Prayer as Secular Breath

Sometimes I think that just about everybody in the world would find some point of disagreement with everybody else on who or what God is or whether she/he/they exist at all.  Many people who do not believe in a god simply cannot ~ this is a holy unbelief.  It comes from their hearts breaking too much at the suffering of the world and the seemingly implacable lack of response from any god to that.  Unbelief made holy.

Because of all of this rolling range of difference when it comes to who or what makes up God or a god, you would think that therefore there would probably be just as many differences in opinion on what prayer is.  But I'm not so sure about that.  Regardless of who it's directed to, what drives the prayer seems to be a remarkably short range of things - gratitude, requests for help, requests for renewal, expressions of love.

I don't even think you need to believe in a personal god to pray.  Surely everybody on the planet has prayed at some point. Some see prayer as praying to that higher part of ourselves, the one that acts in our best interests and seems at times to help us respond to the lower part of ourselves, that which will keep us chained in fear.  In this sense, we all pray, and it has nothing at all to do with institutional religion and that whole bullshit arena of power and control.  In this sense it is a beautiful thing that softens my heart towards the world.

"Prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging" - John O'Donohue

Casa Tomada by Rafael Larrea Uribe

Arrival

Dear God,

We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired.  We are exhausted, we are distressed, we despair.  We give up, we fall down, we let go.  We cry.  We are empty, we grow calm, we are ready.  We wait quietly.

A small, shy truth arrives.  Arrives from without and within.  Arrives and is born.  Simple, steady, clear.  Like a mirror, like a bell, like a flame.  Like rain in summer.  A precious truth arrives and is born within us.  Within our emptiness.

We accept it, we observe it, we absorb it.  We surrender to our bare truth.  We are nourished, we are changed.  We are blessed.  We rise up.

For this we give thanks.

Amen.

Michael Leunig - When I Talk To You:  A Cartoonist Talks to God

Good Prayer/Bad Prayer

I came across a blog post about centering prayer recently where the writer was roundly condemning it as a tool of the devil. Which quite befuddled me for a few seconds while I got my bearings on how he was viewing it. Everybody has their own worldview and everybody is informed by that. I left a comment detailing my experiences, hoping to be able to have some sort of a conversation, but the problem often is that Christians are encouraged not so much to love their enemies but that interacting with them will taint us somehow. "Love your enemies," Jesus said but we prefer to retreat into safe notions of black and white because we are fearful of being deceived. Such a vital element of the human condition, that when someone is in error, we want to send them scapegoated out into the wilderness, keep ourselves pure. And so therefore this man did not respond to my blog comment. This is common enough behaviour in blogland, but it still pisses me off.

I have been thinking so much recently about what prayer is. Even if he did not want to enter into a conversation with a heretical being, the mental dialogues (arguments) I had with him in my own head were quite edifying anyway, to help me identify to myself what I think prayer is. Because the longer I go on doing it, the more mysterious it becomes to me. And I think in some ways too I am still trying to differentiate between meditation and prayer. Meditation feels like preparation for prayer in some ways while it also feels like prayer at the same time (and I am using the words "meditation" and "centreing prayer" interchangeably here, just to muddy the waters further.)

I think it is that severe differentiation between prayer and meditation, Western and Eastern concepts, and the fears that come along with those differentiations that cause many Christians to fear the idea of using a "mantra" as a scary, demonic thing. The man on the blog I commented on said that using a mantra is the same as the "repetitively babbling" we are admonished to not employ as our method of prayer. He also said that this sort of prayer is found nowhere in the Bible, and to that I concur. Not found in a six step methodology. But neither are millions of other things. As far as Bible verses go, the "be still and know that I am God" is the very foundation from where I do these practices, and it is also prayer in its most basic form to me. Jesus said "When you pray, do it like this," but is that where it ends? Is prayer the rote repetition of "Our father in heaven?" Does that not bring us full circle back to the "repetitious babbling" I was just talking about?

