 Welcome to the Spark of Humanity second segment of our talking about the pilgrimage of love. The pilgrimage of love is a prayer resource offered through the Spark of Humanity Network website. And we are here to talk about more about that. And you're very welcome with me today are Axie Noyes, Anne Wade, and I am Martha Holden. And we're all interested in our Spark of Humanity connecting, being strong, so they can connect with other people's sparks, which helps transform this world. And for our sparks to be strong, they need to be fed. And some of us think of our sparks as being fed through a root system. And one of the places our roots can go into is various forms of prayer and meditation. So today we're talking about this particular prayer offered on the website. So shall we pray it? Yes, sure. Do you want to do something first? You know, at some point I would love for you to talk about how you came to this prayer. It came to you. Okay, I can do that. Then we can. I don't know is the answer. I have absolutely no idea. Did you find yourself writing it down at some time? I find myself saying it. Okay. And it just prayers I have. I have prayers that become standard in my prayer life because I like to pray. It gives me, it feeds my spark. It transforms my life. It's what feels, it's the only time I know I'm not getting into trouble. So you said it once. And then it came back around again? I don't know whether it was the same, but this is, you know. It seemed to be. And it settled into what's on the website. And yeah, yeah, it's just, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, how do you paint a picture? How do you conceive a child? I mean, how does miracle happen? Right. Okay. Good enough? It is. It is. There's a thing about if you have a song that you can't remember. And Native Americans say you have to call the song to you. Okay. And so, and it may take a while for the song to come back. This is a song that you think you've forgotten. And you, within an hour or a few days, that song will come back to you. Okay, great. Yeah. So I think that's, you know, these things have, maybe they have their own life. Well, I think the pilgrimage of life has a life of it. And pilgrimage of love has a life of its own. And I think that it was pilgrimageing. It was doing its thing. Right. For eons before I became aware of it at the departure gate at Logan Airport in the end of December of 2010. And I just realized that it was this thing that was happening and growing. And I was becoming aware of it. And my awareness was expanding. And then I guess the prayer just downloaded. I can take no responsibility for it. Right. It came. It came. It came. So shall we give it a try and then we can talk about it in pieces? Yes. And we're reading it because this is a new prayer to some of us. Right. Martha has. I pray it every day. Yes. So slowly, please, so we can say it. Okay. And do we want to say that we've got, we'll put in, we'll put in whatever. Where there's a bracket. We'll put in whatever we feel like. Or not. Or not. Or we might not put it in. Okay. All living, ever loving. Not and. All living, ever loving. Ever loving. One. You. God. You who breathe in us the spirit of your presence. And desire of us only your wholeness. We bring before you the pilgrimage of love. A communion of prayer through the underside. Form and flow through it as it is your will. Bless those within its embrace. Fostering them in wisdom, strength, stamina, and joy that it may embody your desire and renew us all for your service. Amen. And then whatever. Okay. I have to ask Anne a question. Because it came up during the break. Anne shared something with me about this prayer. The one thing that gave her like a piece of burdock that snagged her was the concept of service. Okay. Anne. Yes. I guess I think it's the word service that my brain automatically went to command performance the service of our military forces. And it just went to this. I was having a good time reading it until that last word kind of jolted me and it went into a different place. Yeah. But it's my own lack of really comprehending the whole word and the whole meaning of even I think of I will not mind be done just popped into my brain. And I am accepting of the fact that I'm not in control but I can't really explain why it made me uncomfortable. And that word has been there forever since the prayer came but just to give you an idea for some reason because this is a segment of this that if you can't tolerate Christian language or Christian concepts just turn us off right now because there are some people as I was not too many years ago that would you know stone their TV sets or burn their computers at any of this stuff but we need to be able to talk freely about it sometimes and this is a time when we're going to talk freely about it. That's right. It's all subject to translation. Well that's true. That's one of the gifts. And so it means the enemy here is anything, any word that you hear that makes you stop and say no, no further. You can dissolve that word. That becomes a problem for you. It's like a small little tumor. So service, but I agree with the service word. This is not a journey for the soft at heart. I think it should be considered and decision made because it does mean a decision that one's going to try to drop selfishness, lose the self actually in a certain way. To be willing to be transformed. That's right. By our own strategy. Our ideas of what we were, that's good to have an idea of what you are but you have to be willing to change. Otherwise you don't want to go this path. Yes, do turn it off. You just turn it off. But you're welcome to leave it on and you can sort of take what you like and leave the rest. Make it so worshiped because we welcome everybody. You're all absolutely welcome. And we have no doctrine to jam down your throat. There's no dogma. This is an offering of a, it really is sort of a spiritual practice or a spiritual path, this whole spark of humanity thing. You can be Taoist and do this. Sure, of course. You could be a Hindu. You could be an atheist. You could be a nothing at all. Except that you do have a spark of humanity whether you recognize it or not. We see it. So if you want to join us, that's fine. And anything you're offended