Tag Archives: Prayer

Have We Known the Anguish of an Unanswered Prayer?

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Perhaps we fell in love with the person of our dreams, but despite our yearnings and furtive requests to a higher power, our feelings remained unrequited. Perhaps we were watching the game of our favorite sports team—but they lost despite the collective energy of millions of fans. I know that may seem trivial, but a huge number of people pray for their teams to win. Perhaps we were confronted with the serious illness of a loved one, yet all our begging and bargains with God did not make them well. When I think about prayer it is hard not to remember that anguish.

And yet, for me, there are also other memories. There have been times when, to my surprise, strange and wonderful things happened after prayers. As if, despite my appeals, I never really expected a response.

Several years ago, my youngest brother in Michigan was getting married. I am the oldest of nine siblings, and we are scattered across the country. It is rare for my family to be gathered all together. At that time, our finances were very tight, but I really hoped that Margy and I could attend the wedding, since she hadn’t had a chance to meet most of my family yet. But then we found out that two tickets would cost $850. We knew we couldn’t afford that. So I prayed; and I also called my dad and asked him to pray. (No, he did not send us the tickets.) The very next morning, an email came, announcing special bargain fares from Southwest Airlines. The two of us could go for a total of $325.

Perhaps you may have had similar unexplainable experiences. A friend of mine just recently told me a story. She was having a particularly difficult night, with chronic pain that flared up keeping her from being able to sleep. She had never done this before, but for some reason, she reached out and prayed for help with the pain. And then, suddenly, all the pain went away. She was completely pain free for the first time in weeks. She was able to rest, and fell asleep in a deep peace. This prayer did not take away the pain for good. But it did remove it during several hours that night.

We pray when we face a challenge that feels bigger than we are. Praying is a way to appeal to the larger Mystery of the universe, the force for kindness or benevolence, to aid us in our smallness, our vulnerability.

All of this implies that there is something or someone to whom we are reaching out for help. Do we need to believe in God to pray? The answer is not as simple as yes or no.  I define spirituality as our experience of connection to the larger Mystery of which we are a part. We don’t have to understand God in a literal way. In fact it might be better understood metaphorically.

I am thinking of it like a flow of water. If we dive into and relax in a large body of water, we can float; we can also choose to draw water into our bodies by drinking, we can shape water, use it to cause change, create something with it. Prayer is like that. We connect to the larger reality through some kind of opening up or diving in. And if our connection to the larger reality is real, it is not merely an experience like going to the movies, where we can watch but not participate. Our connection creates transformation for our lives.

Swan in water MJ DSC09904

Prayer Links our Smallness to the Larger Kindness

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You can only pray what’s in your heart
so if your heart is being ripped from your chest
pray the tearing
if your heart is full of bitterness
pray it to the last dreg…
pray your heart into the great quiet hands that can hold it
like the small bird it is.
                                          Elizabeth Cunningham

Photo by Margy Dowzer

Photo by Margy Dowzer

The spiritual journey brings us into experience of our connection to the larger Mystery of which we are a part. But spirituality is not only about something we experience, something we receive with awe and gratitude. Spirituality is also about the power we hold to shape, to create, to cause change in the larger whole. Sometimes this power has been called prayer. I have also heard it called magic. But we don’t usually think of prayer as a power we hold. We usually think of prayer when we feel powerless, when we feel our need.

Why do we pray when we are in need? During our day to day lives, many of us often feel a sense of control over our lives, a sense that we are making choices, and things can be expected to turn out based on our work and our effort. But when things go wrong—when someone we love is ill, or we lose a job, or we face death, or a child is in trouble—we are confronted with our limits as human beings, we are face to face with our utter vulnerability. Think about the saddest or scariest or most difficult moments of our lives. In those difficult moments, we feel our smallness in this world.

Prayer is an appeal to the kindness in the universe, to the mysterious power of goodness and blessing that some call God. Prayer is a reaching out from that place of smallness to the larger reality in which we find ourselves. When we were very small, when we were children, we needed the help of someone larger than us. We relied on our parents or other caregivers for everything—our food, our shelter, our learning, our basic needs. That may have been a blessed experience or a painful one. And growing up in any situation, we feel a pull to become independent, to be able to do things for our selves.