And anyway, as far as I am seeing it right now, my use of a mantra is purely as a box to put my monkey mind in. The real effect of using a mantra is actually silence in the end. Those verses that talked about repetitive babbling seem to me to really be talking about not praying in a way where you feel you are not being heard, or in an egotistical sort of a fashion that involves big grand prayers to be heard by God. That is part of what those verses mean to me. Using a mantra is not so much something I am doing to God as it is a way for me to harness my anxious mind so that I am free to enter into being still and knowing that he is God. But I understand why he thinks the way he does about it, I really do. I'm not critical of his observations, but I do think that he perhaps misunderstands the differences. But I could be wrong. I suppose I often am.

How delightful it is to see the Bible in a place where I am still allowed to have my own thoughts and come to my own conclusions. It is something like having the law being begun to be written on your heart instead of it sitting inside a tome I must consult outside myself. More scary, more room for error, sure. And so much more real.

I understand why that man would consider using mantras and repetitive babbling to be much the same as the other, and I also understand from him thinking that that he has no real experience or understanding at all of what he condemns except for what Apprising Ministries has informed him is the evil thing.

What gets me about Christians also is that our thinking is the outrcrop of a childish black and white view of things, our segregating things up into neatly packaged little sections with "Christian" over here and "evil" over there, and "prayer" being the reciting of words in our head (without ceasing? Goodness me, how exhausting then, if that's what it is. I like this version better).

When we have that idea, about being a pure unblemished people set apart from the evil in the world, we are unable and unwilling to see our faith centred in his historical space, nor to see the common heritage it shares with other cultures and other religions. Looking at things in this way, we think that, for example, if we practice yoga asanas that therefore we are practising something "Hindu." We think that meditation is something those Buddhists do, so they've already claimed it and it can't be something that Christians also do, because if we do, then that is just the one world religion. I understand the fear of people who do not want to be led astray and deceived, who want to be faithful to God. To each his own apprising of his conscience, you know? All those verses speaking of not eating meat sacrificed to idols are necessary for us to heed because Western 21st century Christians have the most soft and spongy consciences.

But some of us are free to eat meat sacrificed to idols. As far as I see it these days, yoga practice is a philosophy of the body that was learnt by a bunch of people in a particular time and place that had stacks of knowledge about how our bodies work. They happened to have as their religion the Hindu one. I'm more interested in the people these days. Whatever religion they happen to be is of secondary importance to me. I do not think that God is centred within all religions. I do however think he is centred within Humanity. I think all people have access to God if they so desire to.

And so this man on this blog could look at the methods of centreing prayer and say that they were wrong because they were "Eastern". And Eastern gets equated with Buddhism and other religions which everyone knows have nothing of value to benefit us poor Christians cut adrift from our heritage in so many ways (which reminds me, I still haven't written about my thoughts on the Passover meal. Such a beautiful thing! The history of the Jews' wilderness wanderings, played out ... in food! God is so embodied! Like playing dress-ups. Makes the modern thimble of grape juice and bit of Salada so uncreative in comparison).

And so we are taught that we can't let the worldviews gleaned from any other religion inform us and teach us because that is indulging in false gods. Well, I say that when you get to a certain point of faith in God you become free to eat the meat that is sacrificed to idols and there is nothing in there that can taint you. And yet there's a wisdom that comes too. I do not know why but several years ago I desired to return to practicing yoga but for me it felt wrong. At that time it did feel like I was doing something that was somehow wrong to me at that particular time. To have indulged in it would have been stupid, even if only for the fact that I would have felt guilty, and guiltily practising asanas brings all sorts of physical problems when you're contorted up on your mat. Just no need to go there.

But no need now not to go there.

Eastern religions have plenty to inform me about the inklings I have, the things that I feel I am learning from living within this Matrix, to learn to see in the ways God is teaching me to learn to see, to move forward within my own faith, because my faith has its roots in Eastern thinking. Because so many people are looking to the affairs of the world and seeing antichrist brewings and one world religions festering (I do not criticise that; I see many of those sorts of things myself) they automatically presume, the same mistake made over again and again, that to keep our religion pure and unblemished, to remain undeceived, is to retreat into our own camp of "Christianity" and to do "Christian" things and see life in from a "Christian" worldview.

