Today I read about a woman whose family was suffering, "where the hell is God,"  she said.
The answer was, "I think God is devastated, God is not standing outside our pain, but was a companion within it, holding us in his arms, sharing our grief and pain."

I've had my doubts about God, more than a few.
but today on your birthday, I look to a Divine presence that is a companion and is devastated that you are not here in your physical form with us.

As much as I don't want to, I have to accept the reality of the situation.
and try to understand the "complexities of where and how the Divine presence fits into our fragile and human world."

This is the path I have been given.

Sometimes I stepped onto the path with joy, happy on my road with you.
Sometimes I tiptoed, cautious and afraid.
Sometimes I ran away.

Those moments I stepped onto the path were my most happy.
I'm grateful I had them.
I'm grateful you gave them to me.

I'm blessed that you came into this life.

it will always be your birthday, nothing will change that.

Amen.

"Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words."  St. Ignatius Loyola


I pray to act more in love than speak love.
I pray to follow your example, love in action.

I pray for you in a realm that I can not see, can not hear, can not know.

I pray to trust that all is well in that realm.

I pray to let love carry you through this realm to the next.


Amen.

"Why is there this everlasting craving to be loved?

Listen carefully. You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you.

As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish, so why should you be loved?

Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dead thing asks for love, it is still dead.

Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill it. It is only the empty who ask to be filled, and an empty heart can never be filled by running after gurus or seeking love in a hundred other ways."


I am beginning to understand.

I pray to keep my heart full of love, for you, for everyone, for myself.

May I stop holding my begging bowl out for someone to fill it.

I know I had that with you, I just loved you.

I pray for you ever and always, in my heart, with my soul.

Amen.

"The soul is a fact, but it is not physical.  This can make it difficult to understand what it is and where it is within you."

"Your soul tells you, "Everything is in the hands of a force greater than what you perceive in the present moment.  Let go. Do not let the illusion of the moment seduce you into a misperception. Let it go.  Other guidance is at work that you cannot see or hear. You are not alone.  Let go. Surrender."

 "Only a soul with stamina can truly believe those instructions and have the faith to follow them.  The mind can repeat them like a mantra but cannot truly force itself to believe."

  Carolyn  Myss


    I don't understand and I want to.
    Praying for surrender to what I don't understand.
    trust in life, in love, in the soul. without understanding or wanting a physical sign.
   
    
     Amen.

Taking care of each other
 with your love to guide us,
 that is our gift.
 You are always with us.

  Peace to your soul.

  it was a gentle Christmas Eve
  with your gentle spirit everywhere, in every room, in every conversation, in every moment,
  I felt your presence.
  Amen.

I pray to enter the castle where you are, soul companion,
dear one.

 Let me be humble and brave enough to cross the bridge.
 I pray to be thankful for all the love I was given, all the love I was able to give,
 I pray for you, always.

  My gift from you is life, is love, is eternal.


 Amen.

"the dark night of the soul"


   The days get darker and darker
    a holiday that was a family time
    now lost and lonely.
   
     I pray to know how to take you with us,
     to have you at the table, around the Christmas tree,
     to hear your laughter and feel your grace,
     as we go into winter.


      I pray for your soul to orbit around us, always closer and closer.


      Amen.

Hafiz
"Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly, let it cut more deep."

Surrender seems to be what's necessary.
To not keep myself from falling, wherever that takes me.

I pray for you, near me always,
let me live my life honoring the ways you lived yours,
human and loving.

Amen.

Know that I am with you,
wherever you go, no matter how far, distance can not separate us.

I pray for you, may you live in everlasting peace.

Amen.

"The opposite of death is not life, it's birth. Life is eternal."



I pray for your eternal life, a simple prayer of love for all that you were here on earth
and all that you are in your life eternal. 

amen.

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap;
the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."  
George Bernard Shaw


I am thankful I had the chance to know that feeling of purpose.
I pray for your soul beautiful and boundless.

Let me be brave in this life.

Amen.

"May there be a beautiful welcome for you in the home that you are going to.
You are not going somewhere strange.
You are going back to the home that you never left.
May your soul smile in the embrace of your anam cara"
John O'Donohue


Before I knew my purpose, or part of it, I felt like a fireman waiting in the firehouse to answer the alarm when it sounded.

