Meaningless and Beautiful

I have friends who have no need -- and no use -- for God. Any God. They’re completely satisfied with the universe of time and space as it churns into being moment by moment without any Divine help.

I understand that. I totally understand that. If I hadn’t been raised in a church that taught me to believe in things that cannot be seen—perceived in any physical way, in fact—then maybe the ten thousand things would be enough for me, too.

But I choose to see more. And there is more. And what I see adds an ineffable layer to that universe of time and space, to all of those ten thousand things.

And when I come back to the real, the real is still here. But brighter. And also meaningless and beautiful.

Wealth and Fear

One of the blessings of getting older is that I don't feel quite the same need I used to have for more and more and more. I find myself thinking less about what I don't have and more about what I do have. Gratitude ensues.

Believe it or not, this is one of the reasons I feel sorry for the wealthy of the world. Jesus was right when he said it was easier for "a camel to go through the eye of a needle" than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. I don't think he was talking about wealth. I think he was talking about fear. A fear of the future. A fear of loss of control. A fear of powerlessness. A fear that nobody can be trusted.

Wealth allows for control, and control allows for power, and power allows for security -- which is freedom from fear. We think money can free us from fear. Jesus saw that this is not so, and so he pitied the wealthy because their fear makes it harder for them to open their minds to the presence of [God, Tao, Allah, etc.] -- even though it's all around them and constantly welling up inside them like a spring.

Wealth can spread fear, or it can spread compassion. Great wealth can spread great fear, or it can spread great compassion. My hope is that the wealthier we are, the more compassionate we become.

Spirituality Quote of the Week

In the Scriptures, prayer is always ascribed to the heart, for it is the heart that God teaches and it is through the heart that God enlightens the mind.

-- Jean-Nicholas Grou

Lunch with Sally

I'm almost certain that somewhere in our conversation (see last two posts), Steve and I ended up talking about people who pray before their meal when they're eating out in public the same way they presumably do at home in private.

He asked me if my family prayed in public when I was a kid, and I explained that my father would say a prayer after we sat down to eat at home, but only at home. We didn't pray in public places outside of church and home. That was considered unnecessary, showy, pretentious, and off-putting.

What I didn't remember until some time later is that a couple of weeks before my lunch with Steve and the prayer men, I had lunch with another friend of mine -- who led the two of us in a prayer at our table in the restaurant across the street from my office.

I'll call her Sally. She's in her 70s and is another retired Presbyterian minister friend of mine. We go to the same church. She's written a novel and has hired me to edit it and design it into a book for her. I should add here that Sally and I have developed a good and deep friendship over the years. We are spiritual mentors for one another. She's hurting these days because she just lost her husband, who was yet another Presbyterian minister. I'll call him Carlos. He was born in Cuba but had to flee the island in 1954.

Sally and I went to lunch after one of our meetings about her book, and after the food came and the server had headed back to the kitchen, she asked if I wanted her to pray. I said yes. She then said a short, delicate prayer of gratitude, and that was it.

I don't know how it looked to others on the outside, but to me on the inside of this little duo, it was lovely. I know that's a corny word, but that's what it was. It was a lovely little moment, and I'm glad I was included in it.

Why is that different to me than what I would think if I saw two people sitting at a table in a public restaurant praying aloud with their heads bowed and their eyes closed? Why can I not allow them to have the same experience I had with Sally?

Fair question.

Steve's Question, II

Back to what I posted yesterday about my friend Steve and our conversation about prayer.

As I mentioned, it didn’t surprise me that he would ask me about the two guys praying at the restaurant. He’d asked me about church stuff and Bible stuff and Jesus stuff and Christianity stuff and God stuff lots of times. As I said, he has a curious mind.

And opinions. Lots of opinions. (As do I.)

For instance, I've heard him say more than a few times that he doesn’t think it makes sense to pray to the Creator of the whole universe about his own petty little problems. After all, shouldn’t He or It or Whatever be out there taking care of bigger shit than his piddly little crap? He mentioned this again at the restaurant after he heard the guy praying for different people by name.

Even though he and I had talked about prayer in general, and he’d weighed in on how it looks to him, I'd never really said much about my own prayer life. So I started telling him about my view of prayer. (He did ask, after all.)

First, do I pray? Yes. My prayer life goes back before my earliest memories, and it's been with me ever since. I don't remember a time that prayer hasn't been part of my life.

I told him his idea that God would be too busy to worry about me and my daily calamities was understandable, but I had a different way of thinking about that.

We’re talking about something we can’t possibly comprehend because our minds are bound by time and space. How do we imagine the Eternal—the absence of time? How do we conceive the Infinite—the Emptiness that contains all?

