Category: Prayer

Living on a Prayer

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2020 has not been kind so far.

As I write this I’m sitting in my living room as my daughter naps. My wife is sitting on the couch next to me, creating art on her iPad. We’ve been home for two weeks, sheltering in place. Kourtney’s hours have been reduced to zero for at least another six weeks– you can’t really put on plays and musicals when all the people in your state are supposed to be social distancing. As a result, she’s home everyday, and I get to eat all of her lovely bakes because surprise, I am also home. My organization is considered an “essential business” because it provides services to the homeless and other marginalized communities, but my job specifically is non-essential so I am working from home most days unless they need me to support our front line departments serve meals, or create hygiene kits. I’m lucky, I’m getting paid. I haven’t lost my job. I now get to navigate working from home with a toddler who frankly doesn’t appreciate that I keep looking at my computer and not her.

This is our life in the middle of a pandemic. Continue reading →

Impromptu Prayer for a Rainy Day

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So the last week has been pretty hot here in my neck of the woods– and when I mean hot, I mean almost 80 degrees. What can I say, I live in the bay area, that’s hot here! And I’m so used to 65-70 degree weather that when it pushes 80 I’m sweating. This has made sleeping difficult because our bedroom is so stuffy, even with the window open, and we have no air conditioning in our home (and no fan, currently).

This has made me pretty grumpy for the past week.

I was anticipating the weather to continue this way for the foreseeable future. It’s the beginning of summer, we’re in the middle of a pretty intense drought here in California, so I thought this is it. This is my life now.

And then it rained.

I heard it through the night as I moved in and out of sleep, kicking covers off and then piling them on again as a shield against dangerous nighttime creatures (my dreaming self is a scaredy-cat). I heard it still as I got dressed this morning and packed up my work things. And when I opened my front door I saw puddles on the ground and the raindrops falling and thought yeeeeeeessssssss. Finally. I didn’t even bother with an umbrella– bad news for anything made of paper in my backpack– I walked down the street to the bus stop with nothing but a jacket to protect my skin, hood down, letting the drops fall on my hair and face. It felt so good. I had forgotten how much I appreciated the rain. And I thought about how badly our state needs it. I know that the amount of rain we get today won’t make a dent in our water deficiencies. It’s pretty inconsequential considering how much water we need to get back to normal. But it felt like hope. It felt like the rain was washing away some of the bad.

I made my way to the Bart station and up the escalators I went, onto the platform to wait for the train. I couldn’t help myself, I pulled my hands out from my pockets and felt the rain on my skin. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling, the coolness of each drop and I began to pray.

Thank you goddess for this rain

Thank you for the sky above

Thank you for the ground below

Thank you for your nourishment

Thank you for this day

For a moment it felt like no one else was there. It was just me and the rain.

Blocked: Writing Prayers That Don’t Suck

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I’ve been having a bit of a hard time this week with a few things. Firstly, writing my own prayers has been more difficult than I anticipated. I think it’s because although I appreciate pre-written prayers (I think they’re beautiful), I’ve spent most of my life just saying prayers on the fly. As a child I would pray when I woke up, before meals, and before I went to bed, and most of them went something like this:

Hey God, thanks for being awesome. Thank you for all the good things in my life. Please don’t let me die in my sleep. Also, please keep all my family alive today because I really like them. Again, you’re awesome. Thank you. Amen.

I mean, it didn’t go exactly like that, but you get the general idea. Even our grace over meals was short and sweet: Continue reading →

Interfaith Connection

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In my last few posts I’ve been talking about prayer. And as you know, I’ve decided to create my own prayer book. But I haven’t really talked about what prayers I want in the book. I wanted it to be clear that I intend this book to be an interfaith prayer book. It will include pagan prayers/rituals, but that’s certainly not the only thing I will focus on in my project.

My commitment to an interfaith life stems primarily from my relationship with my wife. I consider myself a partner in an interfaith marriage because while I am on this wild spiritual path that as yet does not have a label, Kourtney is agnostic. So I have to make sure that while I am becoming secure in my spiritual beliefs I’m not encroaching upon hers. My family also holds a myriad of traditions and beliefs that differ from my own, but I don’t believe they are right or wrong, just different (unless their beliefs condone human rights violations, of course). But even beyond that, I’ve always been committed to an interfaith dialogue. I think it’s vital for our society to see the value of other beliefs and traditions, I’ve worked with many interfaith programs and groups as an adult to keep myself open and also to connect with other faith workers on a deeper level. The work can be hard but it’s so worth it.

interfaith peace logo

It’s true that this book is primarily for me. But it’s also for those who come after me, who might find value in what I have written. Who am I to say exactly what path they should choose? Isn’t it beneficial in some way to have a sprinkling of many things? isn’t there some wisdom to be gleaned from all faiths? I think so.

A Night of Prayer

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A couple of nights ago I was browsing through my book collection when I found something I haven’t opened in a long time: my pagan prayer book. The actual book is called A Book of Pagan Prayer by Ceisiwr Serith. I used to use this book all the time when I was still a practicing pagan, and when I opened it and started to read some of the prayers all these memories and sensations came flooding back and it was just a wonderful moment of nostalgia. Continue reading →