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Kernan Manion, MD's avatar

Enjoyed both the spiritual and pragmatic spine reflections. Ironically, both having to do with the "core" of our embodied self.

I loved Kate Bowler's poem and it got me to thinking about how our prayers of supplication, imploring God's intervention, reveal our powerlessness and ask a third party's intervention, here the ultimate third party. There is no doubt about their deep reverence. They are themselves a form of worship of omnipotence and a re-recognition of our puniness. But I wonder also if they serve to let us off the hook. As if to say "God, that's awful what's happening over there to them people, just awful. Don't just sit there like some arrogant Zeus, do something!" And I've wondered for some time now if such prayers are a scape goat (recalling here pious offerings).

Imagine if we prayed "Here I am witnessing unfairness and brutality by and against my fellow man. It enrages and sickens me, and yet they are so powerful and I feel so weak. I ask, no, I invite, your divine presence within me to empower me to be present, to bear witness, to be directed to some action I can and should take, so that I with others so guided can make a difference in people's lives."

In a way, that prayer is to myself, a spiritual invitation to my higher self which is in dialog with the internal eternal, that I have the courage to open myself to divine guidance, to trust it and act on it.

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