This unnameable mystery is limitless, so how could it possibly be too busy to help poor little old me? Or Steve? Or anybody for that matter?

Then we started talking about praying in public, but I'll save that for another post.

Steve's Question, I

For the last week or so, I've been posting a lot of stuff about prayer. Here's how that all got started:

A friend and I were having lunch at a local restaurant a few months ago, and at one point, I went to refill my tea. When I came back to the table, he said, "Do you ever pray? I don't think I've ever asked you that before, but I was just wondering if you ever pray."

He nodded his head toward a couple of guys sitting at the next table. "Like that," he added. They both had their heads bowed and their eyes closed, and one of them was saying a prayer out loud -- not loud, just aloud. It was an extended one, not just a "thank you for this food" kind of thing.

My friend (I'll call him Steve) and I have known each other for more than two dozen years, ever since our kids were in preschool together. He became a client, then a friend, then a quasi-business partner. We shared an office for 10 years, and we continue to have at least one business client in common. We've had hundreds of lunches together and thousands of conversations on everything from women and wives to fishing and basketball to Buddhism and Donald Trump.

We even have the same birthday, just different years. He's the older, wiser one. I'm the younger, prettier one.

I don't know what it is, but many of my best friends over the years have been decidedly un-religious people -- in some cases even anti-religious. Maybe I'm drawn to such people because my own life is so saturated with religion and spiritual curiosity. True to form, Steve didn't grow up going to church, even though he was raised in the same Bible Belt I was. He doesn't believe in a God like the one described in the Bible. He sees religion on balance as a net loss, thanks to things like the Inquisition, various "holy" wars, and the Crusades, not to mention all of the preachers who condemn gays and deny climate change.

On the other hand, he maintains a curious and open mind, so it didn't surprise me that he would ask about these two guys praying in the restaurant. What DID surprise me, though, was to realize how little I'd said about prayer in all of our conversations. Looking back on it, I think it's because my prayer life is such an intimate, private part of my spiritual life.

But that didn't stop me from answering his question. More on that later.

More Than Two

I think it was Ann Lamott who said she only needs two prayers: Help me, help me, help me, and Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've said those prayers since I was a kid. I still say them -- both of them -- every day.

I want more, though.

I want prayers that godless people can pray. I want prayers that happy sinners can pray. I want prayers that despots and dictators and dilettantes can pray. I want prayers that racists can pray. I want prayers that judges can pray. I want one big, long prayer that I can pray -- a psalm of joy and fear and pain and doubt and awe.

It'll never happen, though. Daily life is too seductive, too shiny. I get drawn away. I could bring prayer along with me, of course, but I get distracted and forget to do this.

Short Trip

Awareness leads
to gratitude.

Gratitude leads
to contentment.

The Original Definition

As I mentioned elsewhere, prayer can refer to a lot of things we don't normally think of as prayer.

Everything I encounter in my daily life can become a prayer. Every experience I have has the potential to bring me back to an awareness of the Mystery. When that happens and I become aware, that’s prayer.

Watching sunlight on the sky-turned face of a lake. Listening to wind hiss through ripe wheat. Smelling coffee in a dark morning. Tasting salt. Touching water. Prayers, all of them prayers.

It’s the awareness that makes it work. Paying attention is prayer. Paying attention as big as I can as often as I can enlarges me. It guides me to wholeness -- the original definition of perfection.

Spirituality Quote of the Week

Inner brightness ends up being a much better and longer-lasting alternative to evil than any war, anger, violence, or ideology could ever be. All you have to do is meet one such shining person and you know that he or she is surely the goal of humanity and the delight of God.

-- Richard Rohr

Always With Us

Prayer can’t be taken away. It can’t be given away. It can’t be thrown away. It’s always with us. One of its gifts is the dissipation of fear -- both within and without.

Whatever reduces fear is a prayer.

Four Lessons

Here are four more things I've learned about prayer over the years:

First, prayer is personal. We may pray with other people. We may pray for other people. We may pray in front of other people. But prayer is still personal. Even if we’re praying in a group, our prayers are still personal because we each have our own path of awareness into the Divine. Prayer is part of that awareness.

Second, prayer is a conversation, not a soliloquy.

Third, prayer doesn’t cure. It heals. To be cured is to return to the state of health we had before we became sick or injured. To be healed is to transcend sickness and injury regardless of our state of health.

Fourth, prayer is a mirror. It shows us what we think we need. It shows us what we think we lack. It shows us our fears. It shows us our joy. It shows us our pain. Tao already knows all of these things.