Tag: Goddess

How To Pray

“You don’t have to throw your bare knees to the cold stone floor at you bedside”, she said.

“There are other ways to pray. Just sit comfortable, close your eyes, be still and call on God(dess) to be with you. When you feel a deep sense of peace come over you, when you feel your heart fill with love, when your feel the room is full of light, then you know that God(dess) is with you.”

Then came the next instruction.

“When you pray, you don’t need to plead, beg, lament in distress or recite the words of a prayer that you were taught in childhood like a limerick. You simply open up a conversation as if you’re talking with a beloved friend or guardian. Ask for guidance. Share your hopes. Offer gratitude for your blessings. Simple be in the presence of holiness for a little while. And then listen…”

She told me that God(dess) doesn’t always answer in words, but most often with a knowing in your heart. The answer may not come today, but trust that your answer and a way forward will be revealed in the days to come. Perhaps you may not even get an answer. Instead, you will wake up to find your situation has been healed and all is on the mend.

She was my spiritual instruction teacher, a compassionate and somewhat unconventional nun named after a rose. I was 16 when I decided to start taking classes with her and she taught me this form of meditative prayer. For a year, I spent my Friday afternoons with her, learning about the church, spirituality, angels, the lives of saints and seemingly simple yet life-changing life skills like how to pray and meditate. While I’ve long let go of the limiting beliefs and ways of orthodox religion and opened up to a broader perception of spirituality, both prayer and meditation have remained a central part of my personal spiritual practice.

Sometimes I wonder why I did that. Why did I choose to offer my Friday afternoons up to learn about spirituality when I could have been hanging out with my friends and getting up to teenage mischief? The only answer I can think of is that it must have been what my soul needed in the midst of my unsettled home life. I followed what my wild essence called me to. These classes gave be the kind of grounding and hope that the adults in my life where unable to give me at the time. Learning how to pray in this manner offered healing for my wounds and inspiration in times when I felt jaded.

Just as there are a thousand ways to draw the sun, there are many ways to pray too.  Is the journey of a feather falling quietly and then landing softly on the Earth not a prayer? What about the way withering sunflowers bow their heads in soulful prayer, surrendering to the beauty of falling apart?

Sometimes a prayer means saying “please help me”, crying yourself to sleep and then waking up with the courage to face another day. And sometimes a prayer is as small a gesture as opening up the conservation to say “thank you” and then listening long enough to hear the response “you are welcome”.

I doesn’t matter who you prayer to. We each need to remain open to what resonates best with our own inner being.

How do you pray?

sunflowers

“each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.”

~ Mary Oliver, Morning Poem

First Autumn Moon

“The first autumn moon swayed on up from the ocean, luscious and wrapped in rainbows.” ~ Sarah Elwell, Knitting the Wind

The first moon of autumn in my part of the world rose gracefully against the dark sky. I sat outside quietly for a long time, just watching. No ceremony and no candles, just the peace of the night sky hanging above and the moon silently looking down as if she was listening to the unspoken dreams in my heart. And that was enough.

It’s little wonder that the ancient Japanese created such beautiful words to describe things like this. In Japanese culture, the word tsukimi refers to the art of ‘moon-viewing’, or more specifically observing and celebrating the autumn moon (although I think this only happens in mid-autumn).

Before going to bed, I decided to pick some Evening primrose flowers to make an elixir. What better time to harvest these moonlight soaked blossoms than on the evening of a full moon? It felt sacred somehow. I put them in a small jar of water together with some moonstone crystals and then left it on the window sill overnight.

I slept deeply last night. I must have needed the rest. When I woke up this morning, I found myself wrapped cotton-soft cosy thoughts of Goddess pouring moonlight, love and healing vibes into the elixir waters. Who knows for sure what magic happens when we sleep? Regardless, my heart is comforted by this beautiful thought.

image

The Mysterious Petals

I noticed some mysterious flower petals, pale-yellow ones scattered like tiny stars on the stone path next to my little herb patch in the early morning. Looking up at the Cypress tree above the path, I was confused was to where they’d come from. I inspected the herbs to see who their possible owner could be, but found no clues. Perhaps they were a gift from the faeries?

palm flowers2

Later on, after lunch I sat in the garden for stillness with a cup of tea and some poetry. I heard the sound of buzzing bees and looked up. What I didn’t see earlier was the tall palm tree towering over the cypress, so still and silent that I’d forgotten it was there. It wore a brilliant bunch of pale-yellow flowers just below its leaves. Mystery solved. Bees waltzed around them, dizzy from sweet scents and nectar.

All autumn, those tiny flowers will drop their petals and grow into stone-like palm fruit. All winter, I will hear the palm fruit fall from their heights, in the dead of the icy night, blending the story of their journey back down to the Earth with the music of the wintry darkness.

And so signs of the shifting seasons are beginning to set in.

palm flowers