Friends,
We are almost done with this series, Portals of Poetry & Prayer.
I hope that however you’ve shown up here, however you show up to ideas of prayer and spirituality, you’re finding space to explore and hold care with yourself and the world around you.
The Comfort of Global Prayer is about as expansive an idea as I can bring to you today, and I’m happy to leave it as that.
I will touch on my ideas within this big idea, but I want you to take some time with it, too.
There are portals of prayer and spirit all around us, and I find comfort in knowing that is true all over the world, this globe we were born to, this globe we will pass away in that holds all of us, all of our stories.
So, our global prayers are held here, too.
As I’ve shared before, I was recently in Northern Ireland, and it was my first time traveling internationally alone. I found that this reality automatically created a sense of awareness in me—not just that I am a young woman traveling alone and have to watch out for myself (of course that’s true), but that I felt this thin space happening, a connection to all the people and places I was coming into contact with every moment of every day.
I was experiencing a visceral kind of liminality, and I’m grateful for that. When we travel to other places, to new places especially, we are thrust into a childlike wonder if we let ourselves get there. We explore culture, religion, language, stories, fashion, food, everything becoming a teacher to us.
In Ireland I was learning how people there pray, all and each of them, how they view their world, their environment, the challenges to all of it.
I was learning to pray differently in the presence of a beech tree that befriended me. I was learning how goats pray when they are hungry, or how we show up in exhausted gratitude to a big meal at the end of a busy day. I was learning why we pray to Saint Brigid, why we pray at holy water wells, why we pray when we are sad or lost, afraid and hoping for peace.
Prayer is everywhere, and when we look, when we walk through the portals, we learn something about ourselves, about The Sacred.
And a way that we experience global prayer is through poetry.
Think about the ways prayer shows up in our lives.
Stay in the spiritual fire. Let it cook you. This is a prayer that Rumi prayed for all of us.
To begin, begin. This is a prayer Wordsworth prayed over us.
Now I become myself. May Sarton prays.
A prayer-blessing of Saint Brigid finds us:
May Brigid bless the house wherein we dwell.
Bless every fireside, every wall and door.
Bless every heart that beats beneath its roof.
Bless every hand that toils to bring its joy.
Bless every foot that walks portals through.
May Brigid bless the house that shelters us.
A Potawatomi prayer from James Thunder, of the Forest County Potawatomi:
I pray to our Creator that we look back so that we may see ahead. Let us examine our lives so that we are respectful to our fellow humans and to nature. Let us respect our children and, above all, let us live our lives in accordance with our beliefs.
Let us share our natural resources for the good
of our People. Let us work for clean air and water and pray for the courage to stand up to those who would abuse our Mother Earth.
And from Joel Cross (@asoulcalledjoel), a prayer of holding this day:
Whatever happens this day, may you use it to awaken your heart. May your energy be directed by your highest intentions to find deeper connections, greater authenticity, and more love.
I think by now we’ve established a few things here:
that prayer is beautifully simple but can become complicated as well
that we can misuse prayer to harm ourselves and one another
and that prayer teaches us what it means to be human
So as we hold the realities of what’s happening around the world, may we find some comfort in the ways we show up to The Sacred, to God, to The Divine, Kche Mnedo (The Great Spirit), whoever or however.
May we wrap prayer around us like a blanket, to hold and bless, to tend and love.
In the spirit of global prayer, I want to share a project I’m ja part of called Calendar of Light by Interfaith Alignment.
This is a beautiful resource to use during the holiday season, and I encourage you to check it out. Each day you can receive a sacred gift from someone around the world of 5 minutes of peace and light.
Click here to check it out
If you’re free on January 9th, I encourage you to join me for a writing workshop on the journey of children’s publishing through childlikeness. I’m really excited for this space, and absolutely love working with Writing the Wild.
Please register here
It’s been so lovely to see Winter’s Gifts popping up in bookshops around the country!
If you haven’t grabbed your copy yet, please do, and friends, if you could take a moment to lave a review on a website or for a bookstore, that would really mean a lot to me.
Thank you so much for being a part of the Calendar of Light and for sharing it with this community. So very grateful for your beautiful contribution.
Thank you for this!