Prayers and Meditations

In Beauty May I Walk

eamaya1 Prayers and Meditations

In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
Beautifully will I possess again.
Beautifully joyful birds.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.

 

Prayer from the Navajo People.

Learning to See Each Other

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A guided mediation for closings.

This spiritual exercise is adapted from the Buddhist practice of the four Abodes: loving kindness, compassion, joy in the joy of others and equanimity. It helps us to see each other more truly and experience the depths of our interconnection.

Sit in pairs facing each other (you can mill first so that people do not feel “not chosen”). Ask people to look into each other’s eyes.

In many cultural settings, it is considered rude to look directly into another’s eyes. In high schools and colleges, sustained eye contact may provoke embarrassment. In such situations, suggest that the partners still sit facing each other, but with their eyes closed, picturing the other’s face in the mind’s eye. Then, from time to time as they wish, they can open their eyes and look at the other’s face to refresh their memory, for as long as it comfortable. Then read the following:

Face your partner with eyes closed, remaining silent. Take a couple of slow breath, centering yourself and exhaling tension.

Open your eyes in soft focus and look upon your partner’s face…. If you feel discomfort, just note it with patience and gentleness, and come back, when you can, to regard your partner. You may never see this person again; the opportunity to behold the uniqueness of this human being is given to you now.

To enter the first abode, open your awareness to the gifts and strengths that are in this being… Though you can only guess at them, there are behind those eyes unmeasured reserves of courage and intelligence… of patience, endurance, wit and wisdom… There are gifts there, of which even this person is unaware… Consider what these powers could do for the healing of our world, if they were to be believed and acted on… As you consider that, experience your desire that this person be free from fear…. Experience how much you want this being to be released as well from greed, from hatred and confusion and from the causes of suffering… Know that what you are now experiencing is the great Loving-kindness… closing your eyes now, rest into your breathing…

Opening them again, we enter the second abode… Now as you look into those eyes, let yourself become aware of the pain that is there. There are sorrows accumulated in that life, as in all human lives, though you can only guess at them. There are disappointments and failures, losses and loneliness and abuse… There are hurts beyond the telling… Let yourself open to that pain, to hurts that this person may never have told to another human being… You cannot take that pain away, but you can be with it. As you draw upon your capacity to be with your partner’s suffering, know that what you are experiencing is the great compassion. it is very good for the healing of our world…

Again we close our eyes, opening them as we enter the third abode. As you behold the person before you, consider how good it would be to work together…on a joint project, towards a common goal…. What it would be like, taking risks together…conspiring together in zest and laughter…. Celebrating the successes, consoling each other over the setbacks, forgiving each other when you make mistakes… and simply being there for each other….. As you open to that possibility, you open to the great wealth, the pleasure in each other’s powers, the joy in each other’s joy..

Now entering the fourth and last abode, your eyes open, let your awareness drop deep within you like a stone, sinking below the level of what words can express… to the deep web of relationship that underlies all experience…. It is the web of life in which you have taken being and which interweaves us through all space and time… See the being before you as if seeing the face of one who, at another time, another place, was your lover or your enemy, your parent or your child…. And now you meet again on this brink of time, almost as if by appointment…. And you know that your lives are as inextricably interwoven as nerve cells in the mind of a great being… Out of that vast web you cannot fall… No stupidity, or failure, or cowardice, can ever sever you from that living web. For that is what you are… Rest in that knowing. Rest in the Great Peace…. Out of it we can act, we can risk anything.. and let every encounter be a homecoming to our true nature.

From Coming back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown. 

Parable of the River

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Once upon a time there was a small village on the edge of a river. The people there were good and life in the village was good. One day a villager noticed a baby floating down the river. The villager quickly swam out to save the baby from drowning. The next day this same villager noticed two babies in the river. He called for help, and both babies were rescued from the swift waters. And the following day four babies were seen caught in the turbulent current. And then eight, then more, and still more.

