I grew up in a faith tradition. As a young Catholic, I was taught that the act of prayer was saying the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be. If you said those words, you were good with God. Thumbs up. Great job.
We also learned early on to ask for what we needed. After all, in the Bible it says, “Ask, and you shall receive, seek, and you shall find, knock, and the door shall be opened to you.” So the petitions were lengthy—please let me get a good grade on this test, please make my friend with measles get better, please help me find my lost cat, please let my mom have a safe trip to Milwaukee…and on and on.
This kind of prayer stuck around for many years, well into my adulthood. When my children came along, my husband and I sat with them to say nightly prayers. We pretty much did the aforementioned practice. Sufficient, foundational, kind of like getting one’s feet wet with what prayer is all about.
My very conservative Catholic father found himself in his later years taking classes at Cal State University Los Angeles in order to obtain a bachelor’s degree which he had always wished to do. This grumpy father of mine (and that’s putting it mildly) slowly began his journey to find himself, though he would never have put it that way. He began spending time in art classes, hopping around campus, getting to know lots of people. Everyone knew Leo.
During this time, my dad decided to take a yoga class to fill in some elective requirements. This 70-something 5’10” skinny guy who used to wear a suit every day when he worked as owner of an attorney service from the late 1950s to the early 1970s was now sitting in lotus pose in sweatpants (though his go-to pants were now jeans—and sometimes white ones at that!) He told me he was learning to meditate. This was quite a stretch from his own foundational Catholic beliefs. Even today, many Catholics want nothing to do with Eastern practices. I believe he was starting to learn about listening to one’s inner self, you know, that place where God resides. And over time, he began to be less grumpy.
One day in my early adulthood, I heard a priest mention in a sermon that besides traditional prayer, we should also listen to God. Hmmm. Interesting. I was definitely up for that but didn’t engage in active listening until I began to meditate in my very late 50s, 14 years after my dad passed away.
What motivated me to start this new practice was the sudden death my 24-year-old son, Eric, as the result of a car accident. Those little prayers I grew up with and taught my children were no longer sufficient for the shit that had just hit the fan. They didn’t cut the mustard, they didn’t bring me comfort, they didn’t explain what the hell had just happened. They merely scratched the surface of a profound reality I was not in touch with. Yet.
I was ravenous for some kind of understanding. I never doubted the existence of God. But somehow, I just knew that there was more to this story. So, I searched and searched, not only through books, but through podcasts and lectures on anything spiritual. 
Much of what I found was not like anything I had known before. Near death experiences and signs from the afterlife were not meaningful to me before my son’s transition. Teachings from other faith traditions and cultures were unimportant before May of 2017. But now, I was grasping for truth as well as meaning. What is the point of this incredibly difficult life?
Have you heard that saying, God is good? “God got us there safely. God is good.” “God healed my wife’s (husband’s, mother’s, daughter’s) cancer. God is good.” “I got the job I prayed for. God is good.”
Soooo…that must mean that when my son was killed in a car accident God was not good? If God is good, why did my son die at age 24? Why did any of the children of the members of my support group, Helping Parents Heal, die? What about people you hear about on the news who are murdered or killed in a natural disaster. Did God not like us? None of that made any sense.
I knew this was not correct. I was missing something, an important piece to this puzzle.
Funny how being broken open allows the lights to stream though, which is exactly what happened. I was no longer a believer in one particular faith that was tied up in a lovely box with pretty ribbons, one faith that insisted it knew it all. Like an erupting volcano, the lid to that box blew off, and something inside of me said, “Go. Go find it. The truth. It is there. “
Without realizing it, I was undergoing a transformation. Not unlike the caterpillar, which needs to cocoon itself and turn into mush in order to emerge as a beautiful butterfly, I was taking the brutal loss of my child and finding that it was leading me to something more.
Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says that it is only through great love or great suffering that we can find transformation. We can move to that more beautiful place, that is, if we allow it. I was in the most vulnerable place I had ever been in my life. The worst thing possible had happened. I was (figuratively) lying flat on the ground, like a pile of mush, totally open to whatever was to come my way. Here I am, God. What next? Lead me. I have no idea what is going on or why I am here.
Spine surgeon and author Dr. Mary Neal, who had a near-death experience (detailed in her book Seven Lessons from Heaven), survived a horrific kayaking accident where she was underwater for 30 minutes with multiple broken bones throughout her body. Her soul’s experience on the other side of the veil with what she describes as the unconditional love of God is astonishing and she was clearly changed, for the better. Ten years later, as was foretold to her during her spiritual experience, her 19-year-old son was hit by a car and killed. I have heard her speak many times, and her account of all that has happened is always extremely moving in its rawness. Clearly the suffering transformed her. In one talk, she used the phrase “scarred beautiful” to describe herself as well as so many others who have taken their pain and found ways to use it to help others. In her words, “Beauty comes from all things.”
