Buttering the Sky
Slipping
On my shoes,
Boiling water,
Toasting bread,
Buttering the sky:
That should be enough contact
With God in one day
To make anyone
Crazy.
~Hafiz
::
This morning, a foggy easy Sunday morning here in the city, Rachelle Mee-Chapman asked this question of her friends:
What feels like prayer to you today?
Such a rich and provocative question…
On Sundays…
While prayer is for each day and every day, today is Sunday.
On Sundays, dance is my usual form of prayer, the dance floor my church. There is no dance on Labor Day Sunday, though, as the big Sausalito art fair takes over the town.
So, today I write. The empty page is also my church, and writing another form of prayer.
Today, I sit in this warm and inviting cafe writing, and I consider her question.
Voices
I listen to voices sprinkling words through the air, trying to communicate as best they can what wants to be said.
I hear laughter.
I hear English and French.
I hear people who are hungry and thirsty, ordering nourishment for their bodies.
I hear people hungry and thirsty for more than food, perhaps communicating with each other to feed more than their bodies…to feed their souls.
Noticing
I’ve been noticing, just this week, how much I ‘think’ my life.
When I think my life, my body feels tight, constricted and stressed.
When I ‘think’ my life, I push and strive.
When I ‘think’ my life, it is just me by myself trying to carry the heavy load that I learned to carry. The load is indicative of something I have to do, somewhere I have to get, someone I have to be. It’s all some kind of illusion my mind keeps creating.
Life as Prayer
Rachelle’s question and Hafiz’s words bring me back to reality, the reality of Life simply unfolding…Life as Prayer.
I posted Rachelle’s question on my Facebook page, and Emily Silbert answered with this:
Today it was the mundane act of grocery shopping and stopping the automatic list-driven purchasing to get myself an orchid. i stopped and looked into it and it was holy, i was holy, the whole grocery store was holy.
Holy is right here, right now.
What if holy is all there is?
Wow, Julie this is gorgeous, it’s all gorgeous.
I had a sense the other day that dance is so necessary. Moving our bodies in a way that we get taken over, as if things are flowing through us is the way to letting go and just being.
Thank you for articulating some of that so beautifully.
Today, riding my bike with my son, 17, thought the sunshine sacred time for me. : )
Julie, this is so lovely. I particularly relate to the idea of “thinking” one’s life. I know I do that all the time. A friend once noticed that I usually respond to questions about how I FEEL with “Well, I think …” – it’s actually hard, for me, to shut my brain off and to just be. But it’s also so essential. I’m not sure my thinking can comprehend the holiness. That’s a whole different part of myself at work. xox
julie … how glorious! from the question “what feels like prayer to you today?” you got to “Life as prayer” … that encompasses all … this takes away a sense of separation between “something” holy and “something” not holy … prayer is a state of openness to what is true, holy and Godly … “what if it’s all holy” you ask … holy has to be the true nature of the world, if we could see it clearly, unconditionally, without judgments … whatever Source or God is, to be That, It must be infinite … Omnipotent Omniscient Omnipresent …
thank you for this, julie … it brings out connectedness … it is powerful and I-opening …
The doing vs. the being… and being is always holy.
Thank you, Julie, as always…
Julie, the holiness of timing, of me finding & opening your post in my twitter stream at this moment, in the midst of …. the holiness of kids with their first case of lice … The holiness of a mama meltdown …. The holiness of dead fish in our pond … The holiness of pouring rain … Of a glass dropped on tile …. Of finger pouring blood …. The holiness of queasiness …. Of catching her as she passed out … The holiness of allowing … And the holiness of now, this moment of having a good laugh at the (w)hol(y) thing. Thank you for your magical reminder.
Yes, Life is Prayer, so beautifully stated. And if we can swim in Gratitude, be joined in her flowing waters, we will see clearly: Beauty is in small things, she’s in all things, and she especially is in you.
Hugs and butterflies,
~T~
Holy IS all there is!! Right here, right now. This is the greatest realization of my life.
It’s all about the body. When I think that, my heart smiles, my limbs feel lighter, I sit up straighter, and my brain whines “Well, what am I, chopped liver?” I can hear male voices in my past chiding with great derision, “That’s the problem with women. They FEEL instead of THINK.” There’s a time to think, a place for thinking in our lives, that’s for sure. But for far, far too long, we’ve been told that feelings are somehow less than, that to feel and especially to feel deeply, renders us less than, and nothing could be further from the truth. We have all sorts of receptors in our bodies that pick up and help us notice more than we know. And when we slow down enough to know through our bodies, life is, indeed, a prayer.