My friend Michelle wrote this last Friday: “Prayer gives structure and meaning to our thoughts.” Our prayers, she says, “Take patterns of thought and make them specific through the process of naming.”
I used to pray with my eyes closed and my hands folded. Sometimes I still do that, because I’m a sucker for nostalgia. But mostly now I pray with my hands full and my eyes looking to the horizon, or at the faces around me, or to the limbs of nearby trees, or the bounce of a candle’s flame.
On the altar near the windowsill, alongside of the fern who I told you about last time, are the other material objects that fill my hands and ground my thoughts when I pray.
In a sense, each object on my altar is a prayer that I say with my fingers. They are a collection of curated prayers. This curation serves even when articulation fails.
A shard of pottery from a tiny blue mug that I broke while walking the dog, copper coins cast by a Scottish artist in the early ’00's, my grandfather’s old harmonica and his hinged carpenter's ruler, a clay bowl with an inscribed incantation that Emma had commissioned for me on my 40th birthday, stones and acorns, some cedar incense, and a turkey feather from a sidewalk in Cambridge sticking out of an empty 80-year-old flattop Hamm’s beer can that I found under a sapling during a day-long solo on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters.
Then, when I was unpacking last month, I came on a photo of myself around four years old. That photo is leaning against the rusty can, near a candle and the harmonica.
Little Aram is standing with a walking stick in hand, about to set out on a path. His shadow is falling over his right shoulder. If it’s morning in the photo then Aram is looking south. If the sun is setting, Aram is looking north. Either way, his look holds years of earnestness that feels familiar.
The decades between then and now are contained there in his countenance. He’s looking toward me. I think he sees me—here, now, at this desk—held in the spirit of what I have become, and who I am becoming.
I see him. I see what has filled the space between us. And I channel his courage to gaze beyond now, with the same degree of knowing and pathward anticipation.
Today, with a fistful of life, and our eyes wide open, let us pray:
Spirit who hovered over the winds of a primal chaos, guide us as we stride toward what’s next, recalling what has been, and washing it anew with each present breath.
Guide us as we look to the horizon and give name to our thoughts. As we give shape to our paths, may our every move be inspired by the genius of creation.
PS - This one pairs pretty well with Song of Good Hope (a prayer in its own way) by Glen Hansard.