Dr. Neal’s story brought me a great amount of comfort, and I found many more books like this one that very much resonated with me. Etty Hillesum, whose journals were written during the year and a half she spent in the transit camp in Westerbork before being taken to Auschwitz where she died in 1943, writes, “Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.” Additionally, she says, “Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for 5 short minutes.”
The teachings of Richard Rohr have opened up a whole new understanding for me of who God is. What I have learned from reading many of his books has enriched my perception of God from being the old man in the sky who doesn’t always hear our prayers to that of a God who is less of a being and more of an action of love. That love is evident in the many people around us, and certainly in the beauty of Mother Earth. All of creation contains this spark of the Divine, of God. Sometimes a prayer is just standing in the midst of a natural setting and being with the awe and wonder all around.
People ask, “Why doesn’t God stop all this madness?” Along with the concepts explained above, James Finley, one of the faculty at CAC, puts it quite succinctly. As explained by his own teacher, Thomas Merton, “God protects me from nothing, but sustains me in everything.” That actually makes more sense to me.
After all, I have always trusted that there is life after death, and now, with all my readings and research, and even my own personal experiences, I absolutely know there is more than just this world. I have come to learn that we are not here for a smooth ride. I understand now that life is meant to be extremely challenging at times, that suffering has a purpose, and that even with all the difficulties, there is still so much beauty that exists. Not only can beauty exist despite the pain, but maybe in some cases—just maybe—as a result of it.
Jesuit priest Greg Boyle has worked with Gang members in East Los Angeles for more than 30 years. In providing a safe place for those who are ready to step away from their gang ties he offers them a chance to work at Home Boy Industries for an 18-month period, but more importantly, he offers them unconditional love, something which many of them have never ever known before in their entire lives. The stories he tells in his books of his work with these men and women are life changing, not only for the gang members, but for anyone who reads these stories. The power of unconditional love is hugely transformative. Greg Boyle explains that it may look like he is helping the men and women who he endearingly refers to as the “homies,” but that the truth is these former and current gang members have helped and transformed him as well. There is a prayer in all of this. That kinship, that connection, that bond, is where lives the spirit of God.
Additionally, the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh brought me to the peace and truth of the present moment. Mindfulness has helped me to see and appreciate what is right in front of me. Over time I began to see that all around me were miracles. I just needed to look around and notice the perfection of a flower, the elegance of the hummingbird, the magnificence of the shifting clouds, the majesty of the mountains, and the brilliance of the sunrise. And in each of those miracles was the presence of God. Taking the moment to be present was in and of itself, a prayer. And in the moments I also found the presence of my son.
From the spiritual guides already mentioned as well as teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Suzanne Giesemann, and others, I learned to meditate, to sit in stillness and just be. I have brought all the previously mentioned rich new thoughts to meditation. I have learned to listen to God in the same way my ultra-conservative Catholic father had just begun to learn to do 25 years ago. Turns out, he was onto something. I only wish he was still around for me to discuss all this with.
And so, I found that place of listening, not only to God, but to my own self. I am finding that the two are inextricably linked, intertwined. Now I understand in a whole new way what was meant by the Bible quote, “Made in the image and likeness of God.”
Prayer is the connection, the communion, with God. It is the flow, the breath, and the space between thoughts. It is the awareness of that which feels greater than us, but in truth is part of each of us. And to use a term coined by English mystic of the Middle Ages, Julian of Norwich, it is the oneing (one-ing). If we allow it, we can see the prayer in all of it.
Not to say I don’t ask anymore. Rather than requests, I like the term intentions, still used by many religious institutions and spiritual people. This word suggests hope and purpose. These are prayers of help and healing, guidance from God or angels or loved ones. I still ask daily for direction in how to be helpful, how to be compassionate, and then I listen. My heart feels open and I am able to find joy.
Those prayers I learned as a child? I still say them. They are beautiful. They brought me to this deeper understanding of the presence of God all around, and to the deeper prayer life that has unfolded before me.
And after living so many years of his life dealing with anger issues that resulted from what I now understand was self-loathing, likely born from an emotionally challenging childhood, my dad had finally found some peace. Not in the rules and dogmas of institutionalized religion, with a God that judges and casts to hell. But in the peace of meditation, a pure prayer to an unconditionally loving God who wishes to gaze at us as much as we wish to gaze at Him/Her. A prayer, not only of someone else’s pre-written (and beautiful) words, but of the heart, of that true connection with the Divine where words sometimes fall short. I found that place as well.
I do regret that I am not able to speak to my dad about all this. I can only imagine the amazing conversations that we may have engaged in. Yet, I find gratitude in knowing that his turmoil was eased and his heart was softened, and he found that prayer was really all about that connection of one’s authentic self with God, all bound together in that often used but greatly underestimated word… Love.
(Read more about my journey from grief to hope in my books Look Around and A Bird Called Wisdom.)
