Author: itoccurstocp

Much is written on the subject of prayer, but I am not sure it is explained anywhere any better than these  words from Mary Oliver’s Praying:

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones, just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together, and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and silence in which

another voice may speak.

Those nine words pretty much cover it.  Prayer = “thanks, and silence in which another voice may speak.”

A “from the front door” view of the front yard fountain that also serves as a stage, bath and watering hole for the birds — particularly the noisy grackles.

Reading Howard Thurman’s Deep Is The Hunger today in which he discusses forgiveness, I am reminded of the C. S. Lewis quote: “Everyone thinks forgiveness is a good idea, until he has to give it.” Thurman provides insight as to why that is true — why forgiveness can be so difficult. First, he notes: “Every person stands in need of forgiveness.” Forgiveness is a universal need that is indifferent to race, gender, or age, or any other classification you want to toss into the ring. That being so, unlike so much else in life, we all, by personal experience, understand the significance of forgiveness. When we start walking in the field of forgiveness, we know the stakes or high. Thurman identifies the heart of the difficulty: “forgiveness is possible between two persons only when the offender is able to stand inside of the harm he has done and look at himself as if he were the other person.” There it is — forgiveness is difficult because it calls upon the offender (let’s say, hypothetically, me) to understand, and to some extent suffer, the very wrong inflicted on the offended. Who wants to do that? Which is, I guess, the underpinning of Thurman’s last sentence on this: “There is scarcely a greater test of character than forgiveness.”

Photo taken on a recent walk in Scottsdale, Arizona. Text is a wonderful prayer within Mary Oliver’s Six Recognitions of the Lord.

Reading today, Thich Nhat Hanh conveys this story, which seems to ring true in my life:

A person is speeding down the road on a galloping horse, apparently in a hurry to get somewhere important. A second person is walking down the road and yells out as the rider passes and speeds on: “Where are you going in such a hurry?” The second replies: “I don’t know. Ask the horse.”

“Ask the horse.” Life feels like that a lot, hurrying, working frantically to get to — well, I’m not quite sure where, or perhaps I have nominally identified a “where” but not really defined it well. Perhaps the destination is “success” or “enough,” or ….

The “horse” in the story, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, is named “habit energy,” after those mindless tendencies we follow without really thinking them through. But he also offers us the solution, the “reins” so to speak: “Mindfulness is the energy that allows us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating us.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?”

Photo taken under Pleasure Pier (formerly, the Flagship Hotel) in Galveston.

C. S. Lewis deals so deftly with the issue of pride, well, deftly until it hits you like a sledge hammer. Today, Lewis from The Problem of Pain, on pride: “…it is the fall in every individual life, and in each day of each individual life, the basic sin behind all particular sins: at this very moment you and I are either committing it, or about to commit it, or repenting it.”

Though he and I have never met, I think he’s got that about right.

Photo taken on a run around the lake this weekend. The animal kingdom, at times, shows signs of wiser, if not higher, development.

Continuing my Mary Oliver-a-thon. A two-fer with the whole poem and a portion, photo taken in Galveston recently.