As Mary Oliver says in her poem,
“I do not know exactly what prayer is.”
What I do know is that when we pray, we invoke something greater than our current selves; we drop into a deep sense of gratitude for all that we already have; and we ask for the support that we need for something more in our lives. When crafting this prayer, we tell the truth as best we know it, frame the asking as what we want (rather than what we don’t want), and let go of the prayer as “this or something greater shall come to pass.” The last part involves trust in this force that we invoke to have a wisdom that goes beyond our current selves to create a future that is perhaps beyond our current imagining. There is more to prayer, I am sure, but this is what I know today.
And so I write today’s prayer: “Benevolent Being that is the Universe hold me and this prayer. Thank you for the gifts and talents to manifest my intentions into the world. Help me to live my best life with courage and grace.”
What is your prayer today?
In the hands of a great poet, prayer is a beautiful thing. Here is Mary Oliver:
The Summer Day
— by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Find more by Mary Oliver:
