UniversalistPrayers

Prayer to Be Thoughtful

Slow me down, Wisdom, when, following fear or anger or helplessness, I want to rush to agreeing or disagreeing. Teach me with each breath to be thoughtful, to notice how my emotions are being charged by rhetoric and directed by habits and learned patterns to add to the mess. Breathe with me, Wisdom, and help me find the real problems we can work together on, the stuff providing the raw material for why fear and anger and helplessness are abundant. Breathe with me, Wisdom, and help me think with others, those who have different beliefs and lifeways and cultures and yet here we are sharing the same root problems. May we realize that rhetoric does not provide answers to the problems, even as it may direct the feelings that result from them. And, in that realizing, may we return to the problems to work on them together, even though that makes for fewer soundbites, agitates fewer people, and nurtures a better shared life in our communities and world. May we let go of the pleasure of feeling justified as an “us” against a “them” and turn to the effort of understanding, of respecting one another, of finding ways to live fruitfully and joyfully together, not again, but for the now and for the future. Amen.

Prayer for Patience in Creating Our Way

Lover of Variability and Adaptation, may we have patience, again, please, as we meet this problem, difficulty, obstacle, or result of someone else’s imagination and belief that could not imagine or believe we would be here also. I don’t want to roll with accepting power over my life and my choices. I want to put some flash on my wheels, to rip out constraining seams, to pop wheelies over curbs and cross traffic with attitude. And for that I need this tension between patience and urgency, want and need, possible and improbable. Without tension, cells do not cohere. Without tension, this knitting does not hew to a certain number of stitches over a certain amount of space, instead warping and stretching and constricting in unusable ways. Lover of Variability and Adaptation, grant me and all of us in need the patience that encourages us to keep heart and try again, to make new ways, to lift up old ways that were discarded, to imagine and dream and create and tinker our way from debris, from junk, from bits and pieces, to create the wholeness we need, the wholeness that liberates us from can’t-do and impossibility and the acid of pity, the wholeness that we make from fierce, persistent, determined, laughing patience. Amen.

A Prayer for Befriending Ourselves

Wisdom, here we are, with this gift of a person already granted each of us, our own selves. Teach us each day to learn to be friends with ourselves, not to pick away at ourselves until there is little left but fear and bones. Help us learn to offer ourselves gentle surprises, pausing to greet ourselves with pleasure as we would someone we are truly happy to connect with again. Help us learn to be truly happy to be with our whole selves, as awkward and inept and challenging as we can be and to be as delightful and interesting and fun as we can. Wisdom, lead us out of the storm-swept spaces of self-skepticism and self-loathing, and into the sheltering, welcoming home of knowing we need not meet some impossibility to be lovable and loved, and we can be cherished here and now. Wisdom, teach us to learn how to resist the mean-towards-ourselves culture as the bullying it is, and allow us to be soft, to challenge ourselves when we truly need it, and to be kinder than we are told is prudent. Dance with us, Wisdom. Whirl with us. Wonder with us. Travel with us on this long journey of friendship with one who is always, always with us – ourselves. Amen.

Guided Meditation to Hold One's Self Gently

Guided Meditation to Hold One’s Self Gently – week of February 26

 

This is a guided practice for when we want to practice holding ourselves gently and compassionately, quietly attending to what is happening and tending our sensations and feelings without big, external reactivity. This practice can give us space to make more skillful choices in responding to a particular event or situation, whether it is a regular occurrence or more uncommon.

 

If it is in your practice to invite protection and guidance from your ancestors, teachers, or guide, to light candles or burn incense, to close a door, or to wrap a blanket or shawl for meditation or prayer around yourself, take the time to set your intention and your space. You can make your own intention or affirmation. If you would like some suggestions, these might be: Here, all of me is welcome. Here, I am home. Gently, I make space for all of me. Kindly, I welcome all of me.

 

If you need to set a timer, then please do so. Perhaps you make space for five minutes or ten or twenty or more. Perhaps you have space to not need a timer today.

 

Recline or sit with support so that it is easiest for you to breathe deeply and freely.

 

As you breathe, slow and soften your breathing, as though you are holding your whole body very kindly and gently, offering yourself a supportive space or a peaceful hug.

 

Begin to offer yourself your intention or affirmation. Freely substitute what works for you for what I am offering:

            Here, all of me is welcome. Here, I am home. Gently, I make space for all of me.

Kindly, I welcome all of me.

Repeat this intention or affirmation three, six, or twelve times. Threes give us a nice stable base to breathe into, not too much to remember, and easy to return to.

 

Continuing to breathe, holding your whole being very kindly and gently, welcome your sensations, thoughts, and feelings. You can stop at any time if they become too much. You are guiding and leading here.

