Category Archives: Prayer

death, life basics, Meditation, philosophy, Prayer

Can I Get A Witness…

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When new life comes into the world and when life leaves the world at whatever age, there are witnesses. People gather to welcome the newly born or the newly met into their families and their hearts; people gather to say God-be-with-you and release friends and relatives from this life, handing them back to God. We all come into life as individuals, and we leave it in much the same way – but others bear witness to our initial coming and our final leaving. Life and death may be solo activities, but they are not unseen.

What does it mean to bear witness to the life of another, the death of another? It’s with this question that I leave my ponderings on life and death over the last few weeks. For me, bearing witness is a joyful and sometimes terrible blessing. Life in any form is precious, if I have eyes to see it clearly. Being given life is a holy and finite gift, one given back in the return to the one who bestowed it in the first place.

For the life I have been given, I am grateful beyond words. For the death I will receive some time in the future, I pray for the wisdom to be equally as grateful. The same holds for the lives and the deaths I have born witness to.

art, Meditation, Prayer, Theology

Faith in Hand

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St. John the Baptizer

It was a Christmas gift: a one day retreat workshop on creating icons with transfers – workshop because it was hands-on, retreat because creating icons is a profoundly theological prayer practice. The other participants all had some background in art, from college minors to art school grads to experienced iconographers. For them, picking up the brush was easy – it was the praying part that was challenging. For me, the praying part was easy – it was picking up the brush that was challenging.

Finding the Lines

Our teacher, Marek Czarnecki, told us that creating icons (writing/painting – he wasn’t fussed about the term) is a process of making our prayers something physical and beautiful through our hands. Through those brushes, a personal prayer becomes a beautiful means of prayer for others. The prayer for creating icons: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. The Jesus Prayer.

Marek said more than once that creating an icon was a matter of self-confidence and justification. We needed to trust in our ability to do the work and accept that the time and energy devoted to this prayer practice is justified (not selfish or merely a hobby).

I didn’t doubt that a spiritual practice was justified – I’ve set aside the time for decades. I very much doubted, and still do, that an icon will come from my brush. The others struggled with the exact opposite issue – no doubt about the ability to create but doubtful that taking the time to do so was justified.

At the end of the workshop, all of us had created a transfer pattern of the icon of Saint John the Baptizer as a spiritual practice. Here’s mine:

Transfer

It’s not clean enough to be the basis for an icon, and I didn’t finish half of his mustache, but it’s the first time I’ve tried to pray with a paint brush (creating Celtic knots with gel pens is as close as I’ve gotten). I haven’t figured out how to turn what I see and what I pray into ink on acetate. But I can see the underlying structure, the lines that form the basis of an icon, in a way I never did before. I got the chance to learn from someone whose prayers and talent come together to create icons – beauty that draws us into God’s embrace. I doubt there could be a better way to spend a Saturday in June…

[The workshop was on Ender’s Island, in Mystic, Connecticut – home of St. Edmund’s Retreat. www.endersisland.org. Marek Czarnecki leads many workshops here.]

Biblical Reflection, Meditation, Prayer, proverbs, Theology

Watch Your Language

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Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Proverbs 4:24

There are six things that the Lord hates…haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family. Proverbs 6:16-19

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. Proverbs 10:11

It’s not the occasional swear word I worry about these days: it’s using words as weapons to harm those with different ideas, faiths, skin tones, and lovers. It’s the exaggeration and the lies designed to provoke. It’s the verbal violence aimed toward others that encourages and condones the move from reckless rhetoric to harmful physical action.

It’s tempting to answer angry and violent rhetoric with more of the same, to meet fire with fire, to win the day by yelling cruel words at those who yell at me. But ratcheting up the bitterness and anger won’t solve whatever the original issue was. It just divides neighbor from neighbor.

The damage hateful and violent speech creates is plain to see. It’s hard to take a moment, to stop the harmful words before they make it into print or speech. But it isn’t impossible. I don’t have to keep the cycle going. I can choose to hold my tongue until my thoughts and words show respect rather than disregard.

I’ve said the same prayer every morning when I awake for over a decade, written by Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow in the nineteenth century. It has been especially helpful for me – I hope it will be for you as well:

Prayer at the Beginning of the Day

O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon thy holy will. In every hour of the day, reveal thy will to me. Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul, and with firm conviction that thy will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and feelings. In unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by thee. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others. Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day and all that it shall bring. Direct my will, teach me to pray, pray thou thyself in me. Amen.

[A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991, p.20]

This is one in a series on Proverbs. For more information, click Proverbs above…

Meditation, observation, Prayer

Foundation

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Local Foundation

A short walk and a glance at foot level is a time capsule in this Vermont town. Brick, marble, field stone, poured cement, cinder blocks, and a combination of any and all of these are holding up any number of buildings of varying vintage, purpose, and style. I am amazed at the ingenuity of past builders who were able to use what was on hand to create solid and unique foundations.

