Pentecost Prayer Day 45 Becoming a Baby Again

I read a post today at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/spiritchatter/2013/05/pentecost-for-the-rest-of-us/ in which the author talked about waiting in prayer while we await Pentecost. "Wait" was my daughter's favorite word while she was under my care. Waiting seems to be the hardest thing many of us can do. We don't want to wait; we want to participate.

My daughter was always very methodical in her actions; she didn't toddle and fall. She waited and watched until she felt sure that she had figured out this walking thing. She then got up and walked up our driveway. I wasn't asked or expected to participate in her efforts. I was simply to wait while she did it herself.

When my first grandchild was born, she was a very hyper-aware baby. She was extremely excitable; I say that she moved like a little ferret.  I took great delight in seeing and hearing her hearty laughter. When she was fussy, my way was to try to "cheer her up." My daughter would envelop her in her bosom and say to me, "Mama, stop. Wait. She needs down time, not more excitement." I would watch my daughter absorb all her daughter's anxiety into herself as the baby drifted off to sleep. It was beautiful to behold, but I had no participation on the process.

We want everything to happen on our own time, not in eternal time. Often, especially in relationships, all we are asked to do is wait and watch. Pentecost is a state of being, not a series of actions. We want to go out and infect people with it, but it is usually best to simply wait. Opportunities to share The Sacred Spirit will come to us, just as plants grow toward the sun and animals draw near to a source of warmth emanating from each other.

My prayer for Pentecost is that we learn to watch and wait.

Pentecost Prayer Day 44

I was blessed by being with my dear friend and her family as she struggled with her fear of illness and death during a recent hospitalization. It isn't every friend who is allowed to help a leader in her most weakened state. I have been asked to sit by the bed of several giants as they confronted their own fears.

I still grieve that I was not strong enough to hold my mother-in-law as she passed from the physical world into the spirits of those whose lives she had touched. I was, however the person who held her hand all night as she wept in fear before the exploratory surgery that announced her fate. I was also in the room when she breathed her last. I like to believe that much of her Sacred Spirit went directly into my womb which was sheltering her first grandchild, a girl. Her granddaughter carries in her a huge spirit and strength that I recognize as much stronger that that of myself and her father.

It is a gift to be able to attend at the illness or death of a person who carries such a huge spirit that others greatly fear their loss. I believe that we must get past our own fears and assist the weakened person to open their souls to a peace with whatever they have sown, while they were strong, carrying on in others for all of eternity.

I certainly don't want to spend the last days of my life using up the energy that I worked so hard to impart to others. I believe it is a merciful gesture to soothe others while they let go of their physical selves.

My Pentecost prayer is that we truly begin to see life as a continuum that began before our physical births and continues in all we have touched in any way.

Evil Incarnate

My niece's social worker called me today. I was not available to answer her call, but I assume it was made because me niece has, once again, checked herself into a mental institution to escape the consequences of her abhorrent actions. My deceased little sister, who fought me and our mother for matriarchal influence over our family, did much the same thing whenever she was in trouble with her support sources.

I have cut off all ties with most of my siblings, as I did with my mother when I was fourteen years old. I struggle daily to retain my sanity in a world where we are asked to believe in opposing truths simultaneously. My family seems to like to live in the abyss that our pseudo-spiritual, religious society creates, pretending that they don't experience the cognitive dissonance.

Our culture is afraid of evil intent, so we have now labeled all evil as mental illness. The question we're not asking ourselves is, "Which came first, the evil intent or the illness of the mind?" I, my siblings, and their children were brought up by a woman who believed that even thoughts had to be purified by punishment. When the judge, jury, and executioner, all in one mother figure, sought to become more humane, she decided that all evil in her charges was the work of demons that could be exorcised by her holiness and that of her priests.

In attempting to explain the explainable, we have created even greater evil than that which already existed in humanity. We often speak of Adolph Hitler as the greatest example of human evil in our time. The social work system would have us believe that Hitler only acted evil because of his low self esteem. Where did we lose the idea and acceptance that the greatest evil is too much esteem of oneself?

There is certainly more evil done in our society by those who set up themselves, or are set up by others as gods, than there has ever been done by those who feel inferior.

Pentecost Prayer Day 43

Often the choice is between peace and our perceptions, what we like to see as universal truth.
The scriptures are read with different translations and eyes that see through varying lenses.
Does one's child see the world through the parents' eyes, or through eyes that are unique?
We must accept the same of people seeking The Divine, and gifted with many manifestations.

Where one may find a path to inner peace in one passage of one "prophet's" perception,
Another may find nothing but fear in the way life's lessons are described by their priests.
Seeking The Sacred Spirit's truth of existence has reigned as long as has humankind;
We must not discount anyone's vision of the path to earthly peace and harmony.

