The Power of Prayer

I grew up going to church every Sunday. Eventually the prayers said aloud were words I could speak by heart. Although I no longer attend Mass and haven’t for decades, I can still bring up remnants of those prayers. I find it fascinating how little they speak to me. I wonder if they ever spoke to me.

Suddenly understanding what prayer is has become of great interest to me. Is it something I speak without fully understanding the words I’m saying because it’s comforting to do? Is prayer something I make up on the fly? And is that even okay? Is prayer like wishing on a star for adults? Is prayer a way to connect with Divinity? What do people pray when they say things like, “Keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.” Can thoughts be prayers?

I suspect everyone who prays comes to it for all manner of reasons and in all kinds of styles, which seems rather perfect.  Whatever you do and whatever you say, so long as you do it and say it with an awareness of your intention will likely be sacred in prayer form.

For the month of July, I’ll be practicing prayer on a weekly basis at Souls Center during Wednesday morning Coffee Circle. We’ll be using wooden tokens that have a word burned into them as sources of inspiration for what’s to unfold into prayer.

Yesterday there were 4 women who participated in the first prayer circle. I didn’t set a group intention. In fact, I didn’t encourage setting intentions at all. Simply being together and engaging in this practice of sacred vulnerability was intention enough. I asked each woman if there was a number that was speaking to her and to choose that number of tokens for their prayers.  As each woman blindly reached into the bowl, wooden tokens spilled out and became the center into which all these prayers were poured. This is what came forward.

K: Allow-Anger-Gamble-Birth
~I must Allow Anger to come out and turn that energy so I’m Gambling that it will Birth me into something else that connects me to center. Birthing me to Listen, practice Stillness, Paint, Inspire all of which will bring me closer to God.

B: Will-Arrogant-Wander
~I operate on Will and I’m really in this place of Wandering on so many levels of life; personally, professionally, geographically and now I know why Arrogant is there. How Arrogant of me to not trust the Mystery of Life.

C: Asleep-Seek-Realize-Resonate-Beauty-Health
~Asleep has not been in balance. Now that I’m awakening, it’s time to Seek and Realize I can have Health and learn to see the Beauty inside of me. So, I ponder why Resonate is there.

Julia:
Simplify-Disappointment-Wealth-Spirit-Death
~In the Wealth of Spirit, I honor and revere the sacred process of Death to bring to Life ways to Simplify my Disappointment.

Prayer, I’m discovering, has reaches farther than I could ever have imagined. Beginning with a Circle of Women, we will write them anew for ourselves and one another.

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