As a child, I went to church every Sunday. But that’s not where I learned to pray.
Prayer was what came through my Italian grandmother as she sang to me. Prayer was imbedded in the final words my father said to me each night, “God bless you always”. My mother had the amazing ability to curb her rage with prayer. Like a tuning fork I could feel it.
I’ve always gravitated to those who could drink from the cup within. It never mattered to whom they prayed, or for what. There is something in that humanness that touches me. Something in that desire to be heard that assures me.
I can’t find it in the prayers that are made like lists to Santa Claus or are scribed by another long ago. I find this shared humanness in the silence behind the words and it is in the heart not in the ears where it’s felt.
I had the good fortune to find my way to a Navajo Grandmother who guided me towards Walk in Beauty. And it was the prayers of the people at the camps at Standing Rock that beckoned me and held me there.
So it’s of little surprise that the prayers for justice are awakening my humanity once again. And after the guilty verdict was announced each person who spoke carried the ancestral trauma and the ancestral strength that I could recognize and feel. Their prayers were powerful and offered with certainty.
And I can add my plea to theirs: that we embrace our humanity; that we see one another as kin; that fear and intolerance be dissipated by love and kindness.
And that humility will outlast power.
The verdict was not an ending but a beginning.
And prayer without effort is futile.
photo: Creative Commons
let kindness win 