Everyday Boy

Serenity Prayer

Back in January I felt a lack of inspiration - just in going about the day to day, but I found a hint of it when I stumbled upon the serenity prayer on a step one drug and alcohol meeting card, amidst a youth's belongings.  I was surprised to find more than the first three lines that I have usually come to associate the prayer with:

Serenity Prayer

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change
Courage to change the things we can
Wisdom to know the difference
Patience for the things that take time
Appreciation for all that we have
Tolerance for those with different struggles
The freedom to live beyond the limitations of our past ways
The ability to feel your love for us and our love for each other
And the strength to get up and try again even when we feel it's hopeless

It holds a lot of things I have come to hold true in my life: that life happens best in a community; that patience means we may suffer through things for a time; that gratitude is important to infuse in one's life; that we all struggle now and then and need understanding and support; that we are all reaching beyond what we now know to something better; that we all need to love and feel loved; and that we need hope above all things.  Such simple things that are sometimes lost along the way.

Praying The Messy Psalms

The Psalms defy our notions of profane and sacred, proving that everything we feel, witness, do unto others, and have done to us is acceptable subject matter for conversing with the Divine. They invite us to bring every part of ourselves into our houses of worship. If we omit expressions of faith lost, of rage, of disdain, and of the desire for revenge, we leave parts of ourselves at the door.

Kari Jo Verhulst, in The Dangers of De-Fanging God
Sojourners, November/December 1999

One of my former housemates once spoke of his desire for a place of worship that allows us to say I do not feel the presence of God today. Such honesty in prayer is often absent in my own prayers, let alone many places of worship.

Prayer remains a bit of an anomaly to me these days.  The sit down kind of prayer is practically non-existent, although I think I might benefit in being more disciplined with that practice. Prayer has become more of an ongoing background question throughout the dailiness of life, of asking am I drawing near to God? As I sleep, eat and walk around in life am I drawing closer to God or am I growing more distant?  I have heard one teacher talk about how our sit down prayer is a practice in being attentive to God, so that the rest of our lives can be one of prayer and attentiveness to God. So I wonder how to incorporate this again in my life. I used to have friends knocking at my door in the early hours of the morning to keep me motivated. Now, not so much.

For a long time now I have wanted to pray through the Psalms, both for the fact that Christ prayed through them, and also that they convey the range of human emotion and experience. So I am looking at ways this Lent to go through the entire pslater somehow, hoping this will help me be more attentive to my own condition of sadness, anger and joy, and to the voice of God speaking within me, and in the people and in the world around me. It is often very easy to fall into the whirlpool of noise and despair that surrounds our society.

Ideally, prayer is a time to ground myself in reality. A time to breathe in the moment. A time to let go of everything swirling around in my head and in my heart and allow God to speak into my life. The question God seems to ask is Where are you?. And my answer at times may be lost in fear, shame or distraction - but sometimes I can muster enough courage to simply say, here I am in all my messiness.

Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places:
a quick glance, and away - and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river's purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn. Not you,
it is I who am absent.
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow,
you are the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the foutain's heart
the sapphire I know is there?

Denise Levertov

Light & Prayer

I stepped out into a strange light late this afternoon. Dark storm clouds were gathering over the North Shore and over the East, but a bright dusk light was emanating from the South and West where clouds had parted a bit to show some blue sky. It was a diffuse light, as though the world was tinted with a yellow film. It made me want to rush out and capture the atmosphere on film or in a bottle. Tonight, I finally found a downtown coffee shop that's open late and has free wi-fi, so I enjoyed staring out into the wet, flourescent and neon lit street, with taxis, pedestrians, bicycles and buses rushing by. I love the two scenes juxtaposed in my mind; one of natural light and one of man made light. Both so beautiful in their own unique ways.

