"Being here is so much."  Rilke

"The soul has no limits."  Heraclitus

"Meister Eckhart was once asked where does the soul of a person go when the person dies? He said, no place.  Where else would the soul be going?  Where else is the eternal world?  It can be nowhere other than here.  The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. The only difference between us and the dead is that they are now in an invisible form.  You cannot see them with the human eye.  But you can sense the presence of those you love who have died.  With the refinement of your soul, you can sense them.   You feel that they are near."    John O"Donohue/  Anam Cara


In whatever space you occupy now
I want to believe you are close by.
In all my troubles and fears
I want to know I can talk to you.
In all my loneliness and longing
I want to know you hear me.
Sometimes I don't believe you are here,
but I want to, more than anything.

You live in a "circle of eternity."

Why do I doubt myself ? I let others persuade me it's not true.

 I join you in the circle of eternity.
 And I will never leave.

No matter what anyone says.

Amen.

"The dead bless us, we do not need to grieve for the dead.
Why should we grieve for them? 
They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation or pain. 
They are home.
They are with God from whom they came. 
They have returned to the nest of their identity within the great circle of God.
God is the greatest circle of all, the largest embrace in the universe which holds visible and invisible, temporal and eternal as one."   John O'Donohue/ Anam Cara

I want to believe all of that.
I'm not there yet.
Where is that place ?
Where can I find you now?
You occupy a greater space than when you were here.
Everything I do, say, think, feel, you are there with me.
You are on "the other side of the air,"  yet within my breath,
because every breath I take I hold you in that space.

    I like to believe that your soul is free.
    free as it wants to be.
   
    I have to see where my soul now wants to go,
    what it wants to do while it is still here.
    I know that my soul wants nothing more than to honor your life,
    your soul, your love.
    I pray for that. 

   Amen.

"When you really love someone you shine the light of your soul on him or her."  John O'Donohue

 I pray to shine the light of my soul on all those I love.
I know I let my light shine on you,
it was so easy.
Now I need to learn how to shine it on others with ease.
It's the only way.

I pray for your beautiful soul to be at ease,
to be in the great beyond and  yet remain with a solid slender thread
with all of us, gently tethered to this world and all of us who love you.

Amen.

 "Our real journey in life is interior:
it is a matter of growth, deepening,
and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of
love and grace in our hearts."   Thomas Merton


I'm thankful I was born into this life
with my mother and father to guide me.
I'm thankful I have a life, let me not waste it,

"We are all put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love."  William Blake

I pray to "learn to bear the beams of love."

I pray for you out in the realm beyond what I know, what I understand, what I see.
and today you will be with us. in each and every moment.

Amen

"Song Without Borders"
  
you are my song

"I live my life in circles"
I
pray not to tiptoe
through life
to march into  it,
a soldier of my snowy dreams.

"you have been living a life that cannot die
 there is an indestructible life that is in every person,
 when someone is departing they are reminded
 of love that lasts, that they have known something that lasts,
 one can never die."  Brother David

 We belong together.

 "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere") e.e. cummings

   I pray to breathe all this in and make it part of me
   because if I don't I can't go on.

Loesch mir die Augen aus
Extinguish both my eyes: I see you still;
Slam shut my ears: I can still hear you talking;
Without my mouth i can implore your will
And without feet: Towards you i keep on walking.
Break off my arms: I shall still hold you tight;
My heart will yet embrace you all the same.
Suppress my heart: My brain knows no deterrent;
And if at last you set my brain aflame
I carry you still on my bloodstream’s current.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke


Did I love you enough,show you.
I feel guilty those last moments after,
I was cold.
I can not live those moments
I will die from them,
I pray you forgive me, my failings, my lack,
my unfeeling feeling.
I pray you understand, that you weren't confused, or lost.
I pray you found what you needed to find out in the after.
I pray hard that I can feel again.
and not close off.
I pray for your silent guidance.

Amen.

