on my lips

Discouraged and bound to petty worries, I see myself praying, praying to pray. As Nachman suggests, praying to find the words for the prayer that life provokes from my heart. Even as I articulate the words, I feel the swell of all that robs humanity of hope crowding around the new baby, this newborn prayer, absorbing its light and cloaking it in doubt and darkness. It's like a race, to keep the prayer always new, always at dawn, to fortify the words against a thousand corrupting influences. Maybe that's why an old sage might stay up all night to pray, to make sure the dawn is pure and nothing blocks its rays.

So, on your mark, get set, go, here's the prayer.

Let the soul of humanity be deeply nourished by the beauty of human souls and the mystery of their radiant origin. As a friend of mine might say, let us become drunk on the event of ourselves and others and warmed by the unseeable light that carries us continually into being.

Amen

the purification of nations

In Zuccotti Park

The double usage of the root "ecos" in this vignette at Occupy Wall Street reminds me that the root is Greek for home. That's all the Greek I know, maybe all I need to know...I was there with my daughter last night, she jumped in and insisted on painting a sign which read "Take Care of Earth," and tromped around carrying it high over her head. I love the fact that she didn't write "the" before "earth." It's more like when you say "give this to mom," you don't say "give this to the mom."

What kind of food, what kind of drink?

Came across this by Hafiz yesterday..few manage to change my perspective on life in so few words.

A Cushion For Your Head

Just sit there right now
Don't do a thing
Just rest.

For you separation from God,
From love,

Is the hardest work
In this
World.

Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.

After I read this I asked myself, what kind of food am I given to weather this beautiful disaster? What kind of drink? They are such small, tiny things, a beautiful dream or an instance of precognition, a song that speaks to me in Motherese, words that heal wounds, but more than anything else, the chance to help someone retrieve the soul's inscrutable radiance, the flavor of life, because under these conditions, the home sick soul often finds a camp somewhere between this world and another, and our poverty doubles.