As adults we are working out a balance: between giving and receiving, between helping others and getting help when we need it. But for many of us asking for help is difficult. Probably because we don’t really like to experience our vulnerability, our smallness. Possibly because we’ve had the experience of asking for help and not receiving it. In some settings in our world, to show our weakness might mean to be taken advantage of.

Prayer has this baggage attached to it. It requires that we face our vulnerability, and be willing to ask for help. Prayer is like letting go into a kind of floating—a hope that if we are in over our heads, the ocean will hold us up, rather than swallow us. Prayer opens a link from our smallness to the larger kindness in the universe.  The Sufi poet Rumi said,

Don’t do daily prayers like a bird pecking,
moving its head up and down.
Prayer is an egg.
Hatch out the total helplessness inside.

How Can a Mystery as Large as the Universe Connect to a Being Like Me?

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Hubble Image of Spiral Galaxy

Hubble Image of Spiral Galaxy

Another reason that fractals matter, and why I want to explore them, has to do with a very old spiritual quandary. Human beings have long imagined the possibility of an infinite being, a divine being, who is creator and sustainer of the universe, commonly known in our culture as God. Not all human beings resonate with this idea, and the details vary as to what God might be like, but most peoples have some sort of divine being or beings as a part of the stories and values of their culture. I have spoken of God as the larger Mystery of which we are a part.

Many human beings have also imagined that they can have a personal relationship with this divine Mystery. Most cultures have forms of prayer to entreat help from God, and forms of prayer to thank God for help given. Many people also directly experience the presence of the divine in their hearts, the intimate presence of the Mystery.

I know that I have had moments in my life when I felt held in the arms of divine love, that I felt cared for by a Mystery greater than myself. Those feelings are so tangible, that they help me get through my most difficult days. When I feel afraid, I can trust that all will be well, because of that tangible presence of love. When I feel overwhelmed, I can keep on walking forward, held in the memory of that love. But if God is infinite, or if the Mystery is all that is, how can that be? How can a Mystery as large as the universe connect to a being like me, small as a speck of dust?

Fractals have given me a new way to think about this spiritual dilemma. A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself, from an infinitely large scale to an infinitely small scale. What if God is a fractal? What if God is a pattern that repeats itself from the infinitely large to the infinitely small.

Here is how I imagine it. The divine pattern is a pattern of life and love and creativity—it expresses itself in the creative unfolding of the universe. It repeats in the attractions of planets and stars, and in the evolution of life itself. Because fractals continue to repeat in self-similar ways at all scales of size, the same divine pattern emerges at the size of our own human consciousness. We can find that pattern in our hearts, the expression of life and love and creativity. Thus we can find the Mystery in our hearts, as well as in the larger whole.

In this way, fractals offer a solution to the old quandary of an infinite God relating to a tiny human being. By understanding fractals, my intellect can make sense of what my heart experiences of the Mystery. It helps me to make sense of the tender feelings I feel, and to welcome their help for the troubles that life brings. I feel less lonely, when I feel connected to the divine love. It becomes possible to believe that I matter, that I am not just a speck of dust in a vast uncaring universe. I have within me the fractal beauty of the infinite Mystery. Ferns More DSC03600

Reblogged: Global Day of Prayer for the Water

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I am reblogging this message from a Facebook event sponsored by Indigenous Peoples for December 21st:

 

Ocean Waves MD DSC07085

Photo by Margy Dowzer

Water is the one thing that all living beings require to survive. And, it is a resource that is rapidly disappearing. We have a fixed amount of water on this planet. Despite all of our technological advances, we haven’t figured out how to make more water. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

We have resorts in the desert and bottled water for sale. We have an industrial system that uses more water each day than it would take to support our entire civilization. Our waters have never been in greater danger. Practices like hydro-fracking and tar sands extraction pose the greatest threat to our water that our planet has ever seen. Our oceans are contaminated with waste, including the devastating amounts of radioactive materials that are being released by the Fukushima disaster.

