Intimacy With All That Is
Watcom Falls Park, Bellingham WA
As many of you know, I have been taking a course through the Episcopalian Church here this past year. Each week, one of the group members is responsible for an opening offering of some kind and a gathering question or prompt. A few weeks ago, one of the members asked, “How might we pray for you this week?” When my turn came, I was surprised that I unleashed a torrent of small worries and anxieties. I remarked, “Wow, I am totally unburdening myself here.”
And I was.
If you know me, you know that I am a reasonably competent person with good problem-solving skills and many well-practiced, healthy coping mechanisms. And you also know that I live with anxiety. If you are new to my blog you might be saying,“Anxiety? You? But you do yoga, you meditate… you should be relaxed by now.”
Yeah, one would think that, based on the slew of slogans and promises offered in the marketplace of yoga. From “Live your Best Life” to “Dare to Dharma Dream,” spiritual transformation is packaged and sold as though each one of us, through healthy habits and a few life hacks, could craft ourselves into an optimized, high-performance version of who we are where all of our rough edges are smooth, our idiosyncratic features no longer annoy others, we are always hydrated, and we make money without working. “Practice and all is coming,” they say, as though the “all” that is coming is our idealized, perfected self—not breakdowns as well as breakthroughs, periods of illness and cycles of recovery, skillful interactions as well as acting out entrenched patterns, endings along with beginnings.
But, as I always say, I got into yoga because I needed yoga, not because I was so well-suited to it. In fact, my primary qualifications for being a yoga practitioner are an eating disorder, an exercise compulsion, and a love for altered states of consciousness. But I digress.
Anxiety.
Of course, my point before anxiety was prayer. Because the thing about prayer—or any meaningful intention, if prayer is not your thing— is that it can be a fast track to the Heart of the Holy. At some point in my 54 years, I crossed a threshold from “God-the-Authoritarian-Arbiter-of-My-Innermost-Thoughts-Feelings-and-Life-Choices” to an image and experience of “God-as-Personal-Intimacy-With-The All-that-Is.”
The first God image isn’t really a great conversationalist and therefore, prayers to this God tend to be half-hearted, fearful, and withholding. I mean, who wants to spill their guts to a judgy bastard in the sky, removed from human suffering, whose most likely response will be to dangle them over a pit of hell for all eternity just for being human? Not me. No thank you.
But, my guess is that each one of us has a friend in whom we confide and who offers us compassion and doses of usable honesty that keep us in touch with our true nature. God-As-Intimacy-With-All-That-Is is a trustworthy and reliable companion, perfectly suitable for the great unburdening I need in these anxious times. God-As-Intimacy-With-All-That-Is has proven to be both a great cheerleader and a wonderful source of consolation. When that intimacy is shared with other people in prayer, I find the power of the connection multiplies. I am not talking about a power that works like a magic wand or that changes outcomes to go my way, like the parking fairy. I am talking about the power to experience my life as a living, breathing, call-and-response conversation with the All-That-Is.
Last week, my sister told me that some of Dad’s helpers expressed concern about his well-being. We talked about his needs for companionship and support exceeding what she was able to provide for him in Waco. We began outlining options for his next chapter of life. I reached out to my church group and explained our situation. I asked for their prayers and support. In addition to sharing community resources and their experiences with arranging elder care for their parents, they told me they would pray for discernment, courage, patience, and forgiveness.
As the week unfolded, I understood my sister’s situation and needs more clearly. I saw the limits of what Dad could do where he was with more compassion. I recognized the value of the time Anne and Dad shared the last few years more deeply. And so on. I felt the prayer behind each insight from compassion to clarity. Clarity yielded a living answer to the prayer for discernment, out of which good choices became more obvious. And, of course, forgiveness unfolds more readily and becomes much more likely out of such states than it does from the contraction of self-concern and self-righteousness.
Like I said, I am a competent person who can solve problems, so I think we would have made the same outer choices for Dad without the prayers. (I am going to fly to Texas in two weeks to help pack his things. He and I will fly back to Bellingham together. He will enroll in a great independent living facility less than ten minutes from my house. I’ll be able to visit most days and when I am not there, he will be surrounded by people, activities, and support.) So yeah, I think any person— whether they prayed or not— might have arrived at the same outcome. However, the process felt linked to the holy, held by the grace of good company, nourished by the shared prayer that allowed me to see I wasn’t just making a plan, I was participating consciously in an intimacy with what life was offering. In my younger years, I thought spiritual life involved fixing up my inner and outer life so that everything was shinier and making the road I was traveling less problematic. These days, I think spirituality has more to do with feeling embedded in the process of life itself and in that conscious connection, belonging to something much bigger than my anxiety.
So, there you have it— my 1000-word update from the place where the inner and the outer worlds meet.
And, of course, I am always happy to hear how I might pray for you.
Keep the faith.
salmon berries are on the vine now
