Writing
For many of us, prayers and praying don’t touch our lives much anymore. If you operate outside of a faith tradition, there are precious few experiences in public life that include a prayer. And because of this, so many of us have lost the connection to, as well as any models of, what prayers are or could be. To me, it’s sticky territory to presume anything about where or to whom prayers go. Thats between you and whatever theological ground you choose to stand on. But this shouldn’t mean the act of being prayerful isn’t a useful, meaningful, and clarifying action available to all human beings, within or without religious traditions. Prayer is likely as old as humanity and so I hold it as a tool we can all legitimately claim for the kit of parts needed to build more sacredness into our lives. Perhaps prayers are there, already a memory in your DNA?
I hold prayers as poetry, as love, as compassion, and gratitude transmuted into action. They are a radical statement of inter-being and a deposit made to the account of our shared state of interconnection. I think of Prayers as energy transfer conduits; unseen containers capable of holding the shape and momentum of our spoken or thought in a flash intentions. With them you can direct your energy to Spirit, to source, to rosy cheeked house finch sitting on the telephone wire, to your withered handed grandmother releasing her last breath into the world, to your newly car driving 16 year old with the lead foot, to the beating heart inside your own chest that is aching from grief and loss.
There’s no boundaries of inclusion or exclusion, because the framework of interconnection means we’re already touching bits, informing each other on an atomic/energetic level that is preconfigured, already loaded, is the water we’re swimming in…that’s why it’s so tricky to to see it. Prayer helps me remember it. It helps me feel into the fact that every being and every manner of living thing is sharing space with me. We’re all local to each other, all natives of this place we call home. That’s powerful right? We are powerful beings of great influence. One of my prayers is that we reclaim the wisdom to use it wisely. 💫