We, as Indigenous peoples, have been speaking out against the destruction of our planet for decades. We have been working to address these issues spiritually, politically, legally and through direct action.

We now need the help of the global community to protect the continuation of life here on Earth. It is time for us all to come together to make a stand for the future generations. We need to use everything that we have to protect our waters, so that our children and grandchildren will have the ability to live. Today, we ask that you all stand with us.

We are asking everyone to invest in a day of prayer for the preservation and healing of the global waters and for a healing and elevation in the consciousness of those who are destroying our Mother, the Earth.

Please join us by organizing small groups in your local area to participate in this important event. If you can’t join a group then please take the time to add your prayers from wherever you are.

Here is what we are asking people to do: On December 21st, from sunup until sundown, please go to the ocean or to another major water source to pray, in whatever way is meaningful to you. Pray for the healing of the waters and for the healing of the hearts and minds of those who are destroying our water.

If you can’t gather at a water source then collect some water in containers and pray with it where you are, then choose someone to travel to a water source and pour the water that you have prayed with into that major water source. If you can’t reach the ocean or other large body of water then any body of water will do. If you can’t find a water source in your area then pour the water into the Earth at the end of your day of prayer.

We have a powerful ability to manifest change when we focus our energies. In order to create the type of change that is needed we must unite our prayers and energies and focus on healing the catastrophic destruction that humankind has created. We must shift the path that we are currently on, for the future of all life. Prayer is a powerful tool in creating that shift.

What we would like you to pray for:

1. Preservation and Healing of the global waters
2. Healing of the hearts and minds of those destroying our waters and an elevation in consciousness for all global leaders.

We ask that you keep your focus on these issues, so that we can keep the energy powerful.

Please share this with EVERYONE you know. We are all children of this Earth and we all have a responsibility to stand up and protect this vital source of our survival.

Looking forward to joining you all in prayer on December 21st!

Will the Real God Please Stand Up

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If I say the word God, people run away.
They’ve been frightened–sat on ’till the spirit cried ‘uncle.’
Tom Barrett

Steeple DSC01264Spirituality is our experience of the larger reality of which we are a part, the Mystery that connects and upholds all life. Many people call that Mystery God. But the word God is a challenging one. Some people have a hard time with it. A few may stop listening immediately. Others may call to mind particular beliefs and images from their own religious community that are difficult for them. Some may be very clear what it means to them, and very assured that everyone else is wrong about it. Some may be moved with emotion, wounded by the betrayals of those who used that word in hurtful ways. Others may feel a sense of confusion, perhaps tinged with longing. The word is powerful and charged with conflict. I want to wrestle with that word.

When I was growing up, there was a TV game show called, “To Tell the Truth.” Three contestants each claimed to be the same person. The first would say, “My name is Jane Doe.” The second would say, “My name is Jane Doe.” The third would also claim to be Jane Doe. A celebrity panel tried to guess which one was telling the truth. At the end, we all learned the truth when the game show host commanded: “Will the real Jane Doe please stand up!”

Don’t we wish sometimes that there were a game show host to shout—“Will the real God please stand up?” If only it wasn’t so confounding and mysterious! We know that this is not merely a debate about ideas. People fight wars and hurt each other over the issue of whose God is the real God. And, if God is real, others ask, why is there so much trouble in the world? Why aren’t our prayers answered when we are suffering? Why doesn’t the real God just show up, make it all clear?

Wendell Berry asked that question, too, through his character Jayber Crow, who was the town barber in a fictional village called Port William, Kentucky. Jayber was very troubled by the war going on—it was the time of the Second World War—troubled by all the pain it caused. He says: “In the most secret place of my soul I wanted to beg the Lord to reveal Himself in power… to lay His hands on the hurt children. Why didn’t He cow our arrogance? …Why hasn’t he done it at any one of a thousand good times…?” He goes on to say:

I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it, for all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn’t, He hasn’t, because from the moment He did, He would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves. …From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to Him and He to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended.

 Berry asks how could we be human beings if God appeared in the sky and took away our ability to search, to struggle, to think for ourselves, to love? As soon as God stood up, the game would be over—the adventure of human life would lose its meaning. There would be nothing left to do.