Why I Pray What I Pray Everyday - Day Eleven - The Conclusion
June 11, 2010Why I Pray What I Pray Everyday – Day Eleven
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad - Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
On Day Eleven, I am focusing on bonus items I list together in my daily prayer time with the Nine Minute Prayer Project. They are wholeness and harmony and together, both represent the conclusion to Why I Pray What I Pray Everyday.
There exists the notion among humans that the context of wholeness and harmony exists. I am in agreement to the extent that both imply temporal