A COUPLE OF PRAYER/POEMS

Here are a couple of prayers from my book I PRAY ANYWAY--Devotions for the Ambivalent.  The book is written.  Now if I could just get excited about the right cover.  The question is how sassy do I want to be? It is not a provocative book but it is reverently irreverent.  Ideas?


Prayer 356

I want to growl I read
Too precious spiritual language
Love is blah blah blah
Make our own miracle
Affirm yourself silly
Sing la la la la la
Sit smack down with the lepers and say the same
Then you'll be doing love



Prayer174

My gluttony is so huge
(How else could gluttony be?)
I want to read every book
I want to taste every food
I want to visit every country
I want I want I want
When I have I have I have
So much


The book has 365 prayer poems interspersed by my history of spiritual highs and lows and also a little primer about my kind of prayer

I'M AMBIVALENT ABOUT MY OWN AMBIVALENCE!

My book, I PRAY ANYWAY--Devotions For The Ambivalent is finished 
I will publish it on Amazon.
But I am stuck.  Not writer's block. Maybe soul block.
It is 365 prayer poems interspersed by 12 segment that tell of my spiritual journey. 
I start out very new to praying (again).
And I end with a realization that I will probably have an active prayer life for the rest of mine.

So.  Am I ambivalent?
My own devotion time is not a dreaded discipline?
I am no longer committed to any one approach to the divine.
I am committed to prayer because it is validated by my own experience.

So----.  I have a conundrum.
I started the book in one place and am now in another.
I PRAY ANYWAY but I am ambivalent about any one path or THE truth.

Thanks. I feel better.

TO CHURCH OR NOT TO CHURCH???

I get tired just thinking about that question.
My ambivalence comes to the fore.
I have sampled churches throughout my adult life but never stuck to any one.
They were boring or demanding of my social life.
Too club, too little Spirit
Lifeless.
Rote.
(Just writing that makes me want to recant my judgmental approach when I never gave "joining" much of a chance.)  

I now have two churches that I trust and that give me an experience of faith.
One is The Green Memorial AME Zion church in Portland Maine.
I trust it for its joy and sense of Spirit during the church service.
I trust it's humility and devotion and sincerity.
And I trust the pastor completely to be real in life and faith.
I go and I bask and I leave with joy for my spiritual searching and a commitment  to be a much better person.

The other church is in Mexico—in San Miguel de Allende.
We spend part of the year there in a small Mexican community.
The church is Colonial and both beautiful and not.
Tiny, old Talavera tiles, gold leaf, stone, elaborate altar AND neon lights and grotesque dusty statues of suffering.
It is a community church with bells that tell what's going on—a death, a wedding, a 'get to church lazy bones', an alarm if needed.  It is modest on the outside with two pine trees in its courtyard i.e.. concrete slab.
The priest's voice comes out of a large cone speaker to the outside. People come in humble dress and circumstance and with humility and love for their Jesus who suffered like they do. I mumble mass in Spanish and kneel with the others on the concrete in silence and communion.
I trust this church for the love people have for it
I trust this church for its unbroken traditions.
I trust it for its simplicity.
I go as an outsider and am calmed and set right.

One church is all joyous and boisterous and spontaneous.
One is quiet submission along side suffering and comfort.
I trust both.
I go to both, not regularly
These churches are where I can dip my toe into organized religion and explore my questions and spiritual curiosity and yearning.

DONE WRONG? FAILED AN OBLIGATION?

Welcome to the orientation of most religions--guilt.
Why do we get locked into making other people so wrong?
Why do we see ourselves so wrong so often? It doesn't work.

Feeling inherently wrong:
Kills hope
Smothers joy
Destroys motivation for good works
Creates stuckness and depression
Turns people away from faith
Sucks the life out of loving

Yes, we need standards for our behavior.
Yes, we can do great wrong.
Yes, we need to know it.
We need the insight of "guilt" not the perpetual burden of wrong doing and failure.