Partially Covered

The history of additions is on display as well, where the original and new meet. An expanded house requires a larger foundation to support it, and sometimes new materials brought together in new ways.

I suspect the foundation of my faith is much the same – made out of what was at hand throughout my lifetime, and in need of expansion as my faith grew beyond what the original could support.

I hope, at the end of my days, my foundation is sturdy, supporting a lifetime of change and adventure – and that it is anything but uniform.

Meditation, observation, Prayer

Upkeep

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With two cats, two humans, a couple of plants, and workers in to finish this and that project, the floors require a lot of cleaning. It takes at least an hour a week to run the vacuum over all the upstairs and downstairs floors; it’s up to almost three hours when I wet-mop afterward. Throw in bathroom cleaning, laundry, dishes, dusting, and neatening and it’s an eight hour commitment every week to keep things in decent shape. Those eight hours of work aren’t making any noticeable difference: their effectiveness is only noticed in their absence. When there are no clean towels or dishes the value of such upkeep becomes visible. That upkeep is a necessary part of a life well and fully lived.

The older I get, the more I think daily prayer is the spiritual equivalent of keeping the house clean and in order. It doesn’t seem to get me very far and rarely produces obvious results, but things go quickly downhill in its absence. I need it to live a meaningful, full life. Over time, daily prayer has changed my spirit’s home, deeply and incrementally. I doubt I’d ever be at home in the world and in my own skin without it.

How about you?

art, Meditation, Prayer

Above All

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We don’t pray for a lack of conflict only, but an abundance of well-being.

We won’t settle for tolerance, and we will do the hard work to love our neighbors, strangers, and life forms beyond our knowledge.

We won’t stop at the folding-our-hands praying: we will move on to the roll-up-our-sleeves praying.

We will remember that our lives are connected to every other life on this planet – and maybe beyond.

We will live out the truth that nothing can separate us (and everyone else) from the love of God; we are beloved and unique, and our value is not measured against the lives of others.

We will pray for peace throughout the world, and we will choose to be a peaceful presence in our own small part of it.

We will, with the help of God and neighbor, live in peace.

Jane Goodall
Feeroozeh Golmohammadi
Meditation, poetry, Prayer

Can Anyone Hear Me?

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Goodall Prayer

Are my prayers heard by a loving creator who continues to create and sustain the life of this universe? Am I talking to myself, trying to convince myself that there’s more than emptiness and random encounters involved in the life I live and the life that surrounds me?

A yes to the first question brings peace and the strength to make of my life something holy.

A yes to the second is a doorway to a profoundly anxious loneliness.

I trust in the Great Spiritual Power. How else can there be so much love and beauty among all the heartaches and pain?

Meditation, Prayer

We Pray Because

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Why do I pray for things to be different – for myself to be kinder, for the world to value the least and lost, for strength and wisdom to move from folded hands praying to boots on the ground praying? Is prayer meant to change me or to change something and somebody beyond me? Do I trust that my prayers are heard by a loving creator, or is it all so much whistling in the dark?

I trust that there is more good than evil in this world, and that most people are kind when given the chance. I am not self-created, and I trust the life force that brought me and everything else into being. I know that sincere prayer has changed me, and that the prayers of others have blessed me in ways I cannot comprehend. I know that no one becomes her or his best self in isolation, that no one makes it through life without the loving presence of others. Or, as Jane Goodall puts it:

hope and faith

Can we live in a way that honors all life?

We can, with God’s help.

Meditation, Prayer

Rejoice

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A Prayer For World Peace

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Phil. 4:4

We pray that we may learn the peace that comes with forgiving and the strength we gain in loving; that we may take nothing for granted in this life; that we may learn to see and understand with our hearts; that we may learn to rejoice in our being. We pray for these things with humility.

Rejoicing in what is, finding joy in the messy here and now that I do not and cannot control, is an impossible task if I require all things to align with my own wants and needs. Joy is a response to seeing the world as the amazing place that it is; it is not accomplished so much as it is glimpsed and fallen into. I can’t make it happen, I can only accept that it can arise wherever I am, in whatever circumstances I find myself.

Every time I take a walk on Barnumville Road, I rejoice in the beauty of the mountain in front of me, the hydrangeas across the way, and the birds flying all around. I didn’t create any of these, and I have no part in their flourishing. Yet, whether I am happy, sad, tired, satisfied, or hurting, they bring me joy. I can’t earn that joy, and I can’t take credit for it: I can only pray to God to be aware of it, regardless of my own condition and the condition of the road I’m walking.

art, Meditation, Prayer

Seeing

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Heartsight

The saying is that love is blind, and there’s some truth to that. Love blinds us to imperfections and red flags, and allows us to dismiss warning signs we would be wise to heed. But it’s nothing in comparison to the blindness that comes from lack of love. What we do not love, we do not cherish. What we do not cherish, we are willing to neglect or use for our own purposes.

It is with the heart’s eyes that we understand the intrinsic value of the life around us, in its many forms.