I wasn't as brave as a firemen, I may have been a rookie, a fireman in training.  Yet sometimes I answered the call right on time, slid down the pole and ran toward the fire.

That day came when I couldn't put the fire out, all the alarms rang and I stood by.  


May my prayers for you embrace you and keep you.

Amen.

"We are travelling together."  Rumi


To keep travelling with you, whether or not I can see you or touch you,
 that is my prayer.
 we rode together on this rocky road,
 now let us travel together to unseen places.

 I pray to  reach out to what I can not know

 and I pray for you, brilliant light that you are.


And I pray for Sally, mother of Elizabeth, passed from this earth yesterday.
may her soul rest in peace. 

Amen.

Everyday I think of you.

I talk to you in my mind and sometimes  out loud.
I ask for your help.
I ask for your love.
I ask for guidance.

in so many ways you are still here.
it's a mystery to me how I can still imagine you here.
when I know you have gone.

I don't want to bother you with all my needs.
you gave everything you had to me while you could still be here.
I am so thankful that I was so lucky to have had you.

I dream of a world for you where everything is easy, everything is calm and peaceful, where you can enjoy yourself, whatever the soul is.
maybe that's a child like imaginings, I dream of it anyway.

I pray with all my heart you  have gone to all that.

Amen

"In your light I learn how to love...
You dance inside my chest where no one sees you,
But sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art."  Rumi


Learning how to love,
it goes on and on
the lesson continues with you as my teacher,
whatever I do, you are with me.
Sometimes I know that and sometimes I doubt it.
I pray to lose doubt in the great wind
and fly with faith.

Amen

I pray just to listen.

Bless your soul
Bless your heart
Bless your love.

To talk less and listen more with my heart, in that way I can honor you.

Amen.

"My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality."  Oscar Wilde


Bless you for showing me what an individual is, the courage of conviction, the living of a humble life,
and the "obstinate pursuit of your own individuality."

I am blessed to have your example to go forward.

I know if you were in my shoes you would do your best to go on,
that is all I can do.


I pray for you everyday that God keep you in light and love.


Amen, amen, amen.

"Blessed are they who heal us of self-despisings,
Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious." 
William Hale White


I bless you for helping me let go of "self -despisings,
and that you continue to heal me after....

You always told me not to criticize myself,
it gets harder since you are not here to remind me.

I pray to hear you in my mind,
I pray to listen to what you told me.
to your wise words, your careful speech,
your loving voice.


I pray to heal myself of "self-despisings,"  it is
dishonoring you, so I am working on letting it go forever.

I pray for you to hear my words that you may know you go on,
despite the loss of your physical form.

I pray for you to know how much you have given in life
and even beyond this life.

I pray for all this to light your way.

Amen.

"The more you know yourself, the more you will forgive yourself."  Confucius


These could have been your words.
You are wise like Confucius.

I remember you saying, "when you are in a hole the first thing to do is stop digging."
I thought it was yours, until I read in a book that Confucius was credited with it.

No matter, all the wise things you said somehow became yours, the look in your eyes when you said it,
the sincerity and compassion you said it with all made them yours.


I pray to listen with my heart now and my spirit to all the wise words you said,
now that you are not here to look into my eyes, to hold my hand.


I pray to live the words and not just say them, as you lived your words.

I pray always and forever for your soul to be near mine so that I may feel its touch wherever I am.


Amen.

"The giving of love is an education in itself."  Eleanor Roosevelt

My education in giving love continues.
It will continue till the day I die.
It is a practice, not a destination.
I will never arrive at perfection.
I pray to practice as best I can, every day
and when I fall get up, as many times as I fall keep getting up.

I pray to listen to your heart, those were the lessons you taught me.
Your teaching goes on, the conversation goes on, love goes on.
For all this I am grateful.
For the gift of you I am grateful.

I pray for you, I pray for God to keep you always within the circle of life,
not so far away that I can't reach you.

Amen

"The things I thought were so important -- because of the effort I put into them -- have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered."  Thomas Merton


pray for me that I may recognize what matters and cherish it.
Let me go to the wheel of life and ride along cherishing the small, the unnoticed, the ordinary moment.
As I did sometimes with you, although sometimes I faltered, I fell, I ignored.
I pray for you, with all my heart.
I pray for you to hear my prayers and keep them close to your vast soul.

Amen.

