Sister Alma Rose’s Daily Prayer

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We Are Healers and Disciples

Prayer… is the conduit through which God’s power, grace, and light are released into a dark world. Long ago, Chinese theologian Watchman Nee said, “Our prayers lay the track down on which God’s power can come. Like a mighty locomotive, his power is irresistible, but it cannot reach us without rails….” Prayer forms the bridge between earth’s need and heaven’s unending supply of grace. —A Busy Woman’s Guide to Prayer: Forget the Guilt and Find the Gift, by Cheri Fuller

Father-Mother God Almighty, you have
shaped for us so wonderful a place, and
yet we war for every inch, this acre,
this enchanted space, as though we had, our-
selves, created it out of the ether.

Once you made me; make me once again, a
new creation, every morning new, that
I might shine with your reflected grace, and,
too, no longer burdened with the weight of
karmic retribution, spread my wings and
fly among the planets and the stars.

O, Father-Mother, send me to embrace with
healing light my brothers and my sisters.
Send me to them now and I shall kiss each
brow, and sprinkle lavender and pearls, and
they will feel the cure, a gentle sting, no
more than that — for surely, God, once shriven,
I am naught but pure and holy love, a
moment only, living unencumbered,
free of gravity — a ray of sun.

Your
love is weightless; one might bear it blithely,
just as driftwood rises to the surface
of the sea. Direct me, Mother-Father,
to the sons and daughters, restless in the
night from pain or grieving. You can hear them,
God, though they complain in solitude. But
here, I see that you have summoned angels —
guards, companions, watchers, whom I know from
other nations, other lives. God, bless our
going and returning. All you’ve taught to
us of healing or of letting go; of
being merciful or saying no; of
finding the divinity in all — the
learning’s etched upon our spirits, for we
are your children, healers and disciples;
joyfully we undertake to serve in
all the paths you take and bid us follow.

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All photos © Luc Viatour GFDL/CC

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Sister Alma Rose’s Thought for the Day: Breathing Is Enough

 

Author and meditation teacher Susan Piver, on her CD Freedom from Fear, leads a very simple, very effective breathing meditation that never fails to bring peace and gratitude.

At one point she invites the meditator to pause in the little space after the “out breath” and notice how the “in breath” spontaneously arises.

What she doesn’t say is how wonderful it feels to breathe.

I am about to say something that might sound preachy. If it does, please understand that I am preaching to myself as much as I am to anyone else who is experiencing discontent.

Breathing is enough.

That’s the beauty of a breathing meditation. When we are breathing consciously, then each breath is an affirmation, a choice to be alive. And it feels so good.

Whatever might be wrong with our lives, our relationships, our health – when the house is a mess or the spouse is messing around – when we should have had the promotion someone else was given, however unjustly – when (in the words of a song called The Merry Minuet, written by Sheldon Harnick and popularized by the Kingston Trio in the 1950s) “they’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain, there’s hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain” – as long as we can breathe, we have a place to start.

It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed – by the laundry, by global warming, by the millions of messages that bombard us every day, by our own unreasonable demands on ourselves.

When I am flinging fragments of myself throughout the cosmos, trying to solve my own and everybody else’s problems, Susan Piver, in her low, soft, reassuring voice, inevitably helps me reassemble myself in the process often called ”centering.” When life is unmanageable, sometimes all you can do is, as Anne Lamott advises, remember to breathe.

When you can be grateful for breathing, then everything else – sunlight, shelter, warmth, coffee, leftover pizza – feels like abundance.

♦

Health, a light body, freedom from cravings, a glowing skin, sonorous voice, fragrance of body: these signs indicate progress in the practice of meditation. —The Shvetashvatara Upanishad

Photo © Luc Viatour, GFDL/CC. Text from the forthcoming book Unfamiliar Territory, Volume 2: Meditations.
Unfamiliar Territory, Volume 1: Poems, Prayers, Meditations, and Household Hints is available at www.LifeIsPoetry.net.

 

Sister Alma Rose’s Morning Prayer—Spiritual Astigmatism?

To El Elyon—God Most High

My heart is full, O El Elyon — full of spring, like to bursting in the crisp early morning, softening as the sun climbs over my garden fence to kiss the seeds I poked in the crumbly earth and drenched with the water from the bottles I fill while I’m waiting for it to heat up to scour the dishes, the water I mean, precious as it is.

My heart is full and joyous. I can’t speak for everyone else’s heart. Not yet. I guess I ain’t evolved enough. Maybe next lifetime.

There’s holy men and women preaching strange and mystical precepts, and selling lots of strange and mystical books along the way. Bless their work, O El Elyon, for they have great spiritual insight, though I think maybe a couple of them is just a bit spiritually astigmatic, forgive me, God, but if I was wanting to bring folks around to my way of thinking, I probably wouldn’t start out by telling them they don’t exist. To do young Adyashanti credit, he does caution his people to “listen to the silences between the words,” where there’s more truth than in the words, as he so rightly says, but, then, he might say that truth is just a construct, which if he did, and he happened to be in my personal vicinity, I might just want to reach over and pinch him, forgive me, El Elyon.

Words, they’re slippery. Jesus, now, he tells his people they have to leave their mothers and fathers and children and all, to follow him, and give away every bit of their money and storehouses of grain and such. And I know what he means, which is much the same as Adyashanti means, which is you got to let go of yourself to find yourself. But we already knew that. Don’t we get fidgety around folks who we call “self-absorbed” and “self-conscious”? Don’t we understand that our identity resides in thee and not in our occupation, social status, height, weight, age, color, or use of earth-friendly cleaning products?

Now along comes Dr. Wayne Dyer, who’s sold a lot more books than Adyashanti, and I have seen a great deal of wisdom in those books, a great deal indeed, and I believe perhaps there is folks with mighty and awesome spiritual power who can visualize theirselves wealthy and close their eyes and say “Ahhhh” over and over for twenty minutes like somebody with a suspected case of tonsillitis, and bingo, “with no lapse in time,” the doorbell rings and it’s Michael Anthony with a check from John Beresford Tipton (and you who are praying with me this morning who don’t know who I’m talking about, just merge your mind with all the atoms and molecules and so forth of the universe, I’m sure you’ll find Michael Anthony and John Beresford Tipton in there somewhere, or you could just Google them).

So I’m asking you, El Elyon, for wisdom and discernment in this time of shall we say somewhat unfocused spiritual vibes in the universe, and meanwhile, in case you don’t hand over that wisdom and discernment “with no lapse in time,” I’ll just keep on glorying in thy grace that has dropped down spring on thy children like a soft green blanket. Amen.

♦

Photo, top, Luc Viatour GFDL
Read about Sister Alma Rose in The Ancients, Part 1: Daddy Pete
Hear Adyashanti at http://www.zgravweb.net/55med_resources.html