I don't know how to start this post. I feel like there are so many things I can write about but I am struggling with how to write them or how much to say. They don't necessarily belong together in the same post either. I am going to try a stream of consciousness and then edit it for easier reading after I'm done.
JM and I went out to White Rock yesterday to visit a friend of ours who has cancer. She has bad cancer. Not that there's a good cancer but she has aggressive, ugly, mean cancer that she is bravely and strongly fighting. She is thankfully out of the hospital and at home with her husband. For reasons that I don't want to have to think of (and am blessed that I have that choice), she wasn't up for visitors yesterday.
I wasn't raised in a religious home and I never really learned how to pray in any traditional way. I now know that there isn't really a right or wrong way to pray. What I have found that works for me isn't words. Words don't bring me comfort. I don't seem to be able to connect with the words. What I like to do is visualize. I close my eyes and I picture the person, the thing, the place, the situation that I want to pray for. I can feel it in my whole body when I do that.
This is how I pray for K. I visualize her and I focus all of my love and energy on her. As I do that my focus will widen and include her husband, her home, her pets and parents, her sister, her in laws, her friends, her community and so on. It is much like a meditation and the longer I stay in it the more encompassing it gets. I have often ended with my perspective being from way up high and looking at the entire planet with my pinpoint of energy, faith and love still on the one thing I started with. I picture that I am a portal for God to flow his love, energy and faith through to what I am focused on.
I believe in miracles. I believe that miracles happen on a daily basis. I have experienced them and I have witnessed them and the more I am open to them existing, the more of them I am aware of. I have started studying The Course In Miracles and I love it. I haven't figured out how to explain what it is yet because it is new to me and I am new to it. I know it isn't a religion and that it doesn't promote organized faith. It is more of a book of spiritual guidance. It is personal and it makes a lot of sense to me.
I spent most of my life not having any kind of relationship with God. When I was 25, I filled out a values survey. It listed 25 values and asked you to put them in order with most important to you being #1 and least important to you being #25. A relationship with God was #25 on my list. Now a relationship with God is way (way) higher on my list. (I should do the exercise again to see where it lands now).
I was with some friends recently and started a sentence with "According to Jesus..." and we all started laughing because it was probably the first time in my life I had started a sentence with that and it sounded strange. They knew me when I was 25 and I would have tuned someone out who started a sentence that way.
My mom had made an excellent point recently (and I am paraphrasing here) it was that you can start a conversation about any number of uncomfortable topics with a group of people, and nothing makes them squirm more than talking about God. Bring up serial killers, child abuse, molestation, cancer, war, prostitution, drug use and most people will enjoy a spirited discussion/debate about it but bring up God and people get weird. Just an interesting point.
Anyways for those of you that pray and/or believe in miracles/God, please send some thoughts of love and prayer to K.
Thanks.
Health, happiness, peace and love to you all!
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Hey Karli -- Once again I enjoyed reading your blog. I think you'd find Alanis Morissette's journal entries up on her site interesting ... www.alanis.com
I've read through them before and they're definitely interesting. As a Christian I dont' always agree with what she says and some of it seems weird and off to me, but at the same time I've noticed that her spirituality has really calmed her and changed her for the better as a person, and she exudes a lot of love for life and people in her blogs. It's really neat to see coming from the 'You Oughta Know' singer.
Lastly I think people get uncomfortable with talking about God and specificially Jesus because Christians have traditionally shoved it in peoples' faces that they need to believe in God and become saved, and yada yada. (You still have militant Christians running around protesting gay marriage, abortions, and the like, but it's a lot less now)
IN reality a lot of the bible and Jesus' teachings are sound and have good advice and values; others are very confusing and strange and unfortunately have been twisted and used for bad purposes.
In short I think there's a lot to both attract and deter people from becoming a Christian and taking a specific faith, even if it claims to give a personal relationship with God (which Christianity does).
I hope that makes some sense, just dialoging with you really and yea ... :( cancer is brutal my grandma died of cancer a few years ago and that was really really hard ... people my age at chuch weren't really ther efor me during that time either which made it even harder
I'm horrible at remembering to pray, but keep me updated on how your friend is doing, and encourage her to fight bravely and keep a positive outlook on things ... that helps work wonders and increases the chance of survival by a lot.
Take care, cuz :)
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