Santa Claus Prayers

I have in past posts covered various ideas of how God might speak to us, and I have also described several people’s experience of asking God for answers and the answers they received.  Various denominations teach various ways of praying from meditation, to chanting, to memorized prayers which are repeated at appointed times, to prayers made on one’s behalf by others, etc.  And again I would ask the reader to consider all these forms and how they fit or do not fit with the Image of the Divine which you have embraced for yourself.  If you don’t know if they fit I encourage you to try these different forms and find your own experiences with them.  I don’t believe there is a right way to pray.  I think you will have to find the way that brings you into intimate and reliable relationship with the Holy One.

Once I had a conversation with a friend where we agreed that the “trap” in prayer is to make the Santa Claus prayer.  This is sort of praying for things.  It seems to me that we need to be clear in ourselves what it is we really need: to pray for a home not a house, for transportation rather than a car, etc. and have faith that the Divine Provider will sort out what best provides for us.  I remember really wanting a baby, but instead being given the Divine nudge to go to graduate school.  As it later turned out after she was born my circumstances changed, and I needed that degree to provide for that baby.  The Provider had known the right order for everything to unfold as it should.

Part of praying in my experience is reflecting on my current situation and being able to name in what ways I need help, and to name the truer need – not the outer package of that need.  It also means seeing my emotional state and recognizing when I need to ask for comfort, recognizing when there is fear, anger, worries, or confusion that I need to turn over to the Divine Comforter.  It can be way to easy to try to carry everything going on in one’s life oneself, or to try to make a partner or parent be Godlike in what we want from them.  This is when it is good to offer up the burdens or the desires of our heart and then let go of the outcome and be able to listen for God’s response.  This listening would be the kind of listening as described in previous posts.

Praying for others, or intercessory prayer as it is called in some traditions, takes into account some of these same qualities (avoiding Santa Claus prayers on behalf of other people) and offering up to God our concerns for others and then letting go of them.  As a therapist I carry concerns for many people; if I kept them all as mine to carry I would loose my mind.  It is the Sheppard that makes it possible for me to be with people’s pain and not be overpowered by it.  Prayer for others is also remarkably effective.  There are studies where people in hospitals have been put in two groups: those not prayed for and those who had people praying for them. Those who were prayed for healed faster and did better.   My partner tells a story of when he had been diagnosed with a tumor pressing on his inner ear and was scheduled for surgery.  Many people prayed for him.  When a finally scan was done to give the surgeon an image to work from, he was called by the doctor to say that in a month’s time it had shrunk to almost nothing and that he no longer needed surgery!

There are of course many different traditions which suggest that prayers be made in a certain way, calling on God by a certain name, using certain objects or postures or rituals to aid the prayer or make it more powerful.  If you find yourself drawn to these traditions it will be important to learn these ways of praying and to be sure that the methods of a religion you are attracted to really assist you. 

God the Father; God the Mother

When I was in my 20's I was looking at how I prayed and I realized I started prayers with "Dear Lord"...well this I realized was really messed up!  After all the Lord, was the oppressive master in a feudal system of economic oppression....hardly how I wanted to think of the Holy One!  So I started trying to decide how I wanted to call God:  Father...no that implied God was male.  Mother....no that implied God was female.  Goddess...same issue.  Creator? Nice but seemed to overlook the time with God after creation.  Aba...same issue as Father above.  After I read Yahweh was Hebrew for “the One who cannot be Named” I liked that for weeks...but it simply did not ring for me.  Eventually one day in worship I heard the melody of a popular song that says in one line  "Oh by beloved I'm crying".  I had always thought of that verse as being about a human lover, but it occurred to me that God had to be the Most Beloved.  But even that seemed to ignore other aspect of God - God the Creator, or the Divine Parent, etc.  Then suddenly to the same melody I heard all of the names playing in succession and then I realized they were all the right name!  The problem was trying to reduce God to only one name.  I then saw that what I really wanted to do was be in the present moment naming the Most Miraculous One as I experienced God in that very moment.  From then on this is indeed how I have called The Great Soul and have saved the word God for a coin of the realm when I want to be sure another knows what I mean or when I am simply intellectually talking about God and not relating to my Creator.

In the many years I have spent talking to people about their experience of the Spirit I see however that our concept of God is highly shaped by our own personal experience of our parents.  After all our parents were the first all powerful beings we experienced, and if things went well they were also the first beings we felt loved by.  Unfortunately they were also the first people who punished us, and the first people who hurt us.  So I find if someone had a distant aloof parent they tend to see God that way.  If they had a loving supportive parent they tend to see God that way.  If their parent was very punishing they believe in a God of the Old Testament.  And so it goes.  In fact once I gave a workshop entitled "Healing our Spiritual Wounds" and almost all the wounds people brought were a difficulty in feeling connected to God.   When I asked about their relationship to their parents they would describe a very similar difficulty in that relationship.   So I invite you to consider for a moment in what ways do you see God as like your parents?