The villagers organized themselves quickly, setting up watch towers and training teams of swimmers who could resist the swift waters and rescue babies. Rescue squads were soon working 24 hours a day. And each day the number of helpless babies floating down the river increased. The villagers organized themselves efficiently. The rescue squads were now snatching many children each day. While not all the babies, now very numerous, could be saved, the villagers felt they were doing well to save as many as they could each day. Indeed, the village priest blessed them in their good work. And life in the village continued on that basis.

One day, however, someone raised the question, “But where are all these babies coming from? Who is throwing them into the river? Why? Let’s organize a team to go upstream and see who’s doing it.” The seeming logic of the elders countered: “And if we go upstream who will operate the rescue operations? We need every concerned person here.” “But don’t you see,” cried the one lone voice,” if we find out who is throwing them in, we can stop the problem and no babies will drown. By going upstream we can eliminate the cause of the problem.” “It is too risky,” said the village elders.

And so the numbers of babies increase daily. Those saved increase, but those who drown increase even more.

Of course, we need to do our part in rescuing those babies floating down the river. But we also need to take the risk of raising our voices and asking why.

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Discovering Your Senses

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After closing your eyes, be aware of your eyes as they rest behind your eyelids. Feel them resting in their places. What do you know about your eyes? Besides the look of them, their color, shape, and size, what do they see? What do they avoid seeing? What have they helped you to discover in your life? How might you reverently use them during the day to discover what is around you?

After closing your eyes, be aware of your ears resting at the sides of your head. Feel them silently in their places. What do you know about your ears, your hearing? Besides size and shape, and acuteness or lack of it, what do they hear? What do they avoid hearing? What have they helped you to discover in your life? And how might you reverently use them during the day to discover what is around you?

After closing your eyes, be aware of your mouth, and of your tongue, your teeth, and the inside of your mouth. Feel them silently in their places. What do you know of your sense of taste? Is it related to your taste in general? What has your taste helped you to discover? How might you reverently use your taste during the day, especially concerning food and drink to discover what is around you?

After closing your eyes, be aware of your nose, and of your nostrils, and the air coming in and being exhaled. Feel your nose as it gently breathes in and out. What do you know of your nose besides its size, its shape, and whether you like it or not? What has your nose helped you to discover? How might you reverently use your nose during the day, especially in its activity of helping you breathe, to also help you in discovering what is around you?

After closing your eyes, be aware of your fingertips, and of the soles of your feet. Feel the surface of your fingertips are touching; feel the shoes or stockings or surface touching your feet. Try to discover where else on the surface of your skin you are responding to the sense of touch; be aware of your clothing on your shoulders; the feeling at your waist. What do you know of your sense of touch? Do you use your fingertips to sense fully the thousands of different surfaces they touch each day? How might you reverently use your sense of touch to discover the things and people you will contact today?

At the end of fifteen or twenty minutes, take another sixty seconds to be attentive to your breath. Then gently and slowly open your eyes and conclude with either a spoken word such as “good morning” or “amen,” or with a gesture to the mystery within you as an act of thanksgiving.

Invitation to Breathe

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Guided meditation for a group. Start with an invitation to close eyes.
  • Where did you wake up today?
  • How did you wake? Was it the sound of an alarm or perhaps morning light? What reaction did you have to the awakening stimulus?
  • What feelings came to you as you laid there?
  • As you began your day, what attitude did you hold: excitement, gratitude, dread, happiness?
  • What did you first eat today? Remember how that food tasted. How did it make you feel?
  • Were you outside at all today? How did the air feel? What was your response to the weather?
  • Think about the people you saw today. The conversations you engaged in, and those you may have avoided. What did you gain from them? Were you inspired, saddened, relieved, disappointed, frustrated, uplifted?
  • Were you alone at all today? What did that time look like? What feelings came to you? Did you fill that time with media, literature, silence? Were you able to listen to yourself?
  • Perhaps this is the first moment you have had to yourself all day, sitting with yourself. How do you feel? What feelings have you brought with you to this space?
  • Are those positive feelings of joy, presence, solidarity, love? Or are you experiencing something negative: frustration, discomfort, stress?
  • Are you breathing?
  • Breath.
  • Notice your breath. Whatever you have been through today, this week, this year, hold it in your mind, then breathe it in. Now let it go. Again breath in. And let it go.
  • Feel yourself here and now. Feel the freedom of the present moment. The simple joy in feeling your breath, your limbs and your heart.
  • Without opening your eyes, feel the presence of those around you. Know that we are all bound by this moment.
  • Breath in… and out.
  • When you are ready, open your eyes and enter the space.

