Architecture of Prayer
the forgotten love language
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 ominous Black thread
Lest I forget what cracked the egg and
broke the waters, and bore
the little brown seed behind the beauty of the blossom
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
A few Sundays past, Reverend Pam of the Unity Church in Port Townsend, told a story about a healing she witnessed of a man with a late stage, terminal, cancerous tumor in his lung who received hands on prayer from herself and a group of other ministerial school students. One week later, the man went in for a pre-op scan and the tumor and cancer were gone.
Architecture of Prayer
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 pierces our veiled awareness of the unseen world, and illuminates our interdependence with all forms of life.
Soul shaping prayer often resurrects itself in our lives from a lostness, a collapse, and the inevitable surrender to change. It ekes out with that little word with huge implications- HELP! Here the journey truly begins.
It is in those pivotal moments that we are faced with choosing to turn to something that our fears 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.
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 into an alignment with your soul will find you if you are willing to stop projecting what you believe help looks like.
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, unbroken, throughout time.
When we become disconnected from sacred language and spiritual aptitude, we potentially suffer a more catastrophic wound than what we will inevitably endure physically.
Everyone, regardless of the most dire of circumstances, can find some treasure in the wreckage if they know how to pray. For what we 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 to our heart, trust life and follow it’s lead. Projections, expectations and past conditioning will mislead. And yet, there are no wrong turns.
A great misfortune to humanity is when under the dominant Abrahamic religions, and man's manipulation of “the word”, God became a bethroned man. It was 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- and having their prayers answered- that we lost this primary love language.
For me, the most profound aspect of prayer is the deep intimacy with an inner life, left mostly bereft of sacred language, that is churned into a fertile, mystical playground.
Who is it that I am praying to anyway? Who is it that answers?
I have been made whole on a string of prayers
whose answers were woven into my life
in the pattern of a labyrinth
Whenever I cried to see Your face
I would become entangled
in a hall of mirrors
Until everywhere I looked-
upon each day's daunting demands
with its storms and sorrows
and breathtaking bounty
I saw Love.
Forms of Prayer
Prayer is a form of power. The implications of this power were well understood by those who authentically embodied that power. It serves well to understand this dynamic, and the true motive behind the prayer, as it can change the course of a life.
In spiritual communities, animist traditions and indigenous centered societies, prayer was/is fundamental to awakening human consciousness to Universal citizenship. It was/is central to all forms of healing. Prayer fed/feeds the perseverance needed to walk in an alliance with Life that is deeply felt, experienced and therefore trusted.
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather change the nature of the one who prays” ~Soren Kierkegaard
All initiations - the sun dance, vision quest, sweat lodge, medicine ceremony, solitary silence, deep devotional 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. It is the prayer that guides the camel through the eye of the needle.
Prayers of gratitude are scientifically proven to rearrange cellular activity to a more harmonious formation- just ask the water. 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.
Group prayer is like giving God spinach.
Oh, and that most holy 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 Spirit’s kool-aid.
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.
“We Indians know about silence,” he said. “We aren't afraid of it. In fact, to us it is more powerful than words.”
― Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder
Mantra, chanting and primal sound are a historical cornerstone of spiritual health. Ritual, sacred dance, baptism- all forms of prayer.
Yes you can pray for money and love. Maybe you need to win the lottery to face greed and generosity and invest it all in a healing center where you are then no longer "rich", but fed by feeding others, or maybe you need lose everything for your soul to know abundance. Praying for love can be confusing to God ;) as it’s like a wave praying for water. But give it a whirl and see who/what shows up.
Fear is a prayer.
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 sacred sciences dictate 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.
The utter challenge of a prayerful life, beyond developing the ears to hear, is to embody the understanding that death can be what serves the greatest and highest good, that death is a healing. This can be physical as well as intrapersonal.
Also, 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. You are doing nothing wrong. Keep leaning into your heart for the words and you will hear the prayer that is most needed to help you through.
"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
Everyone carries a prayer. Everyone carries a song. Everyone has a sacred 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.
How we sing our song, which includes how we speak to ourselves and others, either puts us in dissonance or harmonious resonance with certain frequencies. It determines a life of peace or one of war.
The greatest leap of faith, the one that will heal you even if you land a broken leg for awhile, is into the language of your own soul- and heading it.
It is here that you glimpse the most sought after of realities- that You are who you have been praying for.
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 else that your choosing to breathe here in Life’s mystery school, this crucible of resurrection- is prayer enough. You are the call, and the one who has already answered.
“It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart”
~Mahatma Gandhi
Amen, Awomen, Namaste, Aho, Blessed Be~ Shira Starfire
THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING A PAID SUBSCRIPTION, LIKING AND COMMENTING BELOW. IT MEANS MORE THAN YOU KNOW.
thank you for this-prayer breaks me open sometimes...