So are you just in trouble forever if you had a terrible relationship to your parents?  No, not at all, but it does mean that you need to connect to where in your life have you felt unconditional love or at least most strongly loved.  It helps to then consciously strengthen the connection in your mind between that behavior and set feelings and your concept of God.  That person has modeled to you a small portion of the Divine Lover.  I think this is very important because I think a large portion of people who give up on religion or even on God do so because the images in the Bible often describe an angry, or vengeful or punitive God and that way too easily connects to painful parental images.  Apparently, Aba is Hebrew for essentially Daddy - Jesus calls God Aba in this very familiar and tender way.  I think we need to be able to call God in ways that are familiar and tender because they allow us much more easily to connect to a Loving God!

I think one of the disillusioning and difficult moments of life is when we first realize our parents are not perfect or all powerful!  This I think is its’ own fall from Eden.  In facing the difficulties and travails of life I think there are times when we all need to be able to turn to someone or something larger than ourselves. If we are lucky, sometimes we can lean on a partner, but even they are not big enough for some of the trauma’s and loses of life.  Some of my agnostic friends say  “Oh this is why people make up the concept of God – to have a crutch to rely on.”  I’m not concerned about this.  I’m not concerned because I have been able to rely on The Rock and that has been real.  But I’m also not concerned about it because the pragmatist in me says:  So if we make something up and it helps and we even live a better life for it… then what is the problem?  Studies show that people who identify as religious have better mental health over all and tend to rate themselves as happier on happiness scales.   So is this such a bad idea?

A friend of mine shared with me that her spiritual life was always a struggle - then one day she went to a workshop where she was invited to call God Mother- in that moment she says something revolutionarily changed in her spiritual life.  Suddenly she could see God in her own image.  She could notice the gentle, nurturing, life giving qualities of God.  This is not everyone's experience.  For some of us to give God any gender again traps and makes smaller The Infinite One. 

But I do invite you to examine: is God male or female or genderless in your experience of the Only One?  Is God the Creator of everything , or the co-creators with all of Life?  Is God all powerful, or simply the field of Unity upon which the Universe rests?  Is God the creator of our conscience or is God neutral and unconcerned with the choices of mankind or of a (wo)man? What qualities and traits do you experience in God? How big is the God you know? What names call out to that which you have known in your own soul?  But most importantly, how do we get really personal with the Inward Dwelling One?

Have you lived before?

Most people find the question of reincarnation quite fascinating.  There are whole religions like Buddhism and Hinduism that believe in reincarnation as part of their theology.  Christianity does not believing that the afterlife is in Heaven.  Judaism believes that this life is the whole ball game.  The ancient Egyptians of course had very elaborate beliefs and rituals surrounding the belief in reincarnation.  Even though this is a Christian nation which would suggest that the general public does not believe in reincarnation, a 2009 Pew polls showed 24% of Americans do believe in reincarnation.

Why do some people believe in this?  I think reasons range from remembering past lives, the hope to be with loved ones again in another time, to some logic of seeing how nature recycles all atoms in some sort of way and feeling this is the way nature works.   Like most beliefs I encourage people who "don't know" to try this on for an hour or two or a day and see - what does it make sense of if it is true?  How does it sit with you if it is true.

Here is a summery of some things I see that it sheds light on if true:
If we live more than one life clearly there is a learning cycle that is longer than a life time.  This seems to imply that the soul which takes more than one body over time, does retain some memory - if not of a life at least of its lessons.  This to me also helps explain the evolution of humanity over time - a shared memory, not just passed down generationally, but in our shared soul.

It has important implications for morality.  If we are to live repeatedly than the mistakes, or "sins" or evils we do have implications for our future live(s).  I have heard this explained in at least two different ways:1) that as a punishment for actions in a past life we are born into circumstances that will punish us (a Hindu belief taken out to justify a caste system.)  This then theoretically also explains why people suffer - although in a way that to western eyes looks like a blame the victim position. 

