Praying All the Time

We are all connected to Everything

I’m in awe of how often an idea I’m working on is echoed by a similar new poem, song or idea expressed by someone else…or how a significant word or image pops up in the course of my day, as if to reassure me that, yes, I’m on the right track.

Jungian analyst and medical doctor Jean Shinoda Bolen writes that when it comes to synchronicities, "there is no adequate explanation for how this could happen other than that we are part of an interconnected spiritual universe that has just shown us that we matter."^[1]

This time, I was very close to finishing the song “Praying All the Time” when poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer offered two poems that harmonized. This one, in particular, seemed to infuse me with the confidence and energy I needed to place the final few words into my song, and to share it, during a time when I’ve been feeling a little bluer than usual.

How I’ve Started to Pray

And if god is in everything—in the bend of the river
and the apricot tree, the song of the blackbird
and the awkward smile of the little ballerina
in purple who wandered out tonight onto the stage
to join a dance recital already in progress—
a dance class that wasn’t even hers— yes, if god
is in everything, and I believe god is—
in the dishrag, in the man who throws
bottles at the people marching for peace,
even in this angriest red sliver of me,
if god is in everything then maybe that is why
I have started to want to pray to everything—
or maybe more truly, to pray with everything—
the wave, the blossom, the awkward smile,
the dirty cotton, the broken glass, the rising ache,
the wonder that opens in me when I trust
there was never even a half of a moment when we all
did not deeply, fully, wholly belong to each other.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

It occurs to me now that, were it not for the Internet (and the ability and willingness of Rosemerry to share her daily poems so widely) I wouldn’t even know this synchronicity was happening. But it still would be happening!

In these days of what Paul Simon called “miracle and wonder,” we can suddenly see more clearly how deeply inter-related we all truly are, when before we might have only intuited it…and perhaps often doubted it. Could it be that we’re beginning to see “face to face” rather than “through a glass darkly?” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

This emerging awareness may serve to teach us that, indeed, our small creative acts are not “only” ours at all and do not spring from us alone.

Clearly, they arise from a Ground of Creative Being that is far more meaning-full and significant than any one personal expression by any one individual…and yet at the same time, every personal expression of love contributes to the well-being of All.

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The song includes references to Julian of Norwich (1343-1416, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well” ), Leonard Cohen’s Anthem (“Ring the bells that still can ring”), Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace is Every Step, and contemplative/mindfulness practices in general.

Thanks for being here, especially as this post comes later than usual. (There’s another one right around the corner, though, as a new song arrived yesterday that I’m very excited about!)

Praying All the Time

This body's getting old, 
that muscle's acting strange
and I'm trying to let go 
of all I cannot change
She said "all will be well"
He sang "the bells still chime"
Well, lately I can't tell
so I'm praying all the time.

There's nothing more to do
I'm running out of words
I fall into the blue
I listen for the birds
Who rise up as they do
with their song sublime
Today I'll make it through 
by praying all the time

I try to still my mind,
to draw a deeper breath
I take myself outside,
seek peace in every step
I'm not sure that it shows  
I'm still not feeling fine 
But something in me knows 
I'm praying all the time

I'm holding in my heart
the suffering I see
And as new fires start
I'm praying with the trees
I use no special words
I make no sacred sign
yet I am not unheard
I'm praying all the time

I know that some will claim
this isn't really prayer
They'll ask me for a name
or tell me nothing's there
Yet still this stormy sky 
is somehow silver-lined
as everything alive 
is praying all the time.

^[1] Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty (HarperCollins, 2001), 44.