 

As I welcome these sensations, thoughts, and feelings, I will find they grow stronger or louder and weaker or softer over time. Giving myself space to remember this truth, that these sensations and thoughts are always changing, reminds me that I am not my thoughts and sensations and I do not have to dissolve into them. I can have pain or difficulties but I am not pain or difficult. In that space between experiencing and being, I have choices and, if I choose, I can offer myself kindness and compassion as I would to another being who is struggling or having uncomfortable sensation.

 

As you breathe and practice holding yourself, can you find space to hold yourself with compassion and kindness? I promise you, you are worthy of this, no matter what. We may have made harmful choices in the past and yet, right here and now, we can make a kind and healing choice. When we learn to hold ourselves with kindness and compassion, we become less reactive, and we can make better choices. When I cannot hold myself  kindly and compassionately or believe I am not worthy of this space, my experience is that I am more likely to say or do things that are truly regretful.

 

Take as long as you have or need. Before you go, take a few breaths to notice how you feel now, and whether you are curious about or would like to try this practice again. If you would, return to the practice, or plan to try it out when time can next be made.

 

Thank yourself for making space to be kind and compassionate with yourself. I thank you for making space to be kind and compassionate with yourself.

Prayer to Nurture Civility and Counter Violence

 

Well of Liberation, grant us gathering spaces where we can nurture, learn, teach, relearn the skills of genuine curiosity, dissenting without needing our neighbors and friends to agree with us to know we are loved and lovable and for them to affirm we are still neighbors and friends. May we imagine together what wondrous possibilities open if we can find small actions to share together and learn how to trust one another. Centuries of learning how to be suspicious will not be undone in one deed, or by one vow, but just as harm was a cascade turning into a flood, we can make a different, liberating flow. Well of Liberation, may we lean into loving more boldly, so we can counter fear and the pleasures of the power of fear with kindness and justice making and healing and building equity and nurturing love and all the pleasures that those powerful forces bring. May we persist with one another, countering falsehoods, inviting truth finding, creating projects that benefit this earth and one another, making a peaceful, creative way where one seems so unlikely without more stubborn violence. Well of Liberation, gather us together, and let us learn with humility and with compassion, with hearts that love deeply how to nurture civility and a better future. Amen.

Prayer to Be with Knotty Issues

Wisdom, breathe with us. Breathe with us in long, slow, calming breaths even as click-bait flashes across our screens promising us if we are living right, no knotty issues will bother or inconvenience us every again. Breathe with us in long, slow, calming breaths even as those who are quite happy to make the tangles and snarls tighter jeer and chitter and even try to tell us that those constrictions and struggles will deliver us to some better time. Wisdom, breathe with us in long, slow, calming breaths even as we and others want to give up, put the knotty issues down, and turn away, pretending they are not so bad, or difficult, or somehow will soften and undo themselves with time. Breathe with us, Wisdom, in long, slow, calming breaths as we try to find a way and then try again and keep trying collectively because in these knots are people’s lives and wellbeing and dignity, and so worthy of our efforts, our patience, our ingenuity, and our persistence. Wisdom, breathe with us in long, slow, calming breaths until we co-create a future that brings blessings and joy, healing and amends, and invites us all to dance. Amen.

Prayer to Free Us of Harmful Beliefs

 

Lover of Diversity, may we acknowledge the harm and wrong-doing that is carried over history and over beliefs we may have learned and made part of ourselves. Help us name, understand, and change these beliefs that may set up some people as being better than others because of how we or they look, we or they think, we or they move, we or they communicate, we or they live, pray, and thrive. Help us release harmful beliefs that teach us to oppress ourselves and others, such as the idea that there is one narrow range of body shape or size appropriate for all, or the idea that some eye colors are more beautiful and some are less, or the idea that health is proof of virtue. Lover of Diversity, we are here in so many amazing cultures, variations in human expression and thriving, understanding and devotion. Teach us to spend more time appreciating one another and supporting each other to living meaningful and joyful lives and less hypercritical and judgmental ones about stuff that may not be in our influence or control or has been a way of causing historical and current harm. Invite us each day to breathe with as much freedom as we can, making it so for one another, freedom to love, to create, to live well in or myriad ways of being. Amen.

Guided Meditation on Goodness and Gratitude

 

This is a guided meditation to soak in the experience of thankfulness. I feel gratitude when I am awake and aware of what is good in my life, my neighborhood, this larger world. Because we want to be able to protect ourselves, most of us find it easier to focus on threats, pain, hatred, and other sources of suffering. Sometimes we need to because there is a real crisis in which we need to bring forward all our skills and resources to survive. But that is not sustainable over the long haul of our lives. By turning our awareness to what else is true and real, to what else that is happening presenting goodness in our world, we can soften, relax, and reorganize some of our energy for other kinds of life-enhancing actions like generosity, creativity, and pleasure.