The 2nd explanation is that we "choose" our next life as part of a past life review done "on the other side".  Included in this idea is the sense that we arrive at some place of deeper wisdom, compassion and insight while united with the Light/God and that from that place of wisdom we choose the circumstances that will help us learn what we still need to learn or accomplish what we still need to do.  (Some versions say we can see everything about the life we will live, other versions say we will see only the circumstances of our birth- parents, relatives, soci-economic status, country, environment, etc. and thus sort of take our "best shot" at getting the right set up for our spiritual goals.)  As a therapist I know it can be quite "activating" for people to look at the idea that they chose their parents ("those SOBs!  No Way I'm not a masochist!")  But I find even in very abusive situations people are able to see lessons they learned, ways they were shaped that now serve them, or strange silver linings in the hand they feel they were dealt. (or chose?)  In some cases it is actually amazingly freeing and healing to let go of a victim posture and embrace one's whole life, all of it as deliberate and meaningful.  This second position also goes a way towards explaining suffering, but differently - as part of the classroom where we learn.  And here I want to be clear that I do not assume that learning always occurs by positive instruction.  If we burn our hand in a fire we also learn something.

So pick one that makes sense to you - so you got here in this life via that means....then what.  If you are living many lives than the question of karma becomes newly meaningful.  If you treat a sibling or spouse meanly or wrongly how does that show up in another life.   I would imagine one unkind act has no real impact....but a lifetime - yep you got karma.  One set of beliefs says we will pay in another life time but maybe not with that person but just with a similar situation.  Another set of beliefs says we will be in lifetime after life time with that person (sometimes switching roles) till we "get it right"".   It would seem to me that in either case to treat a spouse abusively either risks a life time in which one will be treated abusively by a spouse or like the movie ground hog day has us in "take" after "take" in a marriage with the chance to be abusive or not....  Either way in my mind the efficient course is to act with compassion, and justice now rather than putting it off to another life time. 

It is strange to me that Christianity promotes right moral behavior by suggesting sins will be punished in the afterlife.  I do not see this as powerfully motivating most Christians to act morally.  Yet there is something about the idea that doing evil to another ruins your own karma that does seem to give people pause in their actions.  Christianity also suggests that suicide is a sin and thus attempts to prevent the commission of this act.  Perhaps this has stopped people from killing themselves.  But reincarnation makes the claim that if you kill yourself you will simply return to a life with a similar circumstance or suffering and face the choice again until you learn how not to escape the problem at hand.  This I have known to stop seriously suicidal people from killing themselves.  Rather than being a path out of suffering it then reframes it as a path to vastly more suffering.

So those who are scientifically minded are always looking for proof for spiritual beliefs. I actually think reincarnation has more proof to it than many other spiritual beliefs.  If one is not convinced that the Dali Lama is the same soul reincarnated for successive life times as that generations Dali Lama.  (the proof being that a small child who is the next Dali Lama can pick out possessions of the former Dali Lama out of a pile of objects and answer questions about his life.)  Then one might find interesting the following video clip of an American boy who kept telling his parents about dying in a plane over the ocean in a war, until he provided enough information that they were able to find the WWII records of his life, service and death, and reunite him with a still living sister.  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Parents+Think+Boy+Is+Reincarnated+Pilot&search_type=&aq=f

The most convincing for me however is a story of an American woman who from a small child on drew pictures and talked of a family she had had in Ireland.  She remembered dying in childbirth very frightened for her the children she was leaving behind.  As an adult her mother helped her find the village and return there were she discovered one of the children still living there and was able to tell him things that he said only his dead mother would have known!

So what would it mean for your spiritual life if you knew you had lived other lives?

Why God Why?

Recently at my place of worship we had a worship sharing for the adults.  What this usually means is that there are queries (questions which have no correct answer that are philosophical in nature) which we examine together and share with each other the answers we each find.   So usually the group is given the questions.  But the topic was "Why God, why?"  addressing the angst we all feel at times in our spiritual life, the puzzlement, frustration and confusion we have about why God is apparently the way God appears to us, why religion says God is a certain way, or why we cannot seem to get on the same page with God.  So this time instead of doing things the way we usually do people were given slips of paper and invited to write their "why God Why?" questions down to preserve anonymity.  People wrote them down they went into a bowl and were ceremoniously read.

The questions were, not surprisingly, the same ones that theologians and philosophers have asked throughout the ages.
Why does god allow suffering?
Why is there so much violence and war?
Why do I not have enough time to do all the things that you have asked me to do?
Why do I attract people to me who seem to bring suffering?
How do I know what you want me to do with my life?
How should I respond to the suffering that I see around me?  Why am I fortunate?
Why are there things that seem to remain in mystery not for us to know?
What happens when we die?

Long ago I lead a workshop called: Patchwork Faith.  The idea of it was the recognition that those who live a spiritual path but do not just embrace the theology of a given church must work out for themselves all these kinds of theological questions and that the answers we find our often a patchwork of faith beliefs.  In the coming year I will be taking some of these questions and writing about them.

I invite you to send the questions that pull at you.  I invite you to send the answers that you have found.

My apologies to my readers that I was quiet so many months on this blog.  I got very caught up in matters of the Occupation Movement and also my family.  My intention for next year is to return to monthly postings.