Collective
Prayer
“Don’t
do daily prayers like a bird pecking, moving its head up and down. Prayer is an
egg. Hatch out the total helplessness inside.”
Rumi
(“Prayer Is An Egg,” translated by Coleman Barks; in Risking Everything, p.
139-140; edited by Roger Housden; Harmony Books, 2003)
Most of
us are once again glued to our news feeds, NPR, CNN—wherever we can get news
from Ukraine. We walk around with heaviness in our hearts, and in our solar
plexus—carrying the weight of an unfolding disaster we cannot control—again.
Rumi, who was Sufi, suggested that the prayer that is the essence of every
ritual is this: “God, I have no hope. I am torn to shreds. You are my first
and last and only refuge.” The feeling of being helpless is one with which we
are now familiar.
I believe
that collective prayer is a potent intervention. We can pray to God, humble
ourselves and beg for help and support for Ukraine; and if we don’t believe in God, we can at
least hold the Ukrainian people close in our hearts and imagine comforting
energy surrounding them. The reason that we come together for prayer vigils is
that the collective energy of shared prayer is a powerful tool in bringing
about change.
Remember
when we were children and learned that we could start a fire by focusing
sunlight through a magnifying glass? How many things did you burn up? Collective
prayer is like that. In Matthew 18: 20, Jesus said: “When two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I in the middle of them.” Whether
your prayers are Christian, Muslim, Judaic, Hindu, or Buddhist is not the
point. The point is that we come together and pray as one unified voice for
protection for the children, for the Ukrainian people, for their homeland and their way of life
in the face of this monstrous invasion. Pray without ceasing. As Rumi said,
pray like an egg that needs to hatch out all the helplessness inside. Pray like
your own life depends on it.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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