To live out of fear. I do not want to live out of fear. I would rather sin boldly in my pursuit of life and the Father rather than to fear with that horrible Pentecostal fear that takes all of the evils of the world - the one world governments and evil politicians and systemic crushings - and makes it the centre of everything.

God is the centre of everything. That shit is happening in the world. I refuse to let "Christianity" teach me to lose my focus. I trust God to help me maintain that. And he does.

Body Praying

I have so much more energy these days, now they are lengthening. I am sorry that the consequence of them lengthening for me is that Erin is most likely suffering from the shortening of them at her end. I cannot think of a remedy for this situation, living on a sphere and all that. If we lived on a flat plane, then we could all have the same amount of sun all the time, but it would probably mess with the time-space continuum and stuff wouldn't grow and who knows what else :)

Anyway, if I was going to create a place for people to live, far cooler a round ball that just hangs in the middle of nowhere being held up by nothing, with distinct seasons to give variety. Maybe the flat plane thing would be boring. Or maybe there's one of those in an alternate universe.

My floors are almost vacuumed, due to this excess energy. I've got some yummy meals to cook. There's clothes flapping on the line. I've driven to Vermont and back and then to Seaford and back in 24 hours. I've delighted in catching up with friends. All this yoga I have been doing has been a total Godsend. How delightful it is to get back into this space where if I do not do an hour's worth of asanas one day, I am hanging out for it the next. I can feel the greater flexibility in my body already, plus I am beginning to tone up, and the sense of wellbeing is pretty much priceless.

I am in love with my spine. It doesn't get paid all that much attention in our society but it really is the centre of the ship, something that I focus on every day now. The main seven chakras, each of which is linked to a gland, run along the spine. So does the central nervous system. Working my spine keeps me centred, helps keep the anxiety at bay, the mind monkeys from chattering me into a coma.

It's amazing how spot on people thousands and thousands of years ago were about intricate parts of the body - glands and things. It was knowledge arrived at in a different way to the way we often measure our knowledge these days. What amazes me is the great poetry and narrative that accompanied earlier ways of knowing - and how accurate it was. Mindboggling really. And exciting too. We "know" in many different ways. Our bodies "know" things before our conscious minds do. We do well to listen to them instead of dismissing them as something evil.

It also amazes me, the whole chakra thing, how it works. We dismiss them as stupid moronity because you will not find a chakra on a micrscope. And yet science is consistently finding that we are energetic bodies. Chakras live in our energetic bodies, not our physical bodies. That makes them no less real than what we sense as that part of us that goes on, that is our essence. People dismiss this stuff because our ways of viewing things are too narrow and restrictive. Sola scriptura ways of viewing anything dismisses what does not fit into small compartments of our own making. As if any of us ever know anything perfectly.

I cannot begin to describe how wonderful it feels to do different poses that stretch the spine and flood my body with good feeling. I feel like everything is working better in my body since I began a regular yoga practice. Performing yoga asanas is like an active, beautiful form of prayer to me, now.

Fearfully and wonderfully made and all that. We are beautifully made too. The intricate complexity of our bodies, of all of these different bits that all come from a single cell. God, you take my breath away. (And you give it, too :)

Christian Meditation

As an interesting aside: anti-mystical Christians who attack meditation often do so because of a groundless metaphysical argument: that if we “clear our mind” we are leaving ourselves open to demonic attack. This is ridiculous for two reasons: first, it is as impossible to clear one’s mind as it is to consciously stop one’s heart from beating: the point behind meditation is to relax and slow down the mind, so that we can become conscious of the luminous space between our thoughts. And secondly, as Evagrius makes it clear: if a demon is going to attack us, he’ll attack us through our thoughts, not through the silence between them. With that in mind, meditation, far from being a vulnerable practice, actually is a powerful tool that any spiritual warrior would want to use; for it enables us to calmly observe our thoughts, learn to practice non-attachment in relation to our thoughts, and — again, as Evagrius points out — empowers us to gently turn our thoughts over to Christ, for the purpose of discerning which thoughts are truly worthy to act on. Indeed, if more of us could learn to submit all our thoughts to the light of love, wouldn’t the world be a better place?

