I want to start this by expressing my immense gratitude for the outpouring of love from my last post. I received dozens of private messages that I am holding so tenderly in my heart. I still am. You see, when I look at my life honestly, without doubt, I see how generously it has been held. Oh, the words of support! Thank you! You know, I could never in a million years have dreamed or willed myself to what exists in this experience of living— a family that cares so so steadily, a career that feels quite honestly like a dream, a business and an income that sustains me very fairly, the company of the very best books there are in all lines of my interest, and most especially the very best friends I could ever have. If I had better friends than I do now, I would explode! If the world crumbled and came back with us all in it, I will find each and everyone again: including you, who reads this from your inbox. Oh, I am so blessed to have been given the opportunity to love as deeply as I do, in the way I do, even if it’s handed back to me, half-opened, arriving unfinished or heart-shattering. Oh, I would shatter it over and over again to reveal my true self. How could I express these blessings without pointing to my roommate, Milo, who teaches me lessons that could never be penned. His presence teaches me more and more the efficiency of moving without words, being without apology, and the joys of companionship with that which is not cut from the same flesh or the same blood(oh, I could write a longer reflection on this).

Yet, given the current direction in which the wind blows in this hemisphere, if sustained, I stand the chance of losing all of it. Emmm…not metaphorically. Literally! And nothing has prepared me for this possibility more than the steady practice of surrender(that I write frequently write about here). I understand now why the image of the Muslim at prayer moves me so deeply. Facing east, bowing to the ground, rising only to bow again. What an image! There is nothing ornamental about it. If anything it is a bodily confession. Oh isn’t it what we are called to do daily? Isn’t it what I must practice daily? As my will tightens against Reality, caught in my own illusion of separation, I am reminded to surrender, to bow to Reality, to the glorious Mystery. Again and again. Again and again. And again and again. Oh this must be what it is to be baptised. To die and be buried under The Water, to rise again to the fullness of Reality. And over and over again, we plunge into the Water of Life till we are fully buried, rising up to newness.

A way of dying: prayer

Perhaps death does not arrive all at once. Obviously! Perhaps it gathers quietly, as the different systemic structures and the structures of self reach their limit. Sometimes through unbearable pain. Sometiems through the most heart-wrenching, gut-ripping heartbreak. Sometimes through the grief of real raw unbearable loss. Sometimes, through the possibility of being chained unreasonably by masked men at night. Sometimes, through the slow exhaustion of holding one’s self together. When that threshold is reached, something just must give. This is where prayer meets me now. You see, I no longer see prayer as a request or negotiation. Gosh, who would I be requesting to? An entity we pray to who has to see people die, break apart, separate from families, and only waits to move based on emotional requests, called prayer? Surely such an entity must be a monster. As I have written here before, prayer no longer functions for me as a channel for asking or pleading or emotionally cajoling, using manipulative language that lowkey sounds like one party is trying to blackmail the other. Instead, it functions as a solvent. A way of laying myself down until there is nothing…absolutely nothing left to protect, nothing left to argue for, nothing left to defend. And so I start with prayers as poetry, the words moving my soul as I drink of the beauty of words gliding through my tongue, the assonances and aliterations and metaphors and imagery, the magic of expressions moved through vibrations in the vocal cord. What miracle it is to have words! What miracle it is to evoke what is present here, right now. What miracle it is that my desires are aligned with the desires of the Universe, the Universe speaking through me, as me. What miracle it is that I am slowly melting in the words, and the words are no longer words as they melt into mutters and mutters into hums and hums into silence, where I cease to be. Where fear dissolves.

What miracle it is to know that I have never had a will, as my supposed will breaks into unity with the Divine, and all I am left with is the ‘not my will, but yours be done’. And in this assurance, I am made alive again. In this assurance, I can just be. I can do what needs to be done and rest in peace when nothing needs be done. Is this not your prayer too?

A prayer

May Your will move us where our fear tightensThat Your wisdom speakwhere our understanding collapses.That You take my need to be spared, my desire to be in control, and do with it what is true,leaving nothing false standing.

Selected posts on Prayer:A Prayer Of ExtolationA simple recipe for meeting the DivineOf Prayer and the Anthropomorphic GodA Prayer In LonelinessThe Nectar of True DevotionLife Takes Care of Life

A wider list of my essays on Prayers, and a longer one on Surrender.

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