by, ignore or else hold for a while and see whether you become less offended. Is that fair act? I do. I think it's very, very fair. Right. And that a lot of the time, one of the things that happens as you grow older is you maybe realize that you put something away from you that didn't seem to fit at the time. But you begin to wonder maybe if that didn't have some purpose in your life. This is what happened to me and why I have not stopped rejecting Christianity and I've actually found within, largely from you, Martha, and from our prayer group and reading the Desert Fathers and Mothers stuff is that it's rich ground and to have... I can't believe I almost threw the whole thing away. It was really throwing the baby with the bat war and I'm really glad I didn't do that. But even if you tried... No, it's in there. It's got the boomerang. That's right. Bungie cord. That's right. It's rattling around in there somehow. But it's nice to, you know, be open rather than closing the door just to try to be open. Right. We're going to talk about the couple of places where there are blanks in the prayer, but first I'd like to go back to your... Service. Getting on the service thing and what do I tell the story? One of the prayers that I use now focus on I want to serve the life of the one I'm praying to here, the all-living, ever-loving, the one that's living us all and the asteroids and everything. Everything is being lived by a life that's still lively and I know that my comfort is when I'm as closely aligned to that as possible. When I am living that life, when that life is being allowed to live through me, strengthening my spark and I think of that as serving the life. I had an encounter with my higher power at one point a few years ago. I said, what do I do? How do I pray at this particular point? What do I do right now? And the answer came, pray to serve my life. And that, okay, because I knew that that life that I experience is beyond dimension and it goes beyond, it goes before, time and space has it. Right, always will be there and it will be there. So that life, that integrity of that life is what I want to be as deeply into as possible and to use the English word service and the concept of serving that life is what allows me to get closer in there because sitting on the bleachers and critiquing it doesn't work. I want to be, I need to be in it and that means being part of it, participating, participating, acting. Right, yeah, there we go. Well, I do want to share, I did have an experience with prayer when my brother passed away at age 50 and I had gone out to his service out in Colorado and I'd never been exposed to the Hail Marys. This was a high mass and it was really a whole different world but you mentioned something about repetition and I actually, at first when they were repeating the Hail Mary Mother of God it was almost like this is crazy. I don't understand how many times are they going to do that? I mean I had no clue about the rosary and how many times and it just kept going on and on and on and then, but then I saw the peace and I felt the love in the little, it was a tiny little chapel and it was very, I got goosebumps now because it was transformative for me to see how it really gave them the strength and the ability to keep it together. It hooked into a reality that you had no idea of before that. It hooked into a reality that, yeah. And it was a very beautiful, powerful thing and I was working. Look at your camera. I was working and I did, I played with it some at work and I had my, I didn't carry a rosary or anything but I did try to repeat it and memorize it and I can't remember exactly why I quit but it was a beautiful thing to actually be privy and witness this event so I wanted to share that because when you mentioned repetition I can, yeah. I know that you would ask Martha about how she spells God in different ways. At the beginning the all-living, ever-loving you can say whatever you want but I, in my personal I think of it as God-G-O-D-D-E which I've learned since I started spelling it that way is between God traditional, Judeo-Christian sort of God sort of mindset and goddess which is much more fluid and someone suggested this to me a long time ago and I did it just because it's a visual reminder to me that the God, that which I pray to, nevermind let's not call it the God, but it is, is, cannot be contained within a box or understanding and that it's got a life of its own and if I'm participating in that life comfortably if I, if I choose to be of service to that life and not so comfortably, if not but I think we're all participating in that life but anyway, so I spell it that way just because it keeps my mind open from freezing into the you know Sunday school stuff and then at the, at the end of the prayer that it may renew us all for your service and embody your desire embody your desire and renew us all for your service and when I pray it myself I have to confess I say, for the love of your only son our savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Now, in my mind Jesus love him not the only son of this you know we're all children of the divine mystery we all are participants we're all, we're all pseudopods of the cosmic amoeba however we want to consider it we're all aspects of the divine mystery we're all incarnations we're all incarnations, right but nonetheless that's what comes off my tongues and our savior because truly as I'm beginning to experience I've been praying this for a while and allowing myself to pray it realizing that that that the life that Jesus lived his incarnation of the Christ principle as you were as Axie can tell you Christ is not Jesus's last name not that that the integrity with which that life was lived has shifted the metaphysics I think probably throughout all creation not just the planet Earth but it did something to the metaphysics I certainly did something to those who were around it witnessed and participated actively in that life and they began to see the world very differently so there's the being the human being Jesus and then this concept that is developed from that of the Christ consciousness however it's a big thing the biggest thing probably yeah so it's very big and I have resisted that these names and concepts for