The Peace of Prayer
Today I went to Catholic Church
I pulled the pew kneeler out so I could rest on my kneels, and the memory woke up in my bones. The hinge squeaked as it came down and then that thud of rubber on wood. I am able to feel something I had been unable to feel. I cry good and deep so the tears ride each other, one allowing the other to slide off my cheeks onto my sweater.
I feel my heart warm open, and I remember something familiar.
I’m 8 years old. I’m worried sick. My mind had begun to do this thing where it obsessed about whatever was wrong. Sometimes it would choose something I'd done and then I would fear being found out. The “what” would change, but my mind was addicted to chewing on my shame. This time it was a test I had cheated on.
We used to take these timed math tests and I could never figure it out. Now, when I look back, I see that I was frozen. I wasn’t petrified because I couldn’t do the math, but because if I couldn’t what that would mean about me. It would confirm my deepest fear, that I was bad…rotten to the core.
I was silent and stoic and suffering. The pew kneeler came down, proceeded by those sounds of devotion, and I knelt and prayed. I prayed like I’d never prayed before. I let my whole body pray. I shook. I got hot. I stared at the large crucifix above the grand altar and in that catholic church in Bellflower I asked, “Lord, please take away this worry. I don’t know what to do anymore. Please, bring me some relief.”
The next morning the worry was gone along with my mental addiction to my obsessive worry thoughts. It would show up again years later, but never quite like that.
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Now I'm remembering something else. I'm 13.
It wasn’t cool to pray in junior high and high school. My best friend and I had started going to this church. It was the kind with the young blond minister and hip congregation and the prayer and mention of God or the Lord or Jesus Christ was so frequent it felt dishonest.
I remember lying on the bottom bed of bunk beds I shared with my sister and opening my spiral binder. It was black and plastic and I wrote with white out on the cover. I started writing about the Lord and it felt weird. My friend didn’t believe in God and I didn’t believe in my heart, so I devoted myself to boys instead.
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At some point in my 20's I break down.
I have a “spiritual emergency.” I think I may be going crazy. I see three therapists and each one tells me in her own way, congratulations!
I had begun meditating and the flood gates of repression opened and I blacked out into deep, impenetrable wisdom and bliss alternating with terror as myself came back to claim me. Apparently this presented quite well, as all of the therapists told me to keep meditating.
My mind was seized by endless thoughts one night as I was driving to a monthly dinner the company I worked for held. I pulled off the road. I was terrified.
The only thing I could do was pray.
“God, please help me. I don’t know what’s happening to me and I don’t know what to do.”
Calm. It settled over me and under the warm blanket I felt my breath again. It didn’t last though, as the grooves of self doubt and disconnection were strong.
The only thing I could do was sit and pray. I would pull out my cushion in front of the pine alter I had set up from a pier 1 folding table. I would breath and feel my breath in my lower abdomen, like my teacher taught me too. My teacher gave me a way to contain my fear in the new container of my expanded awareness. My prayers were silent. I let my body reach out and touch the God I found kneeling on that pew kneeler I told you about earlier.
I started kneeling again, but with my bones and muscles and big beating heart. I emptied myself again and again. Words seemed too heavy, so I dropped them. My prayers became a continual arrival to JUST THIS.
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I find this return sort of odd, as I cry once again on my knees in front of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Mother.
I find it odd because I have so many words now, very specific ones my heart conveys to me. If I find the right words to match my heart it blossoms like someone who feels heard for the first time.
This seems too vulnerable, too sacred to bring out into the open. Then it occurs to me that this is just what is needed amongst the busy moms and dads walking, biking, and driving by. That this is what they are looking for too and I am witnessing their way of finding it.
Sometimes the prayer is silent before it finds words. Before it finds consciousness. Then the words may come to make the silent less frightening. In time we can trust the truth of our own hearts again.
The wise heart is unbrokenly broken, sealed by the stability of the belly. The cracks allow for movement, otherwise the heart hardens and can shatter.
It contains within it the calling to surrender, to allow prayer to live through us. To be prayer and to be conscious of when we are not. To be conscious of when we've gotten small again. Scared again.
So that our lips can remember the words that bring our heart home to itself. And we can remember the peace of prayer.
Sending love,
Carina
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