I'm sharing some of the entries of a book I'm working on.
I PRAY ANYWAY--Devotions for the Ambivalent.
I share them to get used to the idea of sharing intimate stuff.
I'm like a seedling getting hardened for the real garden. (Huh?)
Always glad for comments and your stories.
Because I don't really write. I talk. And love a conversation.
In sixth grade I gave God up
On Christmas Eve no less
Went to Christmas Service with my parents my college brother, and his fiance
My best friend and I were in the choir
We all went to her house after the service for Polish food and fun
I couldn't wait to tell her I had been kissed for the first time
(My boy crush and later love had come by my house with mistletoe)
Both yuck and yowee!
I remember red hot cheeks
I never did tell her
A phone call ruined Christmas and God for me
My brother's girlfriend's family had been killed in a car accident
Hit by a drunken driver
Her grandparents, her parents, her seven year old brother and a new baby girl
All killed
A six casket funeral
A nine year old sister lived
So may ramifications from that night
I did not have an alcoholic drink until I was forty-four
I still am uncomfortable around real drunkenness
I immediately refused church, Sunday school, prayer,Bible
If God was not good, phooey oh him (small h )
Done
For quite a while
I gave up on God
Thought I'd share a little history--my spiritual reality show-- to give context for
why I pray anyway. Here's the first entry:
I had my first spiritual inkling in 4th grade Sunday School
Mrs Selye was my Sunday School teacher
She inspired me. I decided to be a missionary
She gave us all a Bible--The New Standard Revised Edition
It was maroon and looked like a book, not a Bible
Mrs Selye did the unthinkable. She taught us how to write in our Bibles.
Permission to underline
I was a book worm and had a new book
So I read it.
Cover to cover stumbling determinedly through names and generations
I was fervent until 6th grade when in my own mistaken math
I put two and two together and rejected God
Got mad at God
Good and mad
And today I am one of those people.
Even mystics took breaks and visited other monasteries for fun and to get away from the day to day strictures of worship.
It's not that I want to stop being curious and open and fascinated by the mystery of it all.
I mean, I read theology for fun!!
But it must be nice to just settle into life not caring about meaning.
Let life be as much fun as it can.
Keep suffering to a minimum.
Take death as it comes.
Enjoy.
Happiness is the greatest good so take your happiness temperature every day.
Sometimes the need is to step off the world into solitude and another level of
being. And sometimes it's so right and good to step out of the world of solitude into good ol' everyday fun with no meaning what so ever. I'm ready
I'm talking about the Medieval Christian women mystics.
Julian of Norwich
Bigitta of Sweden
Mechthild of Magdeburg,
Teresa of Avila
Clare of Assisi
Hildegard of Bingen
Margery Kempe
To name a few.
These were strong, independent women who wanted more than domestic life.
Many entered the monastery where they could read and study and pray.
They wrote, they composed music, they founded and managed monasteries.
And they were passionate wild women.
At home with the intuitive and the practical.
As Carmen Acevedo Butcher says in the book A LITTLE DAILY WISDOM these women were "original, extreme, direct and frank". They were risk takers.
No one had to tell them speak up to have impact. They left fortunes and approval to be their unique selves. Some were happily married with children multi-tasking family and spiritual work. All served the poor and the sick in a hands on way. They were leaders. They got things done. They walked their own path when women didn't.
From--Clare of Assisi, letters-- (words of encouragement to other women)
What you hold, may you always hold.
What you do, may you always do.
Never abandon it.
With the swiftest, lightest steps
that stir no dust,
and on feet that don't stumble,
many you walk securely into the future
with joy and speed
along the path of wisdom, happy.
May your steps be practical and sure,
As the Spirit of the Lord calls you.
I am so enjoying reading their quotes. They pull no punches.
Nicely astringent when so much religious talk gets soft and muddy.
Now, remember, they were passionately in love with God. Brazenly.
Medievally!!
They must have driven people crazy! Good for them.
And I am laughing.
A friend and colleague is helping me with my techno deficiencies.
So she changed all of my passwords for me to simplify.
Lovely.
She sent me a notice saying in caps:
EVERYTHING IS NOW---x password
All I saw was EVERYTHING IS NOW
And I thought the universe was speaking to me.
Yes, indeed, it all is NOW.
If only we could remember that.
The phrase that helps me remember that when I get greedy for the future or
wallowing in the past is:
"You are home
You have arrived"
Thich Nhat Hanh in No Death, No Fear
In other words, "This is it. Right here. Right now.
So what are you going to do with it?"
That sounds so beatific and foolish.
Not so. It is a demanding discipline.
I am curious about prayer.
And I pray.
I have no grand theological surety or answers.
I have my own experience.
And I read and read and read about religions and the sacred and that"kind of stuff". I am hungry and feed myself on every spiritual food available.
I have been reading about prayer.
You pray it, there's a name for it.
Simple Prayer
Ordinary Prayer
Contemplative Prayer
Intercessory Prayer
Unceasing Prayer
Petitionary Prayer
There are as many kinds of named prayers as there are names for "God"
Like usual, I dove into the topic til I emerged glutted and confused.
So once again, back to my own experience.
Prayer to me is a place I go.
I use silence and readings to take me there.
It is not meditative emptiness.
It is my home base.
When I "arrive", there is peace and contentment even when my life is a mess.
There is a sense of timelessness.
I feel re-aligned. Truer to myself.
That's all.
Prayer is a place I go to.
I am someone who prays but doesn't always "believe".
I've come to the conclusion to trust my own experience rather than try to force follow belief.
Strange maybe, but I have had so many people share a similar dilemma with me that I decided to share my up and down spiritual journey with prayer.
In fact, I'm writing a book with my kind of prayers in it and my joy and struggles and embarrassment about it. It's called I PRAY ANYWAY--Devotions for the Ambivalent.
I have had the best conversations with people when I mention it. (That will be book number 2.)
So I mentioned the project to one of my sons who looked at me like I was Cro-Magnum Woman. Kind of exasperated I asked, "So don't you pray at all?"
And he said, "All of the time. I just don't worry about who I'm praying to."
We'll come back to that. I found it liberating.