Carl McColman, The Website of Unknowning

Succinct, McColman dude.

Funny how you start seeing a fourth century monk in one place, and suddenly up he pops all over the joint. Good to hear you speak more, Evagrius. You have much to say to us 1700 years down the line.

The luminous space between our thoughts.

May they grow ever bigger for all of us. I find there is sometimes so little space between my thoughts that they can spiral me down into a teary funk in the blink of an hour. This is why I need meditation and prayer. To remember me to the luminous space between my thoughts. Made out of clouds, or fabric softener, or kittehs, or something :) Made of God, who beats my heart.

And You May Ask Yourself - "Well, How Did I Get Here?"

Do you talk to yourself? I don't mean the tapes-in-your-head so-low-you-don't-even-realise it incessant droning of your inner bastards telling you stupid things.

And I don't mean the type of talking to yourself that my Mum does in the kitchen and which I have taken to doing too. "Now, where was I? Oh, okay, here we are. How much butter? Three tablespoons," etc etc.

I'm talking about the sort of stuff you do in psychologists' offices where you sit an empty chair across from you and talk to whichever mad Gedarene of your soul (see previous poem) you are trying to understand. It's something I have begun doing quite regularly (although I skip the empty chair bit, trying as I am to keep myself out being admitted to the psych ward if possible). It goes sort of like this:

"Hmm, okay. I see you've slipped back into this feeling that there is something inherently wrong with you. You know, I can understand why you feel like that. Honestly, when I see what you built when you were young to keep yourself functioning, it's all quite impressive really. But you know it never really was going to survive forever. You know that. But it's okay, really. It's scary not knowing what will be built in its place. You don't even trust half the time that anything CAN be built in its place. Something out of nothing. You will just have to wait and see and hope. And hey, you know what? That feeling you have that there is something inherently wrong with you? It's a lie. It really is. It's a lie. Watch and see what God does."

And blah blah blah. This ongoing, spelling out obviousnesses to myself, has become quite a lovely thing for me to do. Do you do this with yourself? The comfort I feel, it makes me feel safe, you know? As if I'm on my own side. The things I see when I do it, it's like how I feel when I sit down and write and realise that I know and think and remember much more than I thought I did about a particular subject. This is the same sort of thing. It's like conversing with my dreamscape. It's as if the kingdom of heaven is within me.

Unstretching

My brother has departed for the moment. Has gone to stay over in our old South Oakleigh stomping ground, to catch up with friends, our parents and his ex/new girlfriend, to do a few days' work, get his car fixed, etc. He was so fine when I said to him this morning to not take it personally but that I need my space or I will go insane :) How hard it was to work up to saying that. Ouch! But he was gearing up to leave anyway. He has things to do, and he knew that he was cramping my style. Could probably sense it in my stroppiness of the past few days, my downcast eyes. I can't help it. After a while, I just can't breathe.

Such powerful validation when you tell people what you need and they accept it and feed back to you that it's okay. It's like I am growing, but also doubting, and when I get the encouragement that maybe something really is okay, I grow into it a little bit more, there on the spot. Staking my claim, stating my claim, that this is what I require - this size and shape - breathes it into being and solidifies it before my eyes. I often don't quite realise how much I need something until I have spoken the words. And then sometimes I surprise even myself as a the words are coming out of my mouth. Why, yes, that's exactly what I was sensing, but I didn't know how well I could articulate it until I did. This life is a spinout.

My solitude requirements are so different to so many people I know that I really do need encouragement from others that it is okay. I feel guilty. It feels self-indulgent. But then that is often the way when you start unfolding yourself into the sizes that you actually require. It feels too free, so there must be something wrong. But maybe there's nothing wrong. Maybe it is just the space you were always meant to take up until the people around you and your own stupidity and lack of courage folded you down smaller than you were meant to be. We can become so used to self-created discomfort that we miss it when it's gone.

