Musings

Prayer of Release

The experience of God is available to us all the time.  The love that is God is the very substance of our being.  So the spiritual quest is not about discovering God - it's about uncovering, getting past the barriers we put in the way of our awareness of the divine.

Attachments are the obstacles.  Negative attachments get in the way of knowing God.  Holding on to anger, resentment, hatred, prejudice - this leads to the very opposite of the love that is God. 

But, paradoxically, attachment to the good can get in the way, as well.  Clutching and clinging to those we love can sour our relationships -- not only with each other, but with God.  Grasping at wonderful possessions, brilliant ideas, physical pleasures, and beautiful things can result in evaluating them according to our relationship to them - instead of appreciating them for what they are on their own terms.  It can trick us into thinking we "own" these people and things -- when in fact they are good precisely because they are beyond our grasp.  When we see that others are truly other to us, having lives of their own, we can experience God through them.

To help let go of these attachments, and to open us to the experience of the presence of God who surrounds us all the time, closer to us than our own breath, I offer this meditative prayer.  It can be read silently or recited aloud slowly, with long pauses between phrases:

"I lovingly observe my attachment to my anger against those who offend me, and against my own thoughts and feelings that offend me.

"I lovingly release this resentment and open myself to faith that, in community with others, I can respond creatively and compassionately.

"I lovingly observe my attachments to my own body, mind, ego, thoughts, and feelings.  I lovingly observe my attachments to other people and things, the way I become unconsciously absorbed with them.  I notice the ways I think and act as if I own them.

"I lovingly release my own body, my so-called possessions, my ego, thoughts, and feelings.  I lovingly release my clinging to other people and things.

"I open myself to loving myself and all other people and creatures and things, as free, sacred, miraculous beings.  I open myself to delight in them, to enjoy them, to honor them, and to serve them as they may have need and as I am able.

"I open myself to Love, who is God.  I open myself to feel divine Love as the very essence of my being, to enjoy and serve God with my awe and my actions.  Amen!"

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For California readers:

How I'm voting on the propositions on Nov 8:

Prop 73:  No.  It's got hidden language that could weaken abortion rights, beyond its putative goal of parental notification for minors. 
Prop 74: No. Teacher tenure isn't the problem with the schools. 
Prop 75:  No.  Employees of corporations get no say about how their bosses make corporate political contributions.  So why should a union, with democratically elected leaders, be forced to allow its individual members to opt out of their share of the union's political contributions -- when such influence is critical to the very purpose of the union?
Prop 76:  No.  Why have a legislature at all, if the governor has all the power over the state budget?
Prop 77:  No.  The governor wants to rewrite the district boundaries in the state so he can shift power to the Republicans. It puts the power to redistrict into the hands of just three people. 
Prop 78:  No.  This is the drug companies' weak, unenforceable proposal to deflect votes away from Prop 79.
Prop 79:  Yes.  An imperfect but needed step toward greater accessibility to prescription drugs.
Prop 80:  No.  Re-regulation would cause even more problems than de-regulation of energy.

We're All Mojados

A few years ago, Roberta and I went to El Tiradito, a vacant lot with some ruined adobe walls in downtown Tucson which long ago became an informal shrine to lost love.  "El Tiradito", "cast-off" or "throw-away" in Spanish, was a jilted lover in the 19th century whose story took on mythic proportions.  The shrine is a place where the love-lorn light candles and say prayers of grief and hope.  The adobe walls and the bare dirt below them are coated with spilled wax.

In recent years, a group of church and synagogue members from the Tucson area gather every Thursday evening for a vigil, to pray for the "mojados" who have died that week trying to cross the Mexico-US border.  (At least 460 have died in the past year, mostly along the Arizona stretch.) Songs are sung, prayers are offered, and the names of the dead are read aloud, with the circumstances of their passing -- exposure, thirst, injury, sometimes violence.  When we stood in that circle at dusk, hearing those names, the human and divine tragedy along the border became very real for us, breaking open our hearts and freeing our tears.

The Thursday vigil reminds me of the power of ritual to clarify our emotions and purify our intentions, calling us and energizing us to act.  Now is a good time to act, too!  Because the issue of immigration reform is finally back on the national agenda.  There is an opening in Washington for positive change in the way our country copes with illegal immigration.  There's real hope for more humane laws that would offer an interim legal status for currently undocumented Mexican residents in the US.  This is a good time to let our prayers turn into letters to our President and our Congress, supporting their moves toward substantive change that could relieve some of the pressures that drive people to make that dangerous crossing in the desert. 

(For one perspective on possible reforms, see http://www.nomoredeaths.org/faithbasedprinciples.html )

In memory of all the immigrants who have died along the border, I offer this poem.  It makes the connection between the river that runs through the new heavenly Jerusalem in the book of Revelation (Rev. 22:1) in the Bible, and the experience of "mojados" -- "wet ones" in Spanish -- the undocumented Mexicans who cross the Rio Grande to get into the United States.  "Coyotes" are the smugglers who lead them across (and often astray), and "migra" is Mexican slang for the US Border Patrol.  The reference to "buzzards" relates to the hundreds of immigrants who die of thirst or exposure every year along the border

WE'RE ALL MOJADOS
by Jim Burklo

We’re all mojados in the Promised Land,
The river will show us the way,
We’ll be soaking with water when there we stand
At the throne of God someday.

Nobody is thirsty in the Promised Land,
“Coyotes” don’t gather a toll,
Buzzards don’t glide o’er the desert sand
The border’s not there to patrol.

You’ll meet no "migra" at the Pearly Gates
No fake ID's must be bought,
No money to transfer at ripoff rates,
No fear that you’re gonna get caught.

You can't be deported from the Promised Land
When you cross the river, you’re home.
In the presence of God we will finally stand
And welcome all others who come....