To Create Your Own Prayer That Speaks Your Soul
To pray is to develop and refine the light of your life. It smooths the coarseness in your vision. It brings you closer to the homeland of your heart. There are many wonderful ancient and classical prayers from the tradition. Yet there is something irrevocably unique and intimate about your own individual prayer. It would be lovely to create your own prayer. Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul. Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers. Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life. Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost. Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty. Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called. This is not about any kind of self-absorbed narcissism. It is about honouring the call of your soul and the call of eternity in you. Take as much time as you need to find the shape of the prayer that is appropriate to your essence. It might take a month or a year. When you have it shaped, memorize it. When you have it learned by heart, you will always carry this gracious prayer around the world with you. Gradually, it will grow into a mantra companion. It will be the call of your essence, opening you up to new areas of birth; it will bring the wild and tender light of your heart to every object, place, and person that you will meet.
MY OWN PRAYER
6 Absence:
Where Longing Still Lingers
The Subtle Trail of Absence
Everyone who leaves your life opens a subtle trail of loss that still connects you with that person. When you think of these people, miss them, and want to be with them, your heart journeys out along that trail to where they now are. There are whole regions of absence in every life. Losing a friend is the most frequent experience of absence. When you open yourself to friendship, you create a unique and warm space between you. The tone and shape of this space is something you share with no one else. Your friend struck a note in the chamber of your heart that no one else could reach. The departure of the friend leaves this space sore with loss, some innocence within you is unwilling or unable to accept that one you gathered so close is now gone. It is the longing for the departed friend that makes the absence acute. Absence haunts you and makes your belonging sore.
Absence is never clear-cut; it reveals the pathos of human being. Physically each person is a singular, limited object. However, considered effectively, there are myriad pathways reaching outwards and inwards from your heart. The true nature of individuality is not that of an isolated identity; it is rather this active kinship with the earth and with other humans. When distance or separation opens, this connection is not voided—rather, the departed friend is now present in a different way. He is no longer near physically, in touch, voice, or presence. But the sore longing of his absence somehow still keeps him spiritually near. Longing holds pathways open to the departed; it does not erase people. Absence is one of the loneliest forms of longing, and when you feel the absence of someone, you still belong with the person in some secret way. There is a subtle psychic arithmetic in the world of belonging.
Absence and Presence Are Sisters
The ebb and flow of presence is a current that runs through the whole of life. It seems that absence is impossible without presence. Absence is a sister of presence. The opposite of presence is not absence but vacancy; where there is absence there is still energy, engagement, and longing. Vacancy is neutral and indifferent space. It is a space without energy. It remains blank and inane, untextured by any ripple of longing or desire.
By contrast, absence is vital and alert. The word “absence” has its roots in Latin “ab—esse,” which means “to be elsewhere.” To be away from a person or a place. Whatever or whoever is absent has departed from somewhere they belong. Yet their distance is not indifferent to the place or the person they have left. Though now elsewhere, they are still missed, desired, and longed for. Absence seems to hold the echo of some fractured intimacy.
And the Earth Knew Absence
The memory of the earth shrouds our thoughts with depth and mystery. In each individual, the earth breaks its silence. In human gesture, its primal stillness becomes fluent. Because we are so driven by thought we often forget our origin. We are seldom sensitive and patient enough to recognize in the mirror of thought the shadow of clay. The mind echoed back the earth’s deepest dreams and longing, yet its original break from the earth must remain the earth’s deepest experience of absence and loss.
In us, the earth experiences absence. Certain moments in nature seem to crystallize this loneliness. Often at night, when you hear the wind mourning around the house, it seems to be an elegy for us, its vanished children. Among animals the experience of loss often comes to poignant expression. When the calves were weaned from the cows on our farm, the mothers would cry all night the long wail of grief for their lost calves. Nature is elemental longing. The ancient stories of a culture frequently offer insights into absence and how it crosses all boundaries between the elements, the animal and the human.
The Legend of Midhir and Etain
One of the most beautiful stories in the Irish tradition on the theme of the ebb and flow of presence and absence is the story of Midhir and Etain. The fairy prince Midhir fell in love with Etain. His wife, Fuamnach, was furious, and with the help of a Druid changed Etain into a butterfly, and she raised a storm that buffeted the butterfly for seven years up and down the country. One day, a gust of wind blew her into the palace of Aengus the god of love. Even in butterfly form, he recognized her, but he was not able to remove the spell. She did manage to change into a woman from dusk until dawn. He had a garden with the most beautiful flowers, and he put invisible walls around her so that she could enjoy the garden. But Fuamnach found out and sent a storm that buffeted Etain around the country again. Meanwhile, Midhir was not able to bear her absence. He searched every corner of the land for her. One day, she was blown in through the window of the king’s palace. She fell into a goblet of wine that the queen was drinking. After nine months, she was born again as the king’s daughter and again was named Etain. She grew up to be a very beautiful woman, and the High King took her for his wife. Midhir came to the great assembly at Tara and recognized her again, but she did not remember him. Beating the High King at a game of chess, all he asked was that he would receive one kiss from Etain. After meeting Midhir, Etain began to dream of her former life. Little by little, she began to recall all she had forgotten and she pined and fretted for Midhir. On the evening that he was to return for the kiss, Tara was armed against him like a forest of steel. Magically, he appeared in the midst of the banqueting hall and he embraced Etain. The alarm was raised. The king and his army rushed out after them but there was no sign of them in front of the castle. They all looked up to see two white swans encircling the starry sky over the palace.