Tonglen in the Lady chapel

It's an open secret that whenever I get a chance, I slip into the Lady Chapel for a few minutes at lunch to light a candle and say a quick prayer.

This afternoon, unusually, I was on my own, so I decided to try something different. As I've mentioned recently, I've been reading Pema Chodron's When things fall apart and The places that scare you (with a strong preference for the second) - and the first was on loan the minute I finished it. Brilliant, brilliant books - and they've totally transformed my spiritual practice.

There are different ways of using the practice, but the structure is always the same: you stop and find a moment of stillness/spaciousness; then you explore and work with the texture of the feeling you are going to breathe in - which is most often a negative, such as fear, anger, doubt, claustrophobia - whatever is there; you begin with yourself or someone you love; you make the circle bigger: yourself ==> someone you love ==> someone neutral ==> someone difficult ==> all beings. You breathe in the pain and breathe out spaciousness (or anything that would be healing/calming - I've been known to breathe out coffee, as did one of Pema's students, and chocolate!)

You can do it for your suffering and difficult feelings at the moment, initially breathing in your feelings, exploring them, holding them in maitri - or loving kindness and compassion for yourself - and then breathing for all those feeling like you at the moment and expanding the circle. You can do it for another's suffering and all those like them. That is classic tonglen.

But you can do it for all or any of the following, known as the four immeasurable truths - Love, compassion, joy and equanimity - these are the classic phrasings, though I've been known to change them. Use what holds the essence and works:

May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
May they be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
May they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.
May they dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression and prejudice.*
*I actually think that living our lives fully requires passion, so I specify it as 'passion that gives rise to aggression'.

Today, for me, smouldering over Glenn Beck and other things, Door #2 - 'free from suffering and the root of all suffering' was the right answer.

God was clearly smiling down on me, as when I got to Taylors, there were plenty of pastrami and emmental sandwiches left, so I grabbed one and headed into the cool semi-darkness of church, and the deeper sub-darkness of the Lady chapel. I didn't light a candle and stand or even pace as I prayed, as is my usual wont. I sat down and started to breathe.

May I be free of suffering and the root of all suffering.

*Squirm* I absolutely HATE praying for myself. And I DO mean *HATE*. Three breaths was pushing it, four was too far, but I stayed with it.

May he be free of suffering and the root of all suffering.

A good friend I'm really worried about. I could have stayed with that one for ages, but did it till it felt complete and moved on to neutral:

May the people in this church at this moment be free from suffering and the root of all suffering.

No resistance, only slight connection, but a disinterested kind of well-wishing. Ok, that's where I am, but need to work up from there to feel more engaged. But where I am is fine. Now for the toughie:

May Glenn Beck be free from suffering and the root of all suffering. No, edit that, may Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers be free from suffering and the root of all suffering.

Resistance but managed to slip past it. Just as I was feeling spiritually smug, a voice whispered, 'It's easy when it's abstract. Pick someone you know.' Allah damn it. Just when I thought I was home free...ok, you pussy, woman up. Who's it going to be? Ah, yes. Someone who reminds me of a controlling mother.

May SHE be free from suffering and the root of all suffering.

NOW it was hard to breathe, the resistance and tension were so high, but I kept pushing - gently, in keeping with maitri, more like stretching, but I finally broke through - and found a compassion for her fear that I'd never expected to find. I'd always known she was afraid, but now I ached for her in her fear, rather than hardening in response to it.

Then I lined us all up and said it for us all together, spreading to Oxford, the South, England, the UK, the world and all beings.

Finally, I stood up and lit a candle to Our Lady. I have NEVER felt so grounded in my own centre, in my own strength. For the first time, I fully understood Kris' words to Talia in Mercy Lackey's Arrow's Flight:

"Ground and centre, greenie!"

In that moment, I fully knew what it felt to have slightly overlapping versions of yourself with fuzzy edges snap into one, with sharp, crisp boundaries. I knew nothing could shake me.

