Prayer is presence, communion, belonging … or just being
Communing with the Spirit of the Cosmos
Daily Awareness Exercise
How is God with me now?
Barbara Paleczny SSND
One way to find wisdom and peace is doing an awareness exercise. We reflect on our experience. We notice what is happening in our hearts.
This can be a powerful method of prayer as we open ourselves to recognize God‘s love and ask how God is with us in this personal, real experience within and/or around us, whatever it may be. We take a short time daily to do this . . . in our own way!
Awareness prayer leads us to be attentive to our own hearts, to our relationships with others and responses to events. All of these are the holy ground where God lives.
DAILY PRAYER:
REMEMBER GOD’S LOVE for the entire earth community, all creation, including every person . . . and for you personally.
ASK to see yourself, your relationships, problems, hopes, love, talents, desires, sin, fears, all you are as God sees you, with light and love. God desires to give us friendship, love, life, healing, forgiveness and courage. Also notice how you are (physically): our bodies know what we feel even when we don’t realize it; they do not lie. Our bodies, our aches and pains, our good energy all alert us and try to get our attention to the truth of our thoughts, feelings, reactions, inner well-being or illness.
FOCUS on something that touches your heart, inspires or disturbs you, or on some feeling you have. God, how are you with me in this?
RESPOND to God in your own way. Possibly read Psalm 139. Psalms 22, 44, 55, 77 and 88 all pour out lament to God; they are bold, trusting fully that God wants us to be totally honest with ourselves and God about how we feel and about what is happening in our lives, country and world. Other psalms remember God’s mercy.
Or simply be silent, present, still. Let God love you.
We learn to be attentive to the deepest desires of our hearts, to make wise choices and to live with greater courage. Doing this awareness prayer faithfully can help us to experience deep personal love, peace and integrity because it helps us to relate honestly and compassionately with God, all creation, others and ourselves.
Throughout history, people were aware of what they experienced. They reflected on its meaning, interpreted it in faith, told stories about it and grew in their relationship to God. Others eventually wrote all this in many forms and some of their writings became the Bible. St. Ignatius of Loyola lovingly promotes becoming aware of our daily consciousness, of our heart’s desires, of divine presence always with us.
If you do not yet have a personal journal, start one, remembering to write the date and a few sentences about what is happening within you!
The Stones Cry Out
for a Tidal Wave of Justice
1996
Jeremiah 14: 19 - 21. Psalm 77
We can pour out our hearts to God, being true to whatever we are experiencing. And we might write poetry, dance and/or paint it, as I did …
Day cries out to day and night to night.
Deep calls unto deep.
Silent healing sought.
Day cries out to day and night to night.
Oh God, how long we wait for justice.
Justice, justice sought.
Towers of wealth, monuments of death
Dealing sweet words turned foul
Prophets cried out for a mighty stream of justice.
World thirsting, clamouring for justice.
A mighty stream: too dry.
A tidal wave of integrity and justice: thirst quenching.
Cries unheard.
Sisters and brothers; barely skeletons, unseen.
Children at dry breasts.
The very stones cry out.
A mighty stream: too dry.
A tidal wave of integrity and justice.
Black God Wrapped in
Deep Down Dark Green
Jack pine, white pine, spruce silence.
Mystery connects somewhere deep within
Touching me
Catching me
Surprising me in unexpected union.
Months the same
Entering trees
Feeling roots
Reaching out reaching tall
Pulsing sunlife in darkness
Deep down dark mystery.
Sacred mystery
Inner darkness loved
Solitary depths shared
Night warm darkness known.
Creative night conceives corn, wheat, trees and people.
Earthy, watery depths,
Water not so still
Winter passionately active.
What madness destroys safety in dark beds
Instills fear of night and terror of dying
Claims only light goodness
and evil darkness?
Relentless searching destruction
Valuing only the light
Exhausted. Half truths. Life robbed.
Pushed to extremes in white skin supreme
Gripping imprisoning social consciousness
in white shackles.
Deep down unconscious
Social memory faded
Fears darkness
Dark life
Black people
Black Goddess
Inner dark
Black Spirit healing.
Surrender consciousness
Enter the invitation
Sleep the dream within
Making fresh anew
Dream wholeness accept healing.
Embrace day’s darkness
Laugh and cry in the bowels
of knowing, feeling, and restful courage
in the night.
Embrace day’s darkness in night
Dream wholeness accept healing.
Earth, cocoon, womb, tomb
Trees
Dark, moist valleys
Still, sacred silence
Dancing root presence
Bursting creativity.
Dark moist valley
Walk run sleep in the valley of darkness
Black God-with-us here
Comfortably at home with us
In our darkness, Earth’s darkness.
Wrapped in deep down dark green
Glimpsing the universe
as stars hint dark vast limits.
Immersed grounded
Swimming dancing creating
Dark meaning transforming
Opening darkness to its own life.
Sacred black mystery.
Sleep active
Surrender makes new
Dark dying surrender
Trusts patterned energy anew
Meeting loving living Darkness
Wrapped in deep down dark green
God loves, lives mysteries in us.
Watercolour, 1994
Sun Fed Spider
Weaving Wisdom, 1993 - In my poetry and painting, the spider takes in energy of the earth and of the sun. Later I learned that in Celtic, African, Native American and Greek mythology, the spider brings light and wisdom to knowledge and experience.
The waves crashed endlessly
The profound unity of the universe
lured me into its mystery
Surprised, an intriguing, inner question
“How does a spider eat the sun?” arose in me
I held this gentle whisper for months
Sun fed webs
Soft silk
Strong, sturdy webs sticky silk
Webbed wisdom woven wisdom
Sun fed threads
Spiders eating
Spinning
Weaving
Waiting
Webbed world
Quiet wisdom
Working, resting
Weaving wondering watching
Encasing, consuming fire
Sun solidarity
Sun spiders solidarity
World webs
World watch
Soft strong silky sun
Woven carefully
Sun fed spiders
Spinning power
Spinning soft power strong
Weaving sticky silk sun
Into world webs
Webbed wisdom
Woven wisdom …
Carefully linked world watch
Sun fed threads
Sure strong power
Surrounding sun with silk
Why wouldn’t spiders eat the sun?