"It is not possible to live without the unknown."  Rene Char

"Let life happen to you.  Believe me: life is in the right, always. "  Rilke


I'm saying my prayers that" life is in the right," and that I must live with the unknown.
 I want to be on steady ground, yet shifting landscapes have me
losing my footing.
I pray to let life be in the right,
there are so many things I would change.
Maybe changing life isn't the way to "let life happen."
It feels like more and more letting go rides up in the future,
and all the stops I try and put on life
slip away.
I pray for confusion to lift
I pray for your soul to spirit me to that unknown place
where we can ride together.

Amen

"Follow the path until life is over."  Balthus


Moving forward with you,
that's how I pray now.
There are beginnings and middles in life,
I don't believe in endings.
I pray to find a new beginning
and to gift others the way you gifted me,
with your presence, your humor, your wit, and intelligence,
your love and compassion.
to love others as you love me, without wanting anything
in return, to be in the process, not looking for a product,
of anything I do.
How to move forward in that way is still a mystery,
I pray to have a whisper of an answer.

Amen.


I pray for your immense beautiful soul
to soar...

"I'm waiting for the dawn to break"


I dreamt of you last night.
a dream as short as a haiku
in a terraced field, high on a hill
you sat at a long table,
laughing and smiling.
I was down below at another table, too far from you to hear me if I called to you.
Instead I offered sign language, why the language of the deaf?  I don't know.
I signed to you, I love you, with fingers outstretched.  Do I know how to sign I love you?
In the dream I knew.
At first you signed back, a- ok sign?  rounding your fingers, your thumb to your index finger, laughing as you did it.
and then after you saw my sign,
you tried to sign to me
I love you.
smiling both of us, we signed to each other.
The dream was over.
I coudn't reach you high on that hill.
I was happy to see you,
happy that you were happy.
I pray for your happiness, if that's part of what the next life is.

I don't know what happens after this earth leaves our souls.
There are so many questions.  and so few answers.

Amen.

My prayer today is silence, to escape from the hurly burly of everyday life and go inside.
I can meet you there.

As I pray each and every day, today I pray for your soul to be peaceful and joy filled.

Amen.

"I've climbed out to stand here in the sun. One moment I was at the bottom of a dark, fearful narrowness....."  Rumi


I am still climbing out to stand here in the sun.
You were my sun.
I pray to meet you and stand in the sun again.
I pray to not stay too long in "the bottom of a dark fearful narrowness."

Amen.

"I had thought that maman's death would make me someone "strong" acceding as I might to worldly indifference.  But it has been quite the contrary:  I am even more fragile." Roland Barthes


 I am more fragile,
 and not as strong as I thought was.
 I pray to you to see me through and let me be fragile if that is what needs to be.
 You showed your strength and your fragility both with grace and love.

 Amen.

"A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself that's how I hold your voice."  Rumi


I pray, like the mountain with an echo inside itself,
to hold your voice, both your inner and outer voice,
the voice without speaking, without words,
deep inside my soul so that it never goes away.


I pray to keep the thread of you, slender and fragile,
forever tied to me.


Amen.

"The door was open and the house was dark wherefore I called his name although I knew the answer.
The answer this time would be silence."  Seamus Heaney, Human Chain

  I'm a tree born of roots
  your roots and my mother's
  I stand apart
  our roots will always be united,
  in all our lives.
  I pray for your unending soul to be filled with my love for you.
  I pray for you. every day.
  please hear my prayers.

   Amen.

"Everyone is "extremely nice"  - and yet I feel entirely alone." Roland Barthes

 I pray that you watch over me.
 I pray to find a way back to life.

Amen

"Sometimes very briefly, a blank moment - a kind of numbness - which is not a moment of forgetfulness.  This terrifies me."  Roland Barthes

I have these moments.
I want to deny them, push them away, pretend I don't have them
yet there they are.
I pray to have the strength to not deny anything,
darkness, numbness, light, sorrow.
to just take it all, give it my hand, as you gave me yours,
faithfully.
I have a broken heart, may all the broken parts mend together.
I pray for your eternal soul to remain ever with me, ever constant,
forever and ever.
Amen

"Beloved of the Soul"
                Rabbi Eleazar Azikri


beloved souls
reach each other
when matter no longer holds
beloved souls
hear each other
beloved souls
feel each other's touch
king of winds, i am a daughter breeze *
forever in your circle

"Walking on freshly fallen snow"


I do not know where I am going on this "freshly fallen snow"
I know you came before me and flowered my path
I pray although unseen you are still flowering my path
I walk on new ground.