 

I invite you to make yourself as physically supported as possible in a seated position, centering your shoulders over your sitting bones, giving your belly and back room to breathe. Many of us live with furniture that encourages us to tuck our tailbones and curve over our bellies and hearts protectively. For this practice, I invite you to find your seat of dignity. I draw my thighs inward a little bit so they do not roll out. Sometimes, because I do not always have the energy or control of those muscles, I will use a circle of support, a belt around the thighs that allows me to sit up with greater support for my back, shoulders, neck, head, and my breath to be full.

 

Once you have a seat of dignity, allow the breath to begin to grow longer on your exhalation. As you breathe out, slowly stretch your breathing. The act of slowing down our exhalation signals to the rest of our being that we are in a space to invite calm and to experience greater safety. When possible, breathe in and out through the nose.

 

Once the breath has lengthened the exhalation, perhaps you would like to match the inhalation and exhalation, making both long sides of our breath longer and softer. When we are stressed, frequently our breath becomes caught up in the upper third of our chest around our heart and the base of our throat. Here, we invite the breath to come down into the belly and towards our seat.

 

Take ten long, slow breaths in and out, allowing each breath to finish filling up and emptying out before beginning the next round of breath.

 

Turn your awareness to a small delight from the past week, one that maybe in that moment you barely registered. As I practice, I am thinking about a small bird in a flock of small birds. As someone who enjoys watching and listening to birds, they are an easy awareness for me to tune back into in memory. I could choose a fragrance, a taste, a touch, a moment of genuine laughter, the feeling of welcome shade or sun on my skin, or some other small moment.

 

Breathe with this moment, letting your awareness be with the moment until you notice the sensation of contentment or well-being. Here, we might begin nurturing our sensation of gratitude, thankfulness for having such a moment we can revisit, for the relief of noticing something good and nice that is part of our regular experience. We may even wish to name our thankfulness. Notice how thankfulness feels in your being. Notice how you are breathing with your gratitude. Spend another 15 breaths with this awareness.

 

Over the next 10 breaths, as you return to the fullness of your life, you may want to remember that these experiences of goodness are as much a part of our lives as our experiences of trouble and suffering. We have both happening, as is in the nature of living beings. Nurturing our awareness of what is good helps us face and gather energy for dealing with what is painful. Yet it is the very experience of difficulty and pain that allows us to appreciate what is pleasant. This is not a reason to go out seeking difficulty and pain. Our lives will have these, even as we are good and kind people, even if we exercise regularly and sleep soundly and have meaningful relationships. What we are doing is rebalancing our awareness and energies, which gives us space to notice the yearnings, attachments, judgments, and expectations we might also have. And these, we might choose to shift, play with, loosen, or get free of.

 

Returning to your dignity seat in this moment, thank yourself for taking time to breathe, to notice something good in your life, and to care for yourself in this way today. May you remember your dignity, your belonging, and how that felt in this practice.

Prayer to Lean into Transformation

Hello, Life, in all your quirks and foibles and inconveniences, in the obstacles, oppressions, realities that, mmmm, might be nice if they were a little less demanding and harsh. Oh, that’s how it is? Breathe with us, Life, as we adapt to this major shift in being, as we struggle to comprehend the vastness of our changing climate and world, as we find managing a loving and dignified life each day challenging enough. May we support one another in meeting the challenges that need from us not just to change and go with the flow – sometimes the flow is not what is needed! – but to embrace developing skills or gifts or appreciations or networks of resilience and care, to transform from who we are now to who we cannot even fully imagine we will be. Hello, Life, yes, these invitations are not optional, so help us drum up courage together, dance up and out our anger and fears and bring forth our fierce joy and determination, dream into being options, choices, opportunities that nurture love, justice, peace, and equity. Hello, Life, keep offering this ground for growth and witness and, together, may we root down, leaf out, and bring forth blessings, gifts, and just daily good-enoughs-for-now. Amen.

Prayer for Dignity

Beloved, wherever we are and wherever we go, may we live in ways that nurture dignity for each and for all. May we unite politically to choose laws and practices and policies that support a life of dignity for every one, every configuration of family, every differing community, every being without making moral rankings of who is deserving and who is not. May we support and bring forth universal medical care and quality housing, knowing that medical debt and unaffordable and inaccessible housing are leading causes of eroding dignity and of creating long-term poverty. May we support reparations for past injustices and inequities that took enormous resources and wealth generated from the dispossession of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of people from Africa, indenture from Asia, and other forms of human trafficking. Beloved, help us reckon with the reality that cumulative wealth across generations is matched by inaccessibility to wealth from these historic harms and inequalities. Beloved, may we refuse to accept poverty as part of our economic policies and social practices, not by tidying away visible presences of impoverished people from wealthier neighborhoods, but by actually ensuring that everyone has a nice place to call home, enough to eat, clean water, clean air, and the chance to nurture meaningful relationships and joy in this life. As we remember all those who have striven for, shown up to make real, and taken risks to make a more equitable and dignified life for all, may we, too, live into these commitments. Amen.