"Nature has given to men one tongue, but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak."  Epictetus

"Deep listening is like dying.  It's a relinquishing of control... a giving over into the art of what comes. Without such an opening, conditioning stays intact,and natural innocence disappears into an arrogance which knows it has an answer for everything."  Tom Lutes


Let me listen, give up arrogance.
Let me be more like you, listening with my whole heart.
I pray to listen to others, to myself, to the world around me.

I pray for you always and forever, loving soul that you are.


Amen.

"The mystical life has always recognized that to come deeper into the divine presence within, you need to practice detachment. 
When you begin to let go, it is amazing how enriched your life becomes. 

False things, which you have desperately held on to, move away very quickly from you, 

Then what is real, what you love deeply, and what really belongs to you, comes deeper into you. 
Now no one can ever take them away from you."  Anam Cara



Love belongs to me, now and forever.
No one can ever take that away from me.

Physical death can not remove it,
The absence of physical presence can not destroy it.

 You are too great, your soul too strong to be taken away.
 I pray to keep that close to me, to live and breathe it.

I pray for you, my humble father.
my love belongs to your soul, your being, your essence.

Amen.

"O my love, for the first time in my life, my eyes are wide open.
 I see the wind, I see the trees, everything is clear in my heart."  John Lennon


Let me see with wide open eyes.
Let everything be clear in my heart.
Make me an instrument of your peace.
I pray for your courage and beauty to shine its light on me.
I pray for you to be with me although I have to trust in something I can not see.


Amen.

"Anam Cara - teacher, soul love, companion, spirtual guide, with your "anam cara"  you share your innermost self, there is recognition and belonging in this love,
you are understood as you are, you are home."  John O'Donohue

I pray for everyone to have an "anam cara"  in their life.
I am blessed to have known that love
 I hold it in my heart.
 I took it for granted.
What else, who else am I taking for granted.

I pray for you, anam cara.
spirit of love.
eternal father.

Amen

 "May you recognize in your life the presence, power and light of your soul.
  May you realize that you are never alone that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
  May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
  May you realize the shape of your soul is unique,
  that you have a special destiny here that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good and eternal happening."   John O'Donohue Anam Cara


 This morning I'm looking for rebirth.
 A part of my destiny has been realized, not perfectly, but humanly, in my own way.
 I found myself lacking in many ways, yet at the time I thought I was doing it right.
 I pray to be better next time.

 I pray instead of running from my own soul's individuality I run toward it, no matter how alone I may be.

 I pray to accept wanting to belong, yet standing apart.

 I pray to accept who I am and who I am becoming.

   I pray to let the seas of change,
   the winds of new days
   and the flowering of all that comes into my life
   to bring me to my new destiny.

    Amen

Today is seven months.  Seven months and still I see you sitting in your chair smiling at me.
I don't know how or why you disappeared. I know your body was tired and broken, but how is it that your mind wasn't ?
Your mind your heart your soul your eyes were still as clear and luminous as ever.
So confusing.

This disappearing leaves me in a waiting pattern.
Waiting to see what comes next, how and when we can meet again.
I have no future.
The future is a broken branch.

I pray to be all right in the here and now.
ok divine one,  please send me some strength.

I pray for the expansive soul that you are,
to keep me in the heart of your heart.

Amen.

"There is a lantern in the soul.  Meister Eckhart says there is a place in the soul that neither space nor time nor flesh can touch.  This is the eternal place within us.
The deepest things that you need are not elsewhere.  They are here and now in that circle of your own soul."  John O'Donohue, Anam Cara




in the lantern in my soul,
your light is there.
I do not find you in outward things,
places or people, I find you inside my own tranquility.

"You are an eternal essence; this is the ancient reason why you are here."   Anam Cara

I pray for your eternal essence, not that I understand it, but I have faith in it.
For all that you were on earth and all that you are in that eternal essence, I always knew
that you could not be destroyed, and that is what remains, the eternal essence of you.

Amen.

"Love is patient.
 Love is kind.
 it bears all things, believes all things, endures all things."   1Corinthians 13


This is the chapter to bear all things, endure all things.
I pray to know how to endure, how to believe, how to be patient and kind,
to know love and to practice it, day by day.
with every thought and every act.

You are my example.
You are my guide.

 I pray for you out in the circle of eternity.
 Here and there and everywhere.

 Amen.