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

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.