I think this struggle for what I require shall go on for a while, this knowing what I require and this resisting it, this feeling guilty for it. But there is nothing for it because if I don't walk into the spaces I have ploughed, my anger and resentment come spilling out the sides, as they have been doing over the past few days.

I once thought this sort of anger and resentment was just plain childish petulance. Now I believe it is something different, a warning device more than petulance. And yet still the guilt remains. I compare myself to others - always a pointless enterprise. But I look at my friend Jane, who put me up in her house for three months until I found my own place after Mark and I broke up. Sure, I was flitting off for a fortnight at a time, but still, for a great portion of the time I was there. And Jane seemed to cope pretty well without having a nervous breakdown. But then, I can spend countless hours and days with Jane and it doesn't rankle me because we are much more well-matched than my brother and I.

And I think of my cousin, Andi, who also harboured me for weeks at a time at her house, slotted me in amongst her husband and two children. But of course, it is even more easier for me and Andrea to be around each other than just about anyone else I know, really. We have got so good at it, from all those childhood school holidays spent together, six weeks on the trot, day and night, without hardly breaking stride. Ahhh, memories :)

So I am thankful for these two women who helped me when I really needed help. I am grateful to them. But if I compare myself to them, I feel guilty because I have only had my brother here for a few weeks and already it is driving me nuts. But still, there are differences in dynamics, obviously. Andrea and Jane have not affected my boundaries in the way that my brother has, and so there is always a psychic kind of thing that goes on when I am around him. I understand the difference. It drains me so. But still, I feel guilty. This is a long process, it seems.

Tonight, I have the house to myself. My brother is away until next Tuesday, and then probably back for a day or two here and there, but generally, I have my house back. Of course, as often happens, the first hours I have had the house to myself it has felt strangely empty. It's as if the people that have inhabited the spaces before you are still hanging around, and the space has not yet stretched itself back to how it was before they were there. Does anyone else get so whackily influenced by spaces in this way, or is it just me and my flakiness? :)

I feel like I have been sleeping sitting up on concrete all night leaning against a cold fence. Part of it is actually physical - I am way overdue for a chiropractor visit. Most of it is psychological and emotional. I must have my space. I just must. It is non-negotiable. But as you are seeing, dear fellow blogger, I am struggling with this requirement. It seems so big to me. Why do I have require such ridiculous crazy amounts of solitude? And yet, I can ask the question all I want but the answer only comes in acceptance. It is how I am. It is how it is. God must be okay with it, even if I am patently not there yet. I believe that. Sometimes.

So this evening, to celebrate getting my couch back, I lay on it for way too many hours in a row and watched the last 4 episodes of the last season of Six Feet Under. And cried of course. And laughed of course. It's so funny to me that this show, with such a Buddhist emphasis, still manages to call to me about God. I'm sure it was not the aim of the show's producers but nevertheless, it does. I think I see God in strange, downbeat, outcast places and oh, it is some kind of freedom :)

I am very mindful of needing my space and my silence because the times are a-calling for it. I need to get quiet. I need to listen and sniff the wind. I feel so unsettled in my spirit at the moment. Does anybody else feel that way? Politically, economically, it feels like so many changes are underfoot. And I need the silence the silence the silence to get some sort of handle on what it is that is unsettling me so much.

The silence. Oh, the beautiful silence where everything rights itself. Where I hear my heart speak. Where I quell the fear and God speaks and I cry and he watches and I watch him and we gaze at each other with our non-eyes. I go through the days filled with people and colour and light and noise and I love all of that. But it is strangely emptying. The emptiness drives me paradoxically to the empty desert silences to be filled. These silences are so full they overflow their banks and the outflow drives me to stick my hands in clay and paint and move words around on the page and write poems. I feel like I have stacks of words floating around in my head waiting for a poem skin to put them into and I can't wait to get back there because I feel unsafe for too long outside of that space.

Urgent prayer request

Please pray for Harold, my sculpture. She's about to be kiln fired. Heh :)

Wilbur has gone also. I kissed him goodbye on Monday, right on his clayish mouth. Probably give me some horrible disease.