To Have Hope

arampone Prayers and Meditations

By the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo, Honduras

To have hope
is to believe that history continues open to the dream of God and to human creativity.

To have hope
is to continue affirming that it is possible to dream a different world,
without hunger, without injustice, without discrimination.

To have hope
is to be a messenger of God, tearing down walls, destroying borders, building bridges,

To have hope
is to believe in the revolutionary potential of faith.

To have hope
is to leave the door open so that the Spirit can enter and make all things new.

To have hope
is to believe that life wins over death.

To have hope
is to begin again as many times as necessary.

To have hope
is to believe that hope is not the last thing that dies.

To have hope
is to believe that hope cannot die, that hope no longer dies.

To have hope
is to live.

 

The Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo is a Catholic religious order that was founded in 1895. This prayer can be found in God’s Good Earth: Praise and Prayers for Creation (2018, edited by Anne and Jeffrey Rowthorn). 

The Romero Prayer

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By Ken Untener 

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.  No prayer fully expresses our faith.  No confession brings perfection.  No pastoral visit brings wholeness.  No program accomplishes the church’s mission.  No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.  We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.  We lay foundations that will need further development.  We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  This enables us to do something and to do it well.  It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.  We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Ken Untener was a Roman Catholic bishop in Saginaw, Michigan. 

Two Hands of Nonviolence

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By Barbara Deming

The two hand of Nonviolence metaphor comes from the writings of the late Barbara Deming, a feminist writre and activist. In her book Revolution and Equilibrium, Deming’s metaphor of the two hands underscores the creative tension that fuels both interpersonal transformation and social change.

With one hand we say to one who is angry or an oppressor, or to an unjust system, “Shop what you are doing. I refuse to honor the role you are choosing to play. I refuse to obey you. I refuse to cooperate with your demands. I refuse to build the walls and the bombs. I refuse to pay for the guns. With this hand I will even interfere with the wrong you are doing. I want to disrupt the easy pattern of your life.”

But then the advocate of nonviolence raises the other hand. It is raised out-stretched – maybe with love and sympathy, maybe not – but always outstretched with the message that, “No, you are not the others; and no, I am not the others…” With this hand I say, “I won’t let go of you or cast you out of the human race. I have faith that you can make a better choice than you are making now, and I’ll be here when you are ready. Like it or not, we are part of one another.”

 

Barbara Deming was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change in anti-war and women’s movements. 

To My Daughter Kakuya

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By Assata Shakur

i have shabby dreams for you
of some vage freedom
i have never known.

Baby,
i don’t want you hungry or thirsty
or out in the cold.
And i don’t want the frost
to kill your fruit
before it ripens.

i can see a sunny place—
Life exploding green.
i can see your bright, bronze skin
at ease with all the flowers
and the centipedes.

i can hear laughter,
not grown from ridicule.
And words, not prompted
by ego or greed or jealousy.

i see a world where hatred
has been replaced by love.
and ME replaced by WE.

And i can see a world
where you,
building and exploring,
strong and fulfilled,
will understand.
And go beyond
my little shabby dreams.

 

Assata Shakur is an American political and civil rights activist who was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA).