I didn't grow up in a church community, though I had a brief love affair with the ritual I found in an Episcopal church in Oregon in my twenties. My legitimate quest to create a spiritual practice was birthed in middle age by borrowing from the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, and the strong connection I felt for the worship of the Earth as taught us by our first nations. In Native American cultures The Great Spirit is a deity intertwined with the fabric of the Universe and the web of the life on Earth. It wasn't until recent years I discovered my Wiccan roots and the pre-Christian possibility that my ancestors were Earth worshippers. When I started this journey I worried because I didn’t know how to pray. Turns out we all know how to pray through our love of and gratitude for the gifts of life. This vault is for those who, like me, hunger for a spiritual practice and are learning to braid their own.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Prayer connects Earth and Sky


Original wisdom teaches prayer and ritual connect Earth and Sky, and doing so keeps us in contact with the great intelligence offered by a physical Earth backed by a universe filled with spirits and ancestors, visions and dreams. Our unique role as humans is to relay messages to and from Earth. Original wisdom assumes gratitude for the gifts from the Earth as part of ritual. I view this as prayer, but I have heard Native Americans insist that gratitude is gratitude and not prayer. Original wisdom assumes consulting with ancestors and spirit guides for help with decision making. Original wisdom waits a patient 4 days.

I woke up the first morning in the New Mexico desert with these words:

See what is unseen
Hear what is unheard
Feel what is unfelt
Smell what is unsmelled (sic)
Taste what is untasted.

In hindsight these words speak of my hunger for connection and understanding, my version of consulting with ancestors and spirit guides. I hadn't yet learned about beginning with gratitude. But it gave me a place to start. I practiced them every time a situation called for prayer. I still do. They feel comforting now, and remind me to tune in to what is in front of me, not the random and often busy thoughts in my brain. 

It was very soon after that a Raven started doing low flyovers while I attended my altar, often pausing with a squawk above my head--one time with a cracker in its mouth.

I gave thanks and promised to be open to messages, no matter who delivered them.
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