I hope they both survive the kiln firing experience. I mean, I've survived it so far so maybe they will too :) I'm enjoying the respite. The air feels so nice when it's not 1700 degrees celcius :)

Drinking cloud

Sometimes when I am relaxed, the most mundane of things appear as meditation, as prayer. The way I walk, the centreing of myself within my own body, the way I breathe. The awareness of the breath going in, going out. It feels like light going into my body.

At those special kinds of times, everything is so beautifully simple, and every moment feels full with the seeds of symphonies. The pouring of a cup of tea evokes the anticipation of the brew drunk, and the memory of all the times drank before, the shared cups with friends. The ritual of it all.

Or like Thich Nhat Hanh said it ~ like this:

When I drink tea it’s very pleasant to be aware I am drinking cloud.”

Or how Kim says it ~ like this: The Tea Party

Heart Visions

Demons and the dark side sound so weird to 21st century Western ears. Do I believe there is some dark being out there called the devil? Well, the problem with that idea is that it conjures up images of some bloke in a red leather catsuit with a pitchfork and a tail. But yes, I suppose I do believe there is some sort of dark force out there.

I haven't been too much focussed on it over the past several years. As my relationship with God has grown, my ideas of the dark side of life have assumed much less importance, have become something I barely think about. There have been a few strange experiences but the whole idea of the devil as has been experienced in the past just doesn't bear relevance for me. A lot of what we claim to be the work of the devil is the work of ourselves. The less likely we are to acknowledge the dark sides of our own personalities, the more we wll manifest that out somewhere into the atmosphere, methinks.

And yet, for all of that, I can't deny that I am feeling something akin to spiritual oppression lately. I feel like there is a time coming for me of real growth, of groaning forward into life, and for the first time in ages I am thinking that maybe there is something malevolent out there which is not happy about this. I don't know what to call it. I just don't know.

I asked for people to pray here last week, and in return T and K went ahead and had a few visions. How cool is that? I have this urge to post them here. I'm not sure what my motivations are. I have been questioning whether I am just posting them because it's kinda cool having people having visions, and I'm the centre of the sideshow. Maybe - who knows? Having elements of your personality reveal themselves that have remained largely submerged for years release my hold somewhat on any idea that I always know my own motivations. Mainly I am posting it because I feel like I need to, for some indefinable reason. I am feeling a sense of dark oppression which is the worst it's been for years and I really can't get through this one by myself. Much of the content of these visions ring true for me. I feel a bit strange about posting, a bit shy, but what the hell.

I love the way they got to share this together, and I love the community feel of others entering into my healing in some way. It feels really nice and lovely, somehow. I have a renewed sense of how much we all need each other this week. Anyway, here is what they saw.

T said:

As I was praying for you I saw a root, not a root system but a deep, deep taproot and it went all the way down through your abdomen and to your reproductive area. Whether this is because of the sexual abuse or not I do not know, but these were the words I heard, betrayal, violation, poison, anger. So I started coming against it, praying against it (and Kim is good at this too), speaking death and poison to it that it would dissolve.

Then I started praying about your heart and strangely I heard the word "squeeze" and saw that you have a heart like a sponge, something I have never seen before. I believe the reason you are feeling so awful is that your heart is pumped full of poison and bad stuff because of the violations you have endured, and the taproot from that area was feeding your heart full of bad stuff, which absorbed it like a sponge. So I started praying that God would squeeze out the poison, which I saw in the spirit, but there is a problem, once it was empty (which may be future) I couldn't see it absorbing anything but air. Now this may be good or bad but my praying would not affect it which is why I am submitting it to you and you may want to ask Kim what she sees because we all see in part.

And you might want to ask he why having a heart like a sponge is a good thing, because it must be or the enemy wouldn't have attacked it. Or maybe it needs to alter from a sponge. I don't know, but there is that. I will continue to pray but I will be gone all day tomorrow so I wanted to check in, tell you how much I love you and that I am ALWAYS here if you need me. I would face hell in prayers for you and I believe K will too. But I won't breach your privacy by going to her, I just know she would feel blessed to be able to do this for you.

