HUMAN
Part of learning to yield ourselves in prayer to the mystery at the center of ourselves is realizing that we are a part of that mystery. I am me, and yet I am not self-generating. My instincts, my responses, my memories and thought patterns, my desires and my fears all arise from from somewhere beyond my conscious will. I am a collaborative partner in the self, not its master. The deepest experiences of my life, those moments that move me to strong emotion and leave the most lasting impression, come to me: I can’t will them.
This mystery of the self is the first thing I encounter when I close my eyes in prayer. Before I can begin to yield myself to the divine reality, I must first yield my desire to judge, control, or define myself. In order to welcome God, I must learn to accept myself as I am in that moment, and be with it. Whatever it is, God is welcome there. Whoever I am, God is welcome in me.
Prayer is practice for life, and life is participation, not mastery.
Kate
Last week’s reading was from a poem by Galway Kinnell
*Saint Francis and the Sow *The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow began remembering all down her thick length, from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
The Scripture reading was from the Gospel of Mark:
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.
Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.