Help Thanks Wow: The Three Prayers Everyone Says
There's freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won't be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you've reached the place of great unknowing.
^^ Anne LamottThis book had the absolute best, brilliant chapter on prayer that I have ever read --- maybe the best prayer #hottake ever! I think I will always and forever love anything that Anne Lamott writes.
HELP THANKS WOW by Anne Lamott
The following are excerpts taken from Anne Lamott's Help Thanks Wow. Bold and italics are mine. Everything else is Anne's.
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My friend Robin calls God "the Grandmothers." The Deteriorata, a parody of the Desiderata, counsels us, "Therefore, make peace with your god, / Whatever you conceive him to be--- / Hairy thunderer, or cosmic muffin."--
Let's just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us.
--Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we're invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.--Prayer can be motion and stillness and energy---all at the same time. It begins with stopping in our tracks, or with our backs against the wall, or when we are going under the waves, or when we are just so sick and tired of being physically sick and tired that we surrender, or at least we finally stop running away and at long last walk or lurch or crawl toward something. Or maybe, miraculously, we just release our grip slightly.--The great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote,"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. / I awoke and saw that life was service. / I acted and behold, service was joy."--If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.--The Serenity Prayer is one of the most famous instituiotinalized prayers of the world, a Greatest Hits prayer. The best-known version says: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."--A certain priest friend of mine who spends too much time in the Old Testament says that all prayers should include the hope that the children of one's enemies end up living in the streets.--These prayers acknowledge that I am clueless; but something else isn't. While I am not going to go limp, I am asking for the willingness to step into truth. It's like the old riddle:What's the difference between you and God? God never thinks he's you.--We learn through pain that some of the things we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately want out, but even though we built them, we can't find the door.--It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because you think it means you have lost. But in surrender you have won. And if it were me, after a moment, I would say, Thanks.--I asked, "What are you most grateful for these days?"--Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, much is given. We just have to be open for business.--C.S. Lewis wrote:
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking an dsleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.
--You can buy the book here. :)