K said:

The root is bitterness. It is a thick and hideous thing that runs deep - so deep that it can only be broken through prayer and by the will of the one in whom it runs so deep.

The heart is a sponge that absorbs that bitterness and spreads it throughout the body, poisoning everything it touches. This is the cause of much of the malaise in the body.

I see the sponge - the heart - as dark, absorbing darkness, the darkness battling the light.

It is fed by the root.

The root must be dug up and the sponge replaced in the same way an old kitchen sponge would be replaced with a new one. No, your heart is not stone. Not even stony ground. You absorb everything...sometimes, you absorb too much. You must learn what to absorb and what to guard yourself against. I look and I see this "new" sponge, but with a shield, gleaming golden and red, as if it knows what to allow to pass unhindered and what to protect itself from.

What T sees as empty, absorbing only air, I see as purified and absorbing the Holy Spirit: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." At this time, the root chokes the heart. When the root is cut off, dug up and destroyed, then the heart can breathe the pure air and discard the poison.

I wish I had something more encouraging and uplifting for you, my friend. :( I will keep you in prayer. Much love and many hugs.

T said:

I saw your heart, as the sponge, alongside a seashore. The waters were washing gently over the sand and I saw the sponge in (your? I dunno) hand trying to soak up the waters, and getting sand all over it, and then the sponge would squeeze out the water and the sand would stay on and this happened over and over again. I felt as though this salt water was your tears that God had stored up, but that you kept soaking them back in but by doing so you were getting a lot of dirt on you.

Oh dang, gosh just figured it out. That is how bitterness works, instead of crying the tears and then filling with new tears and crying them out, bitterness soaks back in the old grief instead of simply experiencing a new level. Soaking back the old tears, to me, may speak of picking things back up again in unforgiveness, as we do when we want to be angry. But then you squeeze them back out (which seems like forgiveness) but you have this sand left on your heart and it happens over and over again. Whether the sand is good or not I do not know. It's something for you to explore or toss, your choice.

And i don't think the sponge is a bad thing, otherwise the enemy would not be attacking it. For some reason, having a sponge heart is important. I am clueless about why that could be.

WHOA -- It's about EMPATHY. DUDE, you have a heart like a sponge because of empathy. No wonder he is working so hard to fill it with crap.

Oh, as long as he can fill it with crap you will be crippled by being unable to separate the pain of others completely from your pain. You will always get triggered if there is something similar and be driven into a funk, even if it is just a little one.

ooohhh, this is a good thing.

K said:

I began to pull on the root and it moved, ever so slightly. It is a large and deep root indeed, because even in pulling with all my strength, I could barely budge it. So I took a break.

Later, as I lay down to sleep, I looked and I saw the thing from a side view, and I saw the conditions that would be necessary for the root's removal: the earth that holds it in place must become parched, dry. A root that is not being fed or watered easily loosens its grip, mostly because it shrinks and shrivels up and can then be easily pulled out. I looked and I saw the earth around the root become dry and cracked and the the root just dried up and was pulled out as easily as a sword is pulled from its sheath.

As I saw this, I was reminded that though it was only a three day trip through the desert from Egypt to the Promised Land, the trip took forty years because of the Israelintes' disobedience and complaining...Tell Sue that because she is being obedient (unlike the Israelites), because she is letting God into those places, my feeling (though this is not "thus saith the Lord," hehe, it's just my gut feeling) is that she is a lot closer to being through this shit than she thinks she is. :)

Miracle prayers

You know the instrumental break in Miracle Drug where Edge goes all Edge-y on his gee-tar? I reckon God must have really loved it when he first said that to him.

I said it to God this morning too.

The creativity/spiritual connection

I feel really stuck creatively. All of a sudden, I just don't know what to do with myself. I've squeezed out a few poems recently, still writing my morning pages, did a collage last week. But I just feel so stuck!!

It's weird but I have noticed this pattern that whenever I feel unwell, I don't go in the playroom. I feel like there is a reason for that. It's some kind of not wanting to sully my space - not in a superstitious kind of way; it just feels too creative in there when I'm not feeling up to it. Whenever I want to get creative and I'm feeling unwell, you'll generally find me curled up on the couch with the blanket and a tray. I'm a big believer in trays.

