This gnarly stick is like an old friend, reminding me that I am fully alive when I empty, receive and give. My prayer stick bids me to remember that giving from Spirit’s flow, usually takes trudging through talking and listening prayers until I am able to simply abide.
CBS anchor, Dan Rather asked Mother Teresa what she said during her prayers. She answered, “I listen.” Dan asked a second question, “What does God say?” Mother Teresa replied, “He listens…and if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you.”
When, both God and I are listening, it feels like the threshold of abiding. It sounds more ethereal than it is. In fact, getting there can be hard labor.
Listening, when I want to talk
Trying to abide when, really, I want to hear something
Giving out of duty, rather than from an overflow
I call it the work of effortless living.
My prayer stick shows me a pattern. As I patiently wade through talking and listening prayers, I finally find myself abiding. And as I abide with the Holy, I am able to enter the life-giving rhythm of emptying, receiving and giving.
It is hard work because it is rarely linear and it is not something that can be achieved. At each point of change, there is a relinquishing segue of being open to.
I wish that I could skip the endless talking prayers, my stuck-ness. But I realize that I need to articulate and define that which I am letting go.
I am partial to the times when my talking dissolves into listening. I sense a faithful overlap and shift among listening, emptying and receiving. It is like carefully wrapping an oozing wound, so it can accept the balm and begin restoring itself.
When listening finally subsides into restful abiding, Authentic Self finds the strength necessary to freely give. But moving through emptying and receiving to giving, takes time.
I shake my prayer stick to hear the gourds’ seeds rattle around. It is a welcome metaphor for what is hidden, preparing to burst forth and live! It’s sound gives me hope, while I wait.
Endings are not without hope, because at last, I am daring to trust. Things that were once a good fit are now holding me captive, so I take a deep breath and step out in faith.
The in-between times can be disorienting or restful, depending on how far I have strayed from Knowing. The space between, an ending and a new beginning, is about unknowing and coming home to a truer self.
As I accept the journey’s turns, I find joy-filled beginnings. New starts are like signposts that offer fresh possibilities. Within, are invitations to abide with God and our abiding together inevitably spills out onto others.
Of all the times that I have chosen to empty myself, not once have I failed to receive more than I gave up. When I finally let go, I had room to receive; and as the empty places in me began filling up, giving flowed naturally from within, the Sacred within.