I find I have to remind myself every now and then what contemplation, meditation, and prayer are really propelling me towards: love of God and love of my neighbor. Looking through some old e-mails I found these words a friend sent by Cynthia Bourgeualt, passed along to our little group of sojourners a little while ago, as we tried to practice centering prayer. She wrote that centering prayer was consent to the presence and action of God:

Practice is about being awake every moment of your life. Meditation is simply a tool for that. The reason it's hard at the beginning is that we are so easily distracted by our own selves. The goal is to interiorize being awake and attentive to life. The two parts of this are: attention to what is, and surrender to the divine. Theoretically, you will eventually do less meditation, not more. Your life becomes your practice. And when your attention becomes diffuse, and your self-concern distracts you, you go back to meditation. If your practice is a set of observances that you have to do every day ten times a day, it's not a practice, it's a compulsive disorder! The question is how you live. How you react when a needy person is in front of you.

Finding Roots Again

We did not come to remain whole
We came to lose our leaves like the trees,
The trees that are broken
And start again, drawing up from the great roots.

- Robert Bly, A Home In Dark Grass
From The Light Around The Body.

It's begun to rain more and more here in Vancouver, but I don't mind it so much.  It feels lighter than most places, and in the end it just seems to make everything brighter.  The moss becomes thicker, the green leaves become greener and the Autumn palettes seem to pop out more.  Of course it's my favorite time of year, when the Fall leaves are still crisp on the branches, and clumped up in large piles of clumped on the ground like fire and sun.  Yet another season to change.

It was a lazy day of catching up on correspondence, sorting through papers and all the details a move entails - like changing your address.  Mail has been a wonderful thing this past month.  I've been spoiled, and my spirit has been buoyed by letters, notes and packages.  A contemplative book, a notebook, poetry books, chocolate, cards of thanks, and even money (well, not for me) - all of which has made me feel like I didn't have to set out into the rain today.  I've been listening to a wonderfully acoustic, quirky, and soulful music compilation a friend has made for me too:  Because I love to lay here lazy / We could close the curtains / Pretend like there's no world outside / And we could pretend that all the time / Can't you see that it's just raining / There ain't no need to go outside - Jack Johnson, Banana Pancakes.  From the album In Between Dreams (2005).

This move has also been providing yet another opportunity to rid myself of clutter.  A few men in a dump truck came by the house this morning to clear the garage of junk and garbage, and when I saw the clean empty space after I felt a weight literally lift away from me.  It seemed like such a clear metaphor to me of why emptying oneself of the of the worry and other worthless thoughts that crowd our minds and hearts is so important.  Chittister's commentary this past week was reminding me once again of the need to return to a more immersed practice of prayer which I have so easily shrugged off these days:

Prayer in the Benedictine tradition, then, is not an exercise done for the sake of quantity or penance or the garnering of spiritual merit.  Benedictine prayer is not an excursion into a prayer wheel spirituality where more is better and recitation is more important than meaning.  Prayer, in the spirit of these chapters, if we "sing praise wisely," or well, or truly, becomes a furnace in which every act of our lives is submitted to the heat and purifying process of the smelter's fire so that our minds and our hearts, our ideas and our lives, come to be in sync, so that we are what we say we are, so that the prayers that pass our lips change our lives, so that God's presence becomes palpable to us.  Prayer brings us to burn off the dross of what clings to our souls like mildew and sets us free for deeper, richer, truer lives in which we become what we seek. (October 26th)

One Time, One Space

It has been very difficult being disciplined enough and motivated enough to wake up in the morning early enough to say community prayer, let alone find time to sit and seek God alone. It has also been difficult to sit and write - not because I don't have time, but because I tend to wast time on other more trivial things.  Joan Chittister writes the following, in The Rule of Benedict: Insights For The Ages:

Richard Sullivan, a professor of creative writing at Notre Dame University in the 60's and a writer himself, taught his classes that the two most important physical dimensions of the writing profession were time and space.  "Write every single day at the same time and in the very same place," he said.  "Whether you have anything to say or not, go there and sit and do nothing, if necessary, until the very act of sitting there at your writer's time in your writer's place releases the writing energy in you and begins to affect you automatically."  Teachers of yoga, too, prescribe a set of basic postures and places to dispose the soul to the transcendent.  Teachers of meditation prescribe times and places and mantras, a type of personal chant, to center the soul.  In every tradition, in other words, we are taught that it is not a matter of separating the sacred and the secular.  It is a matter of staying conscious of the fact that the sacred is in the secular.  There is, in other words, such a thing as a spiritual well where simply being in that place can tap open that special part of our souls and enable us to touch the sacred in the secular.