So I haven't been in my playroom for a week or so. Was just getting ready to come climb into bed and be cosy. Thought, I wonder if there is a connection between how totally disorientated I am feeling spiritually and how totally disorientated I am feeling creatively? I am feeling very far away from it all, and while I wrote last week some time about how these days I have developed a confidence in knowing I can make it back there again with much more ease even when I've slipped away, there is still that unsettling feeling of not having any idea at all of actually how to get back there. The willingness to just go and sit with the nothingness and see what happens. But hey, I feel like I'm doing that anyway so I may as well be doing it in a creative space and see what happens.

Grabbed Julia Cameron's The Sound of Paper on my way past the bookcase. She is the solace I most seek when I am feeling creatively dead, the way that Richard Rohr and Madeleine L'Engle are my lifelines when I'm feeling spiritually dead.

And here is what I opened the page at, as I hunkered down in bed, crying into a tissue (standard procedure):

Try this: Often when we skid to a halt in our work, we skid to a halt in our spiritual life as well. We do not think to ask God' s help to dissolve our creative resistance, and yet such prayer is often the right answer. Take pen in hand and pray on the page. Write a letter to whatever you conceive of as the Great Creator. Complain, gripe, moan, sigh, weep, scream in sheer frustration. And ask for help. Next, pick up the phone and call an open-minded and positive friend. Explain that you need spiritual support for your creative endeavour. Ask her to pray for your restored productivity. Finally, go back to work. Your prayers have been answered, and you have achieved enough mobility to give work a try.

This definitely felt like one of those God moments. And I haven't even come bashfully with my tail between my legs about swearing at him yet. But hey, that's why I didn't even really felt like I needed to, you know? He knows I'm angry at him. He knows I still am. He knows why and he knows why I'm frustrated.

So anyway. I don't need to pick up the phone. I'll just ask you guys instead? Please pray for me for restored creativity. I seem to go a bit batty without it (battier, anyway). I'm going off to sleep and to write aggro prayers to God. And I imagine I will probably say 'fuck' in them there, too. But he can handle extended dummy spits. And I will at some point get my tail between my legs, not because I feel like I should in all due reverence, but because I know his grace and his love will compel me out of sheer beauty.

But in the meantime, Johnny Lydon was so right. Anger is an energy. I'm just not sure that I'm really expending it on anything meaningful right now but you know. Whatever.

Can a christian sing the blues?

Can a Christian Sing the Blues? Damn fucking right.

I'm feeling angry. I've had it with this stupid goddamn growth process. I'm sick of the world reeling to and fro. I'm sick of crying every fucking day. I'm sick of small portions of light and glee and then the shutters come down. I'm sick of a faulty immune system. I'm sick of myself. I'm sick of God sitting on his hands.

I yelled at God last night in a sentence that included the word 'fuck'. I meant it, and I don't feel in the least bit apologetic about it, either (funny, I don't feel apologetic about being angry at him, but I do feel apologetic about feeling depressed. Hmm ...)

Thanks to Abmo at Windblown Hope for the link.

While I'm linking, I snorted/lamented my way through this excellently written piece of horror that documents a particularly creepy kooky American charismatic experience: Jesus Made Me Puke

Richness

I was thinking today about how St Francis left a life of riches to marry Lady Poverty. But growing up rich, he must have still felt rich in his soul. He must have still felt, even when he was poor, that he was the son of a rich man. I'm the daughter of the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills. The Lord of the Starfields is my dad. I believe that a little bit.

Maybe when God says that we are rich and we have everything, if we let him pump that into us so that we start to believe it, then we will be able to be poor and have nothing and still feel like we are rich and have everything. The ultimate freedom. If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.

I wanna be careless for God. I wanna throw my life away on something grandly frivolous, something ridiculous in the eyes of the world. I wanna throw it all away for You because You have become more real to me than myself, the pearl of great price. I wanna lose my life for your sake. I wanna want it enough to have the courage to do it. That's what I want.