Rituals [500]

by Deneen Ansley

23 May 2009

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Flash Writing

Inspired by superstition

I feel like I need prayer. Someone inside me needs prayer.

There is a part of me that used to depend on prayer. That used to find comfort in it. She needs it again.

“But,” I remind her, “prayer didn’t work! Your father NEVER found ‘Jesus’, in spite of all of your hours confined on your knees, in the musty closet beneath your mother’s old prom dresses. In spite of your arms wrapped around Father’s neck, begging, that one time that he agreed to come to church. ”

The God part of me replies, “Prayer can never work when your basic religious foundation is wrong. When what you are asking makes no sense.”

So, I tell myself that prayer might work this time. I think that what I think now makes perfect foundational sense. Though, I’ve grown enough in wisdom in these passing years to know that I do not really know.

Should I move forward in prayer with this realization that no foundation is stable? That it’s the ever-changingness of the platform, as the waters of time and experience flow and force the opening of new mental passageways that makes this glorious, miraculous?

I wish I could take all of these people from inside me and have a conference and say, “What do you need? How can I help you? How can I make you happy?”

I want to say: I will take care of you and help you meet your goals.

I want to gather myself underneath my wings and rock and croon! A Godly lullaby of Peace!

Safety? I’m not sure that we are supposed to feel safe - or content. Contentment sometimes constitutes sin, for where, in the midst of that, can come the reaching, the striving, the improving?

Someone inside of me needs prayer, and I don’t know how to give it to her, or even if I should, or if I should try to teach her a different way.

We try meditative Yoga and it is, indeed, different. The pretty instructor stands over me, with fleshed out hips and beautifully bulging breasts and enough limberness to kiss her own toes, handing me straps and helping me apply them to my body. It strikes me as odd because this kind of situation is usually in a totally different context!

My ability to kiss my own toes? Not so much! I can’t help but giggle, which always ads a welcome feeling of lightness. At the end of this exercise, as we are cooling down, we are asked to massage ourselves. Rub our own temples in circles, massage our eyebrows, press the backs of our skull where the flow of blood to our brain gives us that wonderful gift of conscious thinking.

Why does this feel more uncomfortable to me than all of the stretches to this post-op, still healing frame of mine? Why do I have this idea that attention to myself is wasteful?

Can any prayer heal the inside of me that cries for hope?

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Superstition5 August 2008

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