Because you may not experience broccoli as a delicious addition to your dinner,
Doesn't make one who experiences it as nectar of the gods an infidel.
It is true that all nature is stressed by change introduced too quickly,
But we've had thousands of years of killing only leading to more of the same.

Our children in public United States education are being exposed to multi-cultures,
The foods, the friends, the families, and the faiths of their many co-classmates.
I'm sad for those who are sequestered from what public education has to offer;
They receive no inoculations to be strengthened in their families' faiths.

Unless a child is given a strong refresher in example at home and community,
In every encounter with one's family of responsible compassionate authority,
There is little chance that the child will grow true to his or her family's core values,
No matter what fear of reprisal may be threatened by family and tenants of their faiths.

What are the core shared values of those seeking The Sacred Spirit?
How do we educate ourselves and others without resorting to a focus on fear?
My prayer for Pentecost is that we open our eyes and ears to the small children,
Who will suckle from anyone who nourishes their  innocently sacred bodies and souls.

Pentecost Prayer Day 42

At the end of life we get greedy to create better memories of each other,
But in the process we are often robbing our sisters and brothers.
Unless we are using the extra time to bond our spiritual selves,
We are only killing The Sacred Spirit that continues to indwell.

Why preserve a body that has long ago ceased to give
The positive energy on which our universe continues to live?
Why can we not accept that all energy has a cycle of life?
Knowing that all energy is eternal should, for us, suffice.

The day that I am sure that I'm no longer able to give,
This is the day I want my body to cease to live.
Energy that could be put to keeping me breathing
May be the energy that keeps another from conceiving.

My life has many times felt it's run its assigned course;
I have only come to new life after years of remorse.
Whenever it is time for me to breath my body's last,
I hope the positive is that to which my family holds fast.

My prayer for Pentecost is that we begin to accept physical birth and death as simply transformations of life and The Sacred Spirit.

Pentecost Prayer Day 41

Pain as punishment has made us afraid to hold each other as we suffer and die, as if the bad karma is contagious. This idea that we, or someone we were born through, acted in ways that deserved the purging that only pain can produce has made us turn away from each other in an attempt to bar the evil humors from our own physical forms and Sacred Spirits.

How often we are given medicine in an attempt to release us from the pain that only the warmth of another's physical being can impart to us. It is my experience that the only way to save the souls of ourselves and of others is to bond with them in their joys and their sorrows, sharing on a level of The Sacred Spirit. How much more beautiful it may be for those dying on the battlefields to be asked whether they want to be put back together like broken dolls or whether they would prefer to be held as their bodies release The Sacred Spirit to simply float home to the hearts and souls of others.

The message often seems to be, "Hurry and heal because your pain makes me nervous," rather than, "Come, let me hold you and absorb your pain as long as you need me to be your balm." It is not only morphine that releases endorphins enough to take us away to a state of spiritual connection with "The Sacred Spirit" of the whole universe. The physical manifestations of love also have this ability.

My prayer for Pentecost is that we open ourselves to the celebration of sharing life up until the very end, when we may be fortunate enough to absorb some of The Sacred Spirit of those with whom we have shared the celebration.

Pentecost Prayer Day 40

Good big brothers and sisters don't ridicule, torture and reject siblings who are slower in ares than are they. Good older siblings are taught to admit their own strengths and weaknesses and share abilities with the whole family. It is true that there is often fear and resentment of the new addition, but when responsible compassion is the way of a family, this is soon overcome by the sense of belonging to a safe society. The ways of the newcomer don't threaten the ways that are firmly established in a fruitful family; they actually enhance it.

In many poorly functioning families, the adults regress to earlier states of childhood rather than stand firm in their own values. I suspect this is because the family hasn't set a clear mission or vision, much less a plan for the accomplishment of such. All are drowning together, but nobody has courage enough to step out and learn to lead.

This is how I feel about multiculturalism and the United States of America. We have a stated vision and mission, and we have a constitution that is supposed to keep us on the path to justice on earth for all. We continue to allow rules of religions to contaminate our constitutional rules. When we stand firm in our commitment to the constitution without fear of failure because of one segment of society or another, we will become a true constitutional democracy.

America has already suffered through the same infancy of self absorption that so many other countries are just experiencing. We must stand firm in our separation of church and state, which will ultimately strengthen both because we have intimately examined each of them. I see our country's challenge as being the good big brothers and sisters to the emerging adults, no matter how early on they are in their growth.

We do have to be careful not to backslide in our own progress toward our fully human, responsibly compassionate goal as we continue to walk the walk of our values. My prayer for Pentecost is that we stop being afraid, and beginning being in awe, of the challenges that accompany change.