How It Seems To Me

Excerpt from a letter to a friend in 2006, upon his having learned
that an aggressive cancer was closing (opening?) the big door in front of him.

Prayer is alignment of our souls with that which is good in the universe. Some things lead toward health; others lead toward disintegration. It’s hard to know which is which sometimes, for without disintegration we would not have health. Nourishment depends upon dis-integrating our food from its form as, say, bread into its form as, say, carbohydrates.

So even to aim for health as if instead of disintegration leaves us open to subjectivity. That’s where the faith comes in: the mystery. Or rather the prayer. That is, as we surrender to the awareness that we do not—cannot—know for sure what is right, we call out—pray—to that which is beyond us which can lead us toward health. (Often, that which is beyond us is referred to as God; coincidentally and conventionally regarded as male.)

My prayer for you is that you will settle into a central place in your heart, where you find confidence and rest in the face of that which so deeply perplexes, confounds, disappoints. I pray that you will be immune to an expectation—within yourself or from others—that prayer is a formula, an incantation, that can lead to what we want … except, of course, insofar as what we want is aligned with that which, in the grand scheme of things, represents/reflects wholeness and not destruction.

I presume it’s obvious that these rambling, disjointed thoughts are partial, not complete. Ultimately, we don’t get to “complete” in this life, anyway. We just move in a direction, sometimes forward, sometimes back. All the stuff of our life, our history, is just history—the starting point for Now. It’s the source of lessons, of wisdom, that can help us take the next step toward love—which, finally, is the only measure of health, of going the “right” direction.