... Have a place where you can go in order to be about nothing but the business of being in the presence of God so that every other space in your life can become more conscious of that presence as well... be there in a special way - with quiet and with awareness, not laughing or talking or lounging or distracting but alert and immersed and enshrouded in the arms of God... Benedictine spirituality says also that to know God in time and space we must regularly seek to find God in one time and space that enables us to recognize God more easily in every other one. - August 3rd

Full Of Grace

The Catholic tradition continues to guide me along the way.  I think I'll finally be able to put a rosary that a friend gave me to better use.  Last week we began saying a shortened form of the rosary for our morning prayers.  It took me awhile, but after saying it together for a week I think I've finally memorized the Hail Mary and Glory Be.  It was an unusual turn into a more traditional form of prayer for us, but a welcome change to give us a bit more focus to our time.

Leroy explained that his family, in their Goan tradition, would say the rosary loudly, very much like a mantra - filling the room with a great unified sound, with heads and upper bodies rocking back and forth very much like the Jewish people pray at the Wailing Wall.  Although ours was a much sleepier and toned down version, I found that in saying the rosary - in repeating the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be - the string of words slowly and persistently become your breathe, and begin to shape your mind - eventually descending further down into your consciousness.

I found you become Mary... the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou... blessed is the fruit - the work of God in and through you.  And the words... pray for us sinners now and at the hour of your death waken you and keep you sober.  My co-worker has passed along a write-up of the mysteries that you read each time you says the rosary - so I hope to explore it further.

Sitting & Dreaming

I write a lot of words all over the place, on matchbooks, on napkins, anywhere.  Songs come from anywhere.  You experience everything as you live.  Even if you're living in a little room, you see lot's of things.  If you have imagination, the songs just come.  I spent lots of time daydreaming.  It's great to sit and dream.- Jimi Hendrix

I'm not feeling very inspired these days, and I think it's because I haven't allowed myself to dwell in possiblity as much as I should.  To see things as they are is one thing, to imagine and work towards how things could be is another... courage to us all.

Writing about forests and trees yesterday made me think about this found poem I put together a little while ago, peices of an Emily Carr journal entry reflecting my experience with centering prayer.  My limited knowldege and practice of this kind of prayer is one in which I sit with the intention of just being before God - letting go of everything running through my head, focusing on my breath, keeping a word like a mantra in my head and in my heart, perhaps - mercy, Lord have mercy - going back to it again and again (perhaps a metaphor in itself).

It is difficult.  Some find it easier with others, some find it easier by themselves.  I find myslef asking what purpose it holds for me.  Sometimes the trying becomes a problem, sometimes the thoughts around technique and whether or not it's being done right interfere with actual practice.  At this point I see it as preparation - in helping me move from what Nouwen described as illusion to a better awareness of God.  Prayer - not confined to time and place, but shown in the living of ones life.  In the time of silence set aside I must reconcile my own true state in the sight of God, to see things as they are in both in my inner and outer worlds and realize the dreams of another.

Centering Prayer

Emily Carr, September 19, 1935
Hundreds and Thousands: The Journal of an Artist

The sweet kettle song rises.
It is good for remembrance.

Nothing ever stands still
and we never catch up.

We can only grow
as straight as we can like the trees.

Yesterday I went into a great forest;
a mess of begun thoughts.

You need not penetrate far into this massed tangle.
Things are swirling by themselves.

Another twitch
and we are off on another thought.

It seems an impossibility
to walk the big wood distance.