Then I turned around and nearly started laughing - not 5 steps away was a parishioner I find very difficult, because I perceive her as a mother who is 'too good' in the sense of 'this is what good is, let's be it' - and I experience her as very controlling through that 'I'm so good' way. She sets my teeth on edge. I smiled as I passed her and I thought, 'Come on, girl, breathe. Or colloquially, 'SUCK IT UP, BABES. THIS IS YOUR PRACTICAL.'' So I started breathing for her - and it wasn't easy.

Fifteen steps later, I passed by a regular asking for the sacristy key. As I'd just seen the sacristan go up the side with the above parishioner, I poked my head through and said, 'X, the sacristan has just gone up the side.' I got told, in no uncertain terms, to piss off and got totally blanked as he passed me. Normally, that would have led to annoyance, but I knew that was just the way he is, and what I'd done could have been seen as controlling rather than helpful. So now it was time to start breathing for him, as well.

Out the church door and into the sunlight, with an uneventful walk back to the office, also a church. And as soon as I sat down, who should sail to my desk but yet another difficult customer.

By now, I knew the laughing Buddha was glancing cheekily in my direction and was finding it hard to keep from giggling myself. There was no question that Our Lady was laughing richly, Joseph's lips were twitching, and Jesus was grinning like a boy who had just put a whoopee cushion on Mum's favourite chair, as the Father and Holy Spirit looked down and said, 'If you're gonna talk it, hon, you gotta learn to walk it.'

Ain't that THE spiritual truth? Being real?

And so, as I continue to breathe in and out for all of us, this time from Stephen Cope:

May you be protected and safe,
May you feel contented and pleased:
May your body support you with strength -
May your life unfold with ease.

How I pray...

For various reasons - from Alphaville's "Forever Young" in an advert to Ruth playing A-ha whilst I was at hers - I've been hunting down the music of my youth. Music from the 80s makes me laugh, cry, dance like a maniac.

It's also the way I pray.





"Kyrie eleison", meaning "Lord, have mercy", has been part of my everyday vocabulary since I became Catholic. I use it in prayer, as an interjection, for any reason going. E.g., "Kyrie eleison, will NO ONE do us all a favour and push Edward out of the choir loft??!" My usage of it is probably (and I'm happy for my Saffa friends to correct me on this) similar to the Afrikaans "Jislaaik" or "Agh".

But this song came out long before my Catholic days, and I used it as a prayer from the moment I was mesmerised by the opening verse:

Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie...

The wind blows hard against this mountainside,
across the sea into my soul -
it reaches into where I cannot hide,
setting my feet upon the road...
My heart is old, it holds my memories,
my body burns a gem-like flame:
somewhere between the soul and soft machine
is where I find myself again...

I'd never heard a song like it before, but it resonated in a way that the young Irim couldn't articulate. All my life, I had felt like my feet had been set on a road, that I couldn't hide, that someone was always beside me, that God was closer to me than my own skin - I never needed to have faith in God; I knew God existed, just like I knew our house did. Just like I knew that there was somewhere, somewhen I was meant to be.

I was always trying to find a way to get closer to God: I wanted to pray with my mother, my cousins in Pakistan, but I always found talking to God in my own words the easiest. You know, words such as, "Lord, I know you're trying to teach me patience, but NOW is NOT the time." It shouldn't surprise me to find myself currently drifting away from mass, only to find myself in an empty church lighting a candle. I don't do God group talk very well. I can talk to God by looking up, by being with those I love, maybe most often in those I find most difficult. (Not that I handle THAT well.) But telling me how to relate to God and what God wants me to do is very likely to get you an impolite gesture - figuratively, of course.

But that rebellion against being told what to say and how to say it doesn't stop me from borrowing someone else's words when they're absolutely perfect for my conversation with God.

I used the chorus of this song as a prayer for years - I still do when the song comes to mind. But my prayers have always been a personal variation on it- Mr Mister just put it more succinctly:

Kyrie eleison, down the road that I must travel,
Kyrie eleison, through the darkness of the night,
Kyrie eleison, where I'm going, will you follow?
Kyrie eleison, on a highway in the light.

