Oh Holy Love
Oh Holy shattering force of Love
Weave me whole again by that Golden thread
with the Red thread and White thread
Tied together with the Black thread
Lest I forget what cracked the egg and
broke the waters, and bore
the seed forever hidden in the blossom
Until that humbling moment of my remaking
Oh how the tiniest well knit together prayer
births the highest peaks
And all who dare travel there will be blessed
by losing their names
in Heaven’s storms
Prayer is our first language. It is that bewildered breathful cry out of the womb initiating the reciprocal contract with Life. It is a sacred dialogue and vital ingredient for navigating the human journey. Prayer parts the portal between worlds and signifies an awareness of sacred interdependence. It lays the foundation for a faith based life and aligns us with the Universal wisdom of Sacred Law where innate belonging and right alignment is reclaimed.
To pray is to honor our place in the life cycle. It acknowledges natural rhythms that are larger than, but not exclusive from, us. Soul shaping prayer often resurrects itself in our lives from a lostness, a collapse, and the inevitable surrender to change. It is in those pivotal moments that we are faced with choosing to turn to something that our fears, traumas and indoctrinations have steered us devastatingly away from. Prayer rises from the heart that is broken open when we are faced with our humanity that has awakened to the truth that we are not immune to the inescapable storms of life.
Prayer is a love song of praise, yet often begins with one clearly heard word…. HELP! Prayer originates from a willingness to be lost, and a wobbling readiness to step into the unknown to be guided by something other than what has steered the ship seeking false treasures.
Once the prayer has left the tongue your only job is to let yourself be loved, lifted and led home. The circumstances to reshape your life in alignment with your soul will find you if you are willing to stop seeking what you believe God looks like in your life.
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear
~Mathew 11:15
Prayer is a conversation with something only palpable to the spiritual senses and therefore requires reconnection to a sense of Spirit in life. The prayer is the tether to the divine eminence that never lets go; it is the golden thread that weaves, untattered, throughout time.
Everyone, regardless of the most dire of circumstances, can find the treasure they seek if they know how to pray. For what we truly deeply seek lives in all the places where we have turned away.
Our prayers come true to the exact shape of our ability to listen, trust and follow divine guidance. Projections, expectations and past conditionings will misguide us every time. And yet, there are no wrong turns.
The fearing mind cannot fathom a Life beyond learned limitations, and therefore dreams inside a tiny box, only to be disappointed by God- a grave deviation. When we become disconnected from sacred language and spiritual aptitude we suffer a more catastrophic wound than many things we could ever endure physically.
A great misfortune to humanity is when, under the dominant Abrahamic religions and man’s misinterpretation and manipulation of all gospel, God became a bethroned man. When God became an almighty overlord that punishes or rewards, a force that judges, condemns and separates people out as either worthy or not of Love.
The moment prayer became dominantly associated with religion is when humanity began to lose its center, its humility, moral compass and touch with personal and collective power. When we turn away from prayer we lay prey to outsourcing for that power. This desacralizing of the good word gave rise to the massive overconsumption of resources, and therefore the rapid loss of life we are facing today.
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather change the nature of the one who prays” ~Soren Kierkegaard
Forms of Prayer
Everyone carries a prayer. Everyone carries a song. Everyone has a holy language within them that is unique to their contract with Life. Not every round, red breasted Robin sings up the sun in the same way and is why every single one of their little voices is needed. Life is shaped by this primordial language of the intimate interior.
How we sing our song, which includes how we speak to ourselves and others and every choice we make, either puts us in dissonance or harmonious resonance with certain frequencies. It determines a life of peace or one of war.
In faith based, animist traditions and societies, prayer was/is fundamental to awakening human consciousness to Universal citizenship, to healing and persevering with an alliance with Life on Life’s terms that is deeply felt, experienced and therefore trusted.
All initiations – the sun dance, vision quest, sweat lodge, medicine ceremony, solitary silence, deep trance states- regardless of spiritual orientation, are seeded with prayer to teach the seeker how, despite the storms, pain, blood, sweat and fears, to hold the good word at the center of life.
The highest form of prayer is silence or stillness. Our willingness to lay it all down at the feet of Faith, and allow life to be as it is until we are summoned into action by a force greater than misplaced desire and fear, is the peak experience of a prayerful life. It is all worth climbing the peakless mountain for.
Prayers of gratitude, honoring and holy devotion are divine beatitudes that radiate out with the power to shape shift the external life to match what has awakened within. Authentic gratitude for our lives is scientifically proven to rearrange cellular activity to a more harmonious formation. We are given so much, so much. We are loved so deeply, so deeply. Our human lives can do nothing, are nothing, without the assistance of a trillion hands that make each moment so. And so it is.
Oh, and that most high prayer for yourself that includes all forms of life, or the prayer for others that includes you- now that is prayer from someone who has drunk the Holy kool-aid.
Mantra, chanting and primal sound are a historical cornerstone of spiritual health. Ritual, sacred dance, ceremonial rites, baptism- all forms of prayer.
I hesitate to say that everything, especially the way we live, is a prayer and risk diluting the sacred lexicon, but it is so.
Fear is a prayer. Repeated patterns are prayers.
And blessed one, please lay down that idea that if “negative” thoughts pass through you that you will fall from grace. The narrow path is wider than that and does not include punishment (nor reward). Yet, the holy mystery is that every action creates a reaction that aims to bring balance back to Life. This initiates that most arduous befriending of pain as teacher and ally.
When things don’t work out, or life keeps handing out the initiations and the same repeated lessons- it is a prayer being answered that one has not yet been able to receive the guidance from. The human ego structure contains many layers of conditioning to address before true spiritual direction can be recognized.
And yes miracles are real.
When we pray for healing or support, and the support arrives in a way that is much different than what we wanted, it is imperative to understand that there is a omnipresent force that knows better than our ego structure about the most imperative healing that supports us and all living beings.
It is the utter challenge of challenges to trust what can only be seen with expanded sensory awareness and felt as a living, breathing, unameable, untraceable notion in the bones. It is impossible to prove the existence of the omnipotent presence that has been there since the first sacred dance for the stars long ago, and that is the point .
The creator knows the deepest calling of the heart. Often our words say one thing and our deeper voice is saying another. This is the voice that vibrates with our Soul language and is heard by the heavens.
All prayers are answered when there is a trust in Life. 8 trillion years of God mastering herself might just know what is best for you.
“Praying”
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak
~Mary Oliver
Your Prayer
I have sat in many different constellations of prayer from many different spiritual orientations. The deviation from prayer, particularly in western society, is so great that prayer must be relearned. Like any spiritual or healing path, there are guides along the way to reawaken the unique prayer and the healer within. The greatest leap of faith, the one that will heal you even if you land a broken leg for awhile (and you will in some fashion), is into the language of your own soul- and heading it.
It is here, and only here, that you glimpse the most sought after of realities- that You are who you have been praying for.
Your prayer is the one that heaven calls for, your song, your dance, your wild crying out. Prayer is nondenominational, yet your prayer might be associated with a lineage, group or ideology that feels true for you. Fully commit to the sacred language and let it guide, refine and tune your instrument so that your song begins to resound your deepest truth.
There is no wrong way to pray as the prayer will always bring you what you need until you learn to speak in a way that shows that you know what you are made of.
LOVE YOURSELF CHILD.
And if words don’t come, if there is fear, bow to your heart and listen for a whisper. You are confronting lifetimes of separation from the language of Love. Know above all that your choosing to breathe here in God’s mystery school, this crucible of resurrection- is enough.
Amen~ Amen~Amen and a little woman~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart”
~Mahatma Gandhi
