So what’s this all about?
So in reading a post from Vernica yesterday regarding AKMA‘s presentation at BloggerCon, I had a suspiscion of mine confirmed.
When I was home in the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago for the wedding,
I had dinner with a friend, and he asked me why it is I write this
blog. “What’s the attraction?” he wanted to know. I can’t
explain all of it, but I was able to finally stumble into the idea that
blogging is in part a form of prayer.
Writing has been a form of prayer for hundreds of years, in all the
spiritual traditions, in the work of the Kabbalahists to Teresa of
Avila and Julian of Norwich to Thomas Merton to the Sufi mystics to
Pascal’s Pensees. If
I’m learning anything about prayer in my own life, it’s that it’s not
just in the form of sitting down, bowing the head, and trying to
replicate the prayer experience of my Sunday School past. It’s
about talking to God in whatever way that’s possible for us. The
limit is on our end, not the Holy One’s (blessed be He or She).
In other words, God does not need us to pray in a particular way —
it’s we who need to pray in a particular way, due to our limitedness.
So when I write, I pray. And sometimes when I pray, I
write. And sometimes I mull over things in the shower and
suddenly realize that I am praying, as happened this morning. For
example, I got a yucky e-mail from my dad last night, and I can tell
that all that’s going on in his life is rocking his world right now,
from my gayness to the fact that my grandfather appears to be
emotionally abusing my grandmother to the fact that my mom had major
surgery a couple of weeks ago to his idea that I won’t communicate with
him and my mom (what appears to have happened is that he hasn’t checked
his home e-mail account to see my response, and so he thinks that I am
in the process of cutting them off). As he concluded, “I used to
think I had, on some level, a charmed life. If things were not
brilliant, they at least seemed to go smoothly, no real problems of any
kind. Now when I see how things are in my family, I feel like we are
all characters in discarded draft of a play by Tennessee Williams. When
I hear people occasionally talk of the second coming and the end of our
problem-filled lives on this earth, it seems a more welcome prospect
than I have ever found it before.”
So, as I stood in the shower, I was thinking about the situation and
how I had responded (I wrote back a couple of hours after I got the
e-mail), and I found myself hoping for compassion to deal with the
situation. And then I found myself feeling thankful that I can be
around for my friend Edward, who’s dealing with the closet and love and
life and work, all of which are quite full. And then I realized
that thinking through these occurences, reflecting on them, and perhaps
seeing the transcendent in them was praying.
Moreso, since I wasn’t in any sort of “prayer mode,” my mind was free
to listen, to “wander”, to do what and go where it needed to.
And I felt at peace with all of that, with yesterday. And writing it out has furthered that.
Is it a bit scary to pray here, where others can read what’s going
on? Yeah, but here’s the thing. I believe that God is found
in each of us (panentheism), that each face is the face of God, and in my particular
religion, the face of Christ. Bits of the God-spark live in each
of us. By sometimes praying while writing and letting other people
read it, I’m not praying to any of you out there. But we all may
be the agents of change for each other, working out our lives with and
for one another, helping to create the kingdom of God here on earth, in
our lives.
Or I could just be babbling on…. *grin*
Ecto blogging software
7 October 2003 at 2:02 pm.
Nate, whatever you and your dad may not share, you certainly share eloquence. Language is all about common ground…maybe there’s something there.
7 October 2003 at 8:07 pm.
I wonder whether your father does exactly what you’re doing when you write: praying. My father last month, for the very first time in my life, sent me handwritten letter [as opposed to a memo drafted and signed by his PA, or the handwritten ‘with compliments’ that came with cheques while I was at university] – what matters when he writes to you, it seems to me, is that you’re one of his ‘agents of change’. Perhaps you can set aside the substance and the tone and concentrate on what might really be meant by a man going through a rough patch who is writing to his son as a means of support.
8 October 2003 at 12:10 pm.
Thanks, Wendy. I think that’s a good idea.
Alex, you’re probably right on, but I had not thought of it in that way. I did respond soon after he e-mailed me, and I tried to pay less attention to substance and tone and focus on intent. Maybe I did some good, and maybe not. But it’s funny to think he’s mailing me as a form of support, when I’m seemingly at the root of many of his problems. The Big Girl Upstairs has a funny sense of humor sometimes….
30 October 2003 at 1:06 pm.
Your post here is very inspiring to me. I feel much the same way and have written much the same before on my blog. Some of my most fruitful prayer comes when I am not praying.
I like the part about being agents of change for one another especially. It’s nice to find a kindred soul in the Blog World.