me are like almost like tripwires and I've had to step over them and say I'm not going to have a reaction to this I'm just going to try to stay open to it and you know I've found that by connecting other traditions I mentioned Daoist or the Hebrew tradition where this name for the being is never of whatever it is is never even said it's too holy to say so you don't put a name on it which is a limiting factor I have all these nicknames like forgotten one where they spell G blank D rather than so it kind of skirts around something and leaves it nameless and but I will say I have a disability in this regard because it's a prejudice it's a prejudice and I'm still trying to be open to it this does not mean that I I don't think I could be even called a Christian in a certain way but I'm studying it and I'm open to learning about it Christianity was just a really far-fetched branch of Judaism in its beginnings it wasn't Christian it was a sect it was a Jewish sect French so and in many ways the part that I feel most connected to is that stuff back there where it was sort of neither one or the other and what was it and what are we talking about I love that stuff there's a distinction that I've bumped into in the writings of William Stringfellow who was a wonderful theologian of the last century and he would not talk about Christianity because he didn't want to have his ideas he didn't want to be boxed he didn't want to have to be he refused to be put in a position of defending the Christian church I mean who wants to do that I don't have energy I think about my spark of humanity he talked about he had a biblical faith and I love that because what he's saying is that he doesn't use the word God spell it however you want but he's saying that there's a divine power that acts in human history and that lives that is living and active in human history and that that's what he means by a biblical faith and that's what he has he doesn't talk about himself being a Christian but he's someone who has the biblical faith and I find that's something I can hold on to I can take that one home I like that one so it's but yeah it is all part of the divine right right and we're all we're all free thank you dear God to play around with it and to find our journey and to find our path and seeking and if it doesn't work now it might work tomorrow to be open as you were saying Axie yeah two minutes more you got more questions comments anything you want to say yeah I just I was sitting here I'd forgotten about the Centering Prayer group that I joined not long ago in Randolph and I loved going to the group and there was a small number of us that would meet once a week and we would somebody would pick a little verse out of the Bible and we never even actually read the Bible or thought about it I have a beautiful leather bound version of the Mary edition which I wasn't even aware of Jesus's parents names and I've I'm realizing that I'm just beginning on this journey but it was a wonderful Centering Prayer where we read and we would read the same verse a few times and then we would sit in the quiet and meditate and there was such a power and doing it in a group rather than I find and they were always saying well you can do this at home and I'd be like oh yeah I will next week would come along and they'd be like did you practice and I'm like no I thought about it but that's one of my big problems is I love praying with other people and I it's not a problem it's like it's a resource you need to make it happen it's not a problem that's a good point you could get your own start group to have your spark fed I like that so you could start your own groups group too no that's a great idea because it was it was just it was a it was a lovely experience being with these people and did you say did you say Ann that you thought about it when you went home you went back to them and they said did you do it and you said no but I thought about it and sometimes I will sit down and with the intent of praying you did do it but I I guess I felt like in order to complete it I should at least sit still and pray for at least 15 minutes that's true that's all of these and you were doing prayers you were journaling prayers for a while so that's another way that's true of connecting every morning and sometimes at night but mostly in the morning I would write a letter to what I consider like my higher power because I know that my journey in life is guided and I feel I'm blessed because of things that have happened to me so I will write I love writing anyway but I will write a letter and usually it turns out to be full of gratitude and just thank you for all that I am blessed to experience today and especially looking around the world and knowing how much is happening this is what I'm talking about the householder aspect of it one tends to feel that it's illegitimate to take something and make it your own in your own way your thoughts in your own home at home if that came into your consciousness that's contemplating the event that happened that's it now whatever you do with that you had it, you thought of it and you put it down and maybe some other reason you put it down was you thought well it's not really legitimate unless I do there are these rules that I have to somehow I have to say prayers or I have to do it a certain way not necessarily so it's a great huge open field that you know that we're in here when we're talking about this kind of work and we limit ourselves and I like to say there's no wrong way although you were talking about the negative stuff even that is because when I have that negative prayer it's not bad this is not something to be frightened of it's when I'm having the negative prayer it's an opportunity because I'm learning something about myself I don't get the negative prayer because of them out there I have that because it's resonating inside of me something that is connected to the behavior that I'm seeing so it's something that I have going on and I can learn from that so it's not negative it's a distortion within yourself which because you're doing the meditation stuff you stop being defended against the recognition that there's a distortion that probably came about thank you we're just out of time it's been wonderful thank you Martha