-
Prayer Is …
I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer lately, how I used to view it and how I view it now. And this further pondering is no wonder; we are studying ‘signs of growth’ on the spiritual path in my Spiritual Direction training … ‘birth-quakes,’ reconciling and renewing growth spurts along the spiritual journey (Rosalie Norman-McNaney). Life is God’s ‘earth school.’ There is much to learn if we pay attention. To me, prayer used to be all about thanking and asking. In fact, when I looked up ‘types of prayer,’ the first thing that came up were ‘Five Forms of Prayer:’ blessing and adoration, petition, intercession, thanksgiving and praise. These are all wonderful. Ways of speaking to God. But I’ve learned many other types of prayer over the last several years. Prayer that feels more like meditation than prayer, prayer that takes us deeply into…
-
A Liturgy in Service to Wholeness
Dear God of All … Instead of asking ‘why am I just now ‘getting this?,’ may I be grateful for a recent divine discovery: that nature isn’t out there; it’s in me too. Yes I am nature in equal measure to the birds, beasts, oceans, stars, raging fires and blades of grass. I am a seamless part of the whole, and I see now that my job is to live into that wholeness, to live into this theology of wholeness I’ve uncovered, within myself and within every alive thing that exists. Spirit is whole; ego is fragmented. May I live in wholeness, dismantling fragmentation whenever I find it in myself. Spirit is truth; ego is non truth. May I ever live in Divine Truth. May I also recognize that my inherent brokenness as a human is not a curse. No, it is only that…
-
The Divine Elements
Dear Embodied God … Who Walked Among Us, Who Was With Us, Who Is With Us, Who Was Us, Who Is Us, in a certain sense … Please show us what it means to be human, to be fully human, to live full human lives, instead of the shadow lives we often limit ourselves to. Please help us to stop, look, continue or pivot, based on what we see. Please grant us Divine Seeing so we may know and trust our sight. Dear God, my own human embodiment tends toward the rush. She tends toward anxiety, overthinking, shame, and sometimes stagnation. While shame makes me not want to name these things, I know that in the naming I am set free. Please continue to show me how these things aren’t from you, and please grace me with the gifts that are of your essence:…
-
May I Live in Awe and Wonder
I’m stuck, God. I’m stuck more often than I’d like, more often than I’d like to admit. That saying, ‘wherever you go, there you are,’ rings true. Can you help me get unstuck? Why do we get stuck in our ways of doing things, and why is it so hard to get unstuck? Why can’t we get stuck in our good ways of being? I suppose sometimes we can and do but what I notice is all of the ways I get stuck in the not-so-good. So here I am, asking, pleading, begging … please unstick me. What I want is to undo the hold my mind often has on me. I want to live more fully in my body. I want to live in awe and wonder. Every day. Because it exists everyday. The mere fact that I’m healthy, alive, breathing, surrounded by…