I pray for love to guide me, for love to save me, for love to be my only path.

Amen.

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.   Thomas Merton


I pray to let go of avoiding suffering,
to not get "tossed away" by suffering, just to let it be.
I pray to not let the fear of being hurt prevent me from loving, from forgiveness,
from living.
I pray to you for your everlasting love and guidance
to see me through.

Amen.

The Whole World Is Your Own

"I tell you one thing -
If you want peace of mind,
do not find fault with others.
Rather learn to see your own faults.
Learn to make the whole world your own.
No one is a stranger, my child;
this whole world is your own."
 Sri Sarada Devi


I pray to see my own faults
and embrace them as a mother embraces her child
as a father holds his daughter.
The whole world is my own?
So many days it doesn't feel that way,
I pray to not be a stranger to this world,
to see the whole world as my own.
I pray for your soul, beautiful and bold, to light up the sky above me,
so I can see the light....

Amen.

"Break into the peace within, hold attention in stillness,
And in the world outside.
You will ably master the ten thousand things.
All things rise and flourish,
then go back to their roots."  Lao Tzu


In all the heavens, in all the skies
under each cloud, everything comes home.
I pray to reach as far as I can reach in this life,
to give up holding on, to keep things close yet let them go.
To flourish as I live,
and then go back to my roots.
I pray your way is kind and swift,
loving and sweet,
and that your way and mine come together
in all the heavens and all the skies.
Amen.

I still wear the veil
I took it off with you,
it was easy.
I saw only love,
I was only love then.
You wore no veil
You had no mask.
Love was your only face.

I pray that I may know that face in my own.
I pray for bright eyes,
like yours,
full of joy
and compassion for all.

Amen.

No one was ever sweeter to me than you.
I was never sweeter to anyone than you.
Which came first?  I don't know.
How does it work love?
Do we love someone first and they respond?  or are we loved first by someone
and then we love them back?
or is there some mixing of love that occurs simultaneously?

I pray to take the sweetness of love
and cherish it, keep it close to me
yet give it away.

Amen Amen Amen.

"Bitter is made sweet through love,
copper becomes gold through love,
love heals all pain
love brings the dead to life"  Rumi

 I dreamt of you last night.
 You were older, smiling, smaller.
  I pray for your smiling face
  to look on me with forgiveness and joy.
  I pray to look on myself with forgiveness and joy.
  I shall only pass this way once,
  I pray to take it all in,
  and do the work I was meant to do
  on my assignment on earth.
 
Amen.

 "In joy and sorrow all are equal.
        Thus be guardian of all, as of yourself."
                                       Shantideva


    I pray to be kinder to myself, especially in the moments when I feel I cannot.
    I'm still afraid of the feelings I have, that they are bad, that they will never go away,
    that I'll be stuck forever.
    Lately, I've been taking the pain, the sorrow, the grief, the fear and sending it to sit in a big trunk for a little while.
    Just a while.

    I pray to send my spirit to the clouds, the sky, the air where you are, that I may float around with you for awhile
    and come back to earth when I'm ready.

     I pray to know your soul, to believe in its existence, even when I cannot.
     I pray for all that I can not see.
     I pray for all that I can not hear.
     I pray for love to keep me with you.
     Forever.

     Amen.

When I am liberated by silence,
when I am no longer involved
in the measurement of life, but in the living of it,
I can discover a form of prayer in which
there is effectively no distraction.
My whole life becomes a prayer.
My whole silence is full of prayer.
The world of silence in which I am immersed
contributes to my prayer.
                                    Thomas Merton


I am looking forward to the day when my whole life is a prayer.
Your life was a prayer
and you are my brilliant example of prayer in action.
I pray to live my life as a prayer.
I pray for your soul to be safe and peaceful, looking down on me
guiding me toward love.


Amen.
Amen.
Amen.