I remember as a child, through my teens, and into adulthood, my prayers were all shaped by lack of love: the hunger for love and the deep belief that I wasn’t worthy of love. As I learned about the spiritual universe I live in, and my relationship to it, I slowly began to understand that the nature of the universe and my nature were one in the same. I too was love!
This realization transformed me and I began to pray affirmatively, for all that has been given, all that exists and all that I AM. I no longer pray to get things, or even change things, I pray in gratitude for an ever-available, loving and intelligent Source which is right where I AM to be fully expressed. In love, all things are possible… including peace!
Throughout this 26th annual ‘Season for Nonviolence,’ we have the opportunity to stand for something and be against nothing. In other words, to stand for the existence of peace, knowing that compassion and love are the truth of our nature and the truth of all humankind. With this knowing, it is impossible to take a stand against anything or anyone. Injustice, inequity, bias, racism, and bullying may exist in our society, but without the same fire, they will eventually burn away into the ash and dust of a once inhumane culture. This is a vision worth holding! It is a vision worth knowing in prayer!
I work at living my life in the midst of possibility and with the inspiration of Love. Believing that love always leads my way is not accurate from a relative standpoint, as there are times when I cannot attain the objectivity and compassion required to be loving. Here my possibilities seem to dwindle significantly. I am assuming you can relate?
Regardless of whether the promise of love realized is guiding my thoughts and behaviours, the impersonal, yet responsive Law of my Being, is always busy creating through right action, a divine outcome. This is true even if I do not recognize the conditions in my life as a perfect match to the intention through which I directed my thoughts. I have come to believe that the discrepancy between my thoughts and the thing which is produced, is the absence of Love.
When we pray as the energy of Love itself, we literally become the embodiment of the Prayer being prayed. We become aware of our own divinity and see the Spiritual Truth existing right within our intention, our subsequent thoughts, behaviours and outcomes.
So what is the far reaching value of Becoming the Prayer, instead of the one praying for something to change? Firstly, the natural outcomes are recognizable, full of possibility and rife with Love’s promise; secondly, being the prayer raises the collective consciousness and helps to create a world in which all feel honored and where peace prevails.
Rev. Nadene Rogers