I am interested in the question of despair. What have you said to God or the Universe in your darkest moment? Please write your actual prayer. Or curse. Or promise. Or plea.
You can post your prayer here or email it to me privately. I may want to use your words for a larger installation piece. It will be a collection of many prayers. You will not be identified personally. There is no guarantee that your prayer will be answered. I hope, if you would like it to be, it will.
help me, help me anyone; God who doesn't exist, whom i begged to for years before shattering your picture and throwing you away; help me constant earth who keeps going--that must mean something; find a cure for me, doctors, find something i haven't thought of yet; help me sweet dog, help me sweet butterfly, help me sweet flock of birds exploding across my sky, straight out of my solar plexus. help me find the flower, fish, plant, food, energy, love; help me find the THING that will make it all right. help me find the peace of a frozen lake. help me find stillness, calm, love, peace. help
ReplyDeleteDear G*D, Ya*weh, A*BA, Y*U are the only father that has been with me since day one. Y*U ♥ me no matter what happens, whether my eyes have been open or closed, Y*U have been by my side, never failing me. Times have been tough, life is never easy, it's not meant to be for a reason. Trails and tribulations fill us with hope for better times... they will come, I do not fear for Y*U are with me and all of us as humans created by Y*U. The labyrinth of life has been so confusing, but in the end I know out of this confusion there will be understanding
ReplyDeleteplease stop wars.
ReplyDeleteThank you for my existence. And thank you for the Gift of All Creation.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in a religion or a God (though I tend to side myself on the belief of there is intelligent design, just disagree that religion is a necessary commodity). I do however have a meditation I have done in the past when things were less than perfect and here it is:
ReplyDeleteI reach into myself, to fix the things around me. I know that life is imperfect, I know that life changes, I know that life ends. What parts of my life are extraneous? Damaging? Wasteful? In what ways I'm I not living up to the expectations I have for my life? I'm I who I want to be? What is causing this time in my life, and how can I fix it? I am alive. I am here. I am conscious. How can I live up to that? How do I need to change to live up to that?
god,
ReplyDeleteDo you mind if I call you “god?” I mean, with a small “g,” ‘cause I really don’t wear condescension well, like Spring colors. Ok, how about if I just use your name only at the beginning of sentences, so that you get capitalized by convention, and I know that I mean it to be lower case, so we are both satisfied. Compromise.
God, I like to think about things. And that has put the idea of you in “mortal danger” with me for a long time. (Note that regardless of the compromise, I will not be capitalizing “you.”) See, if, for example, it is important (or necessary!) to you that I pray to you, for any reason that I can think of, then you are not terribly god-like, and you do not qualify as an icon of mystery and perfection worth worshiping. If you don’t care whether I do or not, then, likewise. Indeed, the idea of you, generally, is so full such non-sensical contradictions that you are far more silly than celestial. Questions about “angels on the head of a pin” and “rocks too big to lift” come up when you start looking at the logical implications of being omni-this and omni-that, and that just ruins your attempts at stature.
Now some folks can look at these sort of issues as evidence of a Great Mystery that shouldn’t be breached, and say that the problem is people thinking in the first place, and that human logic is the evil: “A free thinker is Satan’s slave” quoth the billboards. Really? Is that the game? Give people brains and intellect and a will to learn and understand as a temptation? Wow – that is really tricky. ( I almost said sinister. ) But then, who am I to judge a god’s mysterious ways?
Where does that leave us then? I am to recognize my sinful ways, abandon analysis and problem solving, find contentment in servitude while awaiting the finish line of Death and eternal glory. A small time to suffer for all the time that can be had for joy, surely.
No. I can’t buy in to this deal. It is offered to me only through channels that can not speak coherently in the language that I learned, ostensibly, from you – or at least as you speak through the structure of your creations. Have you revealed a Book that tell me the nature of this “eternity” thing that is consistent with General Relativity and Quantum Gravity? Is there a revelator who does not throw up his hands at the seeming complexity of a biochemical system, but instead explains clearly the development of hierarchical and symbiotic systems over deep time? Which savior and acolytes have presented a universal ethics that can be described with logical precision and is not ultimately self-referential?
No, god. You are either not there at all, or you are not able to be there for me, for what I need you for. And what is that?
This “death” thing. Oblivion. It is a real problem. Or so it seems from the perspective of my time-bound brain. I am here in a body bred for continuity of selfish genes, I think. I avoid deleterious encounters with momentum and entropy long enough to inseminate, and then to nurture and teach an offspring with the genes to self-sufficiency. Then I can die. The rest is superfluous, really. But that is all in the language of time, of temporal continuity, “The Arrow” that points “that way.” To an ending with nothing after, ever. Sterile.
But “I” am not at any particular moment. There are no particular moments, anywhere or anywhen. What any of us knows, or any physical bit of anything knows, is a filtered averaging, a band pass, of happenings and interactions over dozens of orders of magnitude. The common ideas of time are so incorrect they are not even wrong. They are silly (That word again…). So what is an ending, or a beginning, or a span, a moment, a jot or tittle?
For you to be relevant to me, you need to tell me, clearly and precisely in ways that pass rigorous examination and scholarly review, what the fuck is going on.
Then maybe we can talk again.
Amen.
Dear Lord,
ReplyDeleteI pray that you watch over my father, wherever he is. Please grant him the guidance, wisdom and strength he needs to change his heart and his mind. Please help him receive help for his bipolar disorder so he can look back on his life in peace. Please let him have a cappuccino tomorrow and think of me. Thank you and goodnight.