HOW HAS WRITING A BOOK ABOUT PRAYING CHANGED ME?

I was asked that very question by a friend who read the rough draft of I PRAY ANYWAY--Devotions For The Ambivalent.
He was complimentary about the book.
He thought it made me very vulnerable.
Then he said, "Who cares about the book? How did writing it change you?"

Here's how:

I'm much more casual about saying to my husband, "I'm going to disappear for awhile to pray."  It has become normal in the household.

I'm still shy or worried about perceptions when it comes to talking about it with family and close, close, close friends.  Embarrassed to acknowledge how serious I am about it.

I do have a larger hunger now for spiritual food than when i started the book.
I'm not sick of it.

I am more interested in sharing the writing and having conversations about it than I was when I started writing the book.  I'm tired of my own voice. I want to hear others.

I do feel a sense of adventure to think that prayer provides guidance and a kind of alignment of purpose, capital P.  I'm still learning to not be embarrassed to admit that.  

I do experience more day to day mini-miracles meaning something good happens that has no rationale or scientific basis. Shouldn't be possible and is. 

I do feel like I am a writer for the rest of my life.  I've always been a non-writing writer. You know what I mean.

I turn to prayer for comfort and get it.  I end up with a kind of strata of joy that doesn't go away.

I'm less satisfied with the present forms and language of religion.  They just don't fit the global transformation we are in.  

I'm more interested in science, especially New Physics where spirit will meet 
the tangible world.

I hurt more for the craziness of the world and get mad less.

I feel like I've come home to a part of me I ignored for many years.

That's enough. Good question

PRAYER 280

From I PRAY ANYWAY Devotions for the Ambivalent


280

Sometimes I think of
So many people praying
For different things
Different reasons
Different beliefs
And yet
All that yearning
All that gratitude
Circling around
And no tipping point
For peace
Yet


This was written in a kind of despair after racism reared its head in yet another permutation of fear and ill educated power and after the video beheadings of
very innocent people treated like poker chits of leverage.

I pray anyway, sometimes in hopelessness

MY ANSWER TO MY OWN QUESTION SURPRISED ME!

At a recent family gathering to celebrate my husband's birthday, I asked a question at dinner.  My adult kids are used to this and sometimes they like it and dig in and sometimes they groan and say, "Pour me some wine."

I asked, "What makes you optimistic?"  One said his kids.  One said her art.
Most avoided the question so I jumped in and said, "The growing integration between religion and science."  What?  Huh? Where on earth did that come from.  I probably should have said, "My adult children who are the best on earth." (Which they mostly are.)  How cerebral!  How esoteric! And how true!

Really. I am so curious and hopeful about how the unseen reality will become to be seen and experienced in such a way that there is a tangibility to invisible connections and divine something or other.  I hate to be old enough to die before this integration gets really interesting.  

If this topic interests you at all, try reading Fingerprints of God: What Science is Learning About the Brain and Spiritual Experience.

In the meantime, answer the question of my dinner table.

"WHAT MAKES YOU OPTIMISTIC?"

SOMETIMES ALL IT TAKES IS A GOOD GAME OF RUMMY CUBE

Our five adult kids were home to celebrate a birthday.
We did what we do.
We ate too much.
We gave presents.
We reminisced.
We caught up with one another's daily lives.

And we played games.
Around the game table, everything changes.
We laugh.
We tease.
We blop out feelings
We truly reunite
This is where the x-factor of being part of a family shows up.

There is a something that emerges that unites us.
It is felt as precious.
It is a flame of identity that needs this nourishment
It is the "spirit" of our family that will live beyond our bodies