for the long haul, and 
     God is with them for the long haul.
       And even as we pray for Gabby in the aftermath of a tragedy 
     here at home, we're also mindful of the violence that we're 
     now seeing in the Middle East, and we pray that this violence 
     in Egypt will end and that the rights and aspirations of the 
     Egyptian people will be realized and that a better day will 
     dawn over Egypt and throughout the world.
       For almost 60 years going back to President Eisenhower, 
     this gathering has been attended by our President. It's a 
     tradition that I'm proud to uphold, not only as a fellow 
     believer but as an elected leader whose entry into public 
     service was actually through the church. This may come as a 
     surprise, for as some of you know, I did not come from a 
     particularly religious family. My father, who I barely knew--
     I only met once for a month in my entire life--was said to be 
     a non-believer throughout his life.
       My mother, whose parents were Baptist and Methodist, grew 
     up with a certain skepticism about organized religion, and 
     she usually only took me to church on Easter and Christmas--
     sometimes. And yet my mother was also one of the most 
     spiritual people that I ever knew. She was somebody who was 
     instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me 
     constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas 
     upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness 
     and fair play.
       And it's because of her that I came to understand the equal 
     worth of all men and all women, and the imperatives of an 
     ethical life and the necessity to act on your beliefs. And 
     it's because of her example and guidance that despite the 
     absence of a formal religious upbringing my earliest 
     inspirations for a life of service ended up being the faith 
     leaders of the civil rights movement.
       There was, of course, Martin Luther King and the Baptist 
     leaders, the ways in which they helped those who had been 
     subjugated to make a way out of no where, and transform a 
     nation through the force of love. There are also Catholic 
     leaders like Father Theodore Heshburg and Jewish leaders like 
     Rabi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Muslim leaders and Hindu 
     leaders. Their call to fix what was broken in our world, a 
     call routed in faith, is what led me just a few years out of 
     college to sign up as a community organizer for a group of 
     churches on the Southside of Chicago. And it was through that 
     experience working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal 
     the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus 
     Christ for myself and embrace Him as my Lord the Savior.
       Now, that was over 20 years ago. And like all of us, my 
     faith journey has had its twists and turns. It hasn't always 
     been a straight line. I have thanked God for the joys of 
     parenthood and Michelle's willingness to put up with me. In 
     the wake of failures and disappointments, I have questioned 
     what God had in store for me and have been reminded that 
     God's plans for us may not always match our own short-sided 
     desires. And let me tell you, these past two years, they have 
     deepened my faith. The presidency has a funny way of making a 
     person feel the need to pray. Abe Lincoln said, as many of 
     you know, ``I have been driven to my knees many times by the 
     overwhelming conviction that I have no place else to go.''
       Fortunately, I'm not alone in my prayers. My pastor friends 
     like Joel Hunter and T.D. Jakes come over to the Oval Office 
     every once in a while to pray with me and to pray for the 
     nation. The chapel at Camp David has provided consistent 
     respite for fellowship. The director of our Faith-based and 
     Neighborhood Partnership's office, Joshua DuBois, a young 
     minister himself, starts my morning off with meditations from 
     Scripture.
       Most of all, I've got friends around the country--some who 
     I know, some who I don't know--but I know there are friends 
     who are out there praying for me. One of them is an old 
     friend named Kaye Wilson. In our family we call her Mama 
     Kaye. And she happens to be Malia and Sasha's Godmother. And 
     she has organized prayer circles for me all around the 
     country. She started small with her own Bible study group, 
     but once I started running for President, and she heard what 
     they were saying about me on cable, she felt the need to pray 
     harder. By the time I was elected President, she said, ``I 
     just couldn't keep up on my own. I was having to pray eight, 
     nine times a day just for you.'' So she enlisted help from 
     around the country.
       It's also comforting to know that people are praying for 
     you who don't always agree with you. Tom Coburn, for example, 
     is here. He is not only a dear friend but also a brother in 
     Christ. We came into the Senate at the same time. Even though 
     we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of 
     what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition 
     that we pray to and serve the same God. And I keep praying 
     that God will show him the light and he will vote with me 
     once in a while. It's going to happen, Tom. A ray of light is 
     going to beam down.
       My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me 
     over these last few years. All the more so, when Michelle and 
     I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are 
     reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other 
     people say about us but whether we're being true to our 
     conscience and true to our God. ``Seek first his Kingdom and 
     his righteousness and all these things will be given to you 
     as well.''
       As I travel across the country folks often ask me--what is 
     it that I pray for? And like most of you, my prayers 
     sometimes are general: ``Lord, give me the strength to meet 
     the challenges of my office.'' Sometimes they're specific: 
     ``Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first 
     dance where there will be boys. Lord, have that skirt get 
     longer as she travels to that dance.''
       But while I petition God for a whole range of things, there 
     are a few common themes that do occur. The first category of 
     prayer comes out of the urgency of the Old Testament prophets 
     and the Gospel itself. I pray for my ability to help those 
     who are struggling. Christian tradition teaches that one day 
     the world will be turned right side up and everything will 
     return as it should be. But until that day, we're called to 
     work on behalf of a God that shows justice and mercy and 
     compassion to the most vulnerable.

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