And my favourite bit? When, during the choruses at the end, one of the singers comes out with a heartfelt, "Will you follow?" Because that's what I always ask when I start something new: "God, do you have my back on this one?"

Because I know I have yet to reach that somewhere or somewhen that I've sensed since I could toddle. And you know, God, sometimes the going has gotten really tough, and I have had to sit down, wanted to turn back, just quit altogether or take an easier road. But every time I've asked, you've promised that you have my back, that you will follow. That no matter who else has left, you won't.

And if you will follow, I will keep my feet upon the road. Then all that is left for me to ask is:

Kyrie eleison, on a highway in the light.

Snow

I love snow. Living in England, I *miss* snow. Those of my readers who have lived through Minnesota winters or have lived in Canada will probably be putting their heads in their hands right now - sorry, guys.

Why? Not just for the lost school days, both as student and teacher. Nor is it for the sheer beauty of a pristine, blanketed world and the flakes floating down through the sky. In part, it's for the enforced hiatus: as a natural introvert with a strong sense of duty towards others, I love the excuse for solitude under a duvet, with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book (which may stay unread on my lap as I watch the snow fall and just daydream).

Most of all, it's for the silence - by my reckoning, the world is far too restless with too much surface chatter and noise. Snow muffles sound, both physically and by forcing people to stay home. In that stillness, you can hear what's beneath the surface and catch the fleeting sound of creation's heartbeat.

When I lived in Maryland, in the Washington suburbs, we'd almost always be along the snow/rain line, which often meant ice, slush or rain. But some winters we'd hit the jackpot and we'd measure snowfall in feet, with white flakes drifting out of the sky for days, blanketing the world and bringing a preternatural hush to one of the world's busiest cities.

I've not seen snow like that for a dozen years. Yes, we've had the occasional drifting of flakes, maybe even for a few hours, but no real accumulation in this part of the country. This morning...

...this morning was different. My eyes opened in that greyness between darkness and dawn. When I couldn't get back to sleep in 10 minutes, I looked at the clock.

6 am.

I groaned. "IT'S SUNDAY," I thought. "GO BACK TO SLEEP, PLEASE." No dice.

"Maybe you need to go to the loo," an inner voice whispered.

"I've been potty-trained since wide ties were originally in fashion. I think I'd know," grumpy me replied.

"Just GO," came the reply.

This conversation went on for another 5 minutes before I decided to stop wasting time and just go.

I scuttled down the hallway to the loo. As I snapped on the light and blinked sleepily, I idly looked out the frosted glass window into the garden.

White.

"NO," I thought, as it had been sunny and well above freezing the day before. "It's not possible."

Then my no-longer-sleepy eyes flicked upward to the sky - the pinky-grey sky that only ever means one thing. And it ain't rain.

After a loo break that broke the world record for women (I was probably almost as quick as a man!), I tore back down the hall to look through the window in my room.

And there it was - a silent world covered in snow, with flakes drifting down out of the sky at blizzard speed. I watched in wondering silence for a while, then grabbed my phone and took a picture. Then watched some more. Finally, I snuggled under my duvet and closed my eyes with a smile and a prayer of thanks for the beauty, a wish finally granted, for that moment of stillness and connection to creation - which I would have missed without the nudge to nip to the loo, so thanks for that as well.

As I drifted into the twilight world between waking and sleep, I realised what I loved the most about these six-sided ice crystals.

Snow is a prayer.

Prayer

I know, I know. There are at least TWO blog entries that are weeks behind. One is almost finished, but the more emotional one is still in the middle of the creative process - and processing in a deeper sense. I'll try to get them out this week.

Meanwhile, please read this article by one of my favourite authors, Rachel Remen, and feel free to start a discussion on it here. It's a wonderfully articulate exposition on how she - and I - feel about prayer. It will explain to those of you with whom I've started this discussion, better than I ever could, why I regard petitionary prayer with such distaste.

And it will also explain why I've never believed that the mandate 'pray without ceasing' is the sole province of those who take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, any more than a holy - and whole(y) - life is.