It ignores canvas, and flesh, and blood.
It is all above your head and there is no place for your feet.

In the center, the last chords break.
We don’t know anything.

What, eat the woods?  Yes, as one eats the sacraments.
Not boring down into darkness, but through into light.

And there you are, full of content.
Not a sound comes out of the open windows.

Color is swallowed by glory and becomes
unspeakable.  The forest has closed about you.

A hundred yards farther - the kettle breaks.
We are still among material things.  And so it must be.

Deegy Dallong © 2003

World Peace, Not Just For Beauty Paegants

Anyone celebrate Earth Day this past Friday? The best story I heard was a group of Vancouver-ites laying down some grass at a metered parking spot in the middle of downtown, and spending the day there basking in the sun. Some of the folks passing by even contributed to paying the parking fee for them to stay there.  I thought it was a creative way to raise awareness of our tenuous relationship to the earth.

I've been reading The Future of Peace by Scott A. Hunt, and it's been a good introduction to some of the trouble spots in the world, and the leaders of peace in those areas. It's an interesting mix of history, the journalist's own personal journey with peace, politics, spirituality and travel, and candid interviews with the likes of Aung San Suu Kyi and The Dalai Lama. Hunt writes:

Praying for peace, I had to remind myself, is not an unimportant or insignificant contribution. Whether one believes that prayers are answered by God or by deities of some sort, it is certain that the mere act of praying establishes the right vision, the right motivation within oneself. It is the beginning of taking positive action, and it sets up an irrepressible faith that cannot be defeated by external circumstances. (28)

Litany For Peace

As we are together, praying for Peace,
let us truly be silent with each other.
      (Silence)
Let us pay attention to our breathing.
      (Silence)
Let us be relaxed in our bodies and our minds.
      (Silence)
Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.  Let us maintain a half smile on our faces.
      (Silence)
Let us be aware of the source of being common to us all and to all living things.
      (Silence)
Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion - towards ourselves and towards all living beings.
      (Silence)
Let us pray that all living beings realize that they are all brothers and sisters, all nourished from the same source of life.
      (Silence)
Let us plead with ourselves to live in a way which will not deprive other living beings of air, water, food, shelter or the chance to live.
      (Silence)
With humility, with awareness of the existence of life and of the sufferings that are going on around us, let us pray for the establishment of peace in our hears and on earth.  Amen.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Buddhist monk (1926- ).  From Prayers from Around the World and Across the Ages, compiled by Victor M. Parachin (56).

Walking Home

My spiritual director suggested that instead of trying to spend time in solitary prayer before I go to sleep (which I've struggled in maintaining) that I walk and take in Nature instead.  He also spoke about holding my tensions and joys before me in prayer - allowing them just to be.  These weren't necessarily new concept for me, but important reminders that there are many different ways to nurture and practice the discipline of prayer.

It was a beautiful sunny day after work today, so I decided to walk home.  It was a time of letting go of work trying follow me home, being thankful for another day, and just trying to go slow down my heart and head to be able to notice both city and Nature alive around me.  It took me many blocks of walking to notice the beauty and goodness, but soon I was able to take in the soccer game below the bridge, the mountains dressed in green firs and sprinkled with snow at their peaks, and the cranes slowly turning their heads in the blue sky above me.

We don't have to go far to find the treasure we are seeking. There is beauty and goodness right where we are. And only when we can see the beauty and goodness that are close by can we recognize beauty and goodness on our travels far and wide. There are trees and flowers to enjoy, paintings and sculptures to admire; most of all there are people who smile, play, and show kindness and gentleness. They are all around us, to be recognized as free gifts to receive in gratitude. - Henri Nouwen, Bread For The Journey, February 14

Our Prayer

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you;
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this,
O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you with all the love
of my heart,
for I love you, Lord,
and so I need to give myself into your hands,
without reserve
and with boundless confidence.
For you are my Father.

Charles de Foucauld, in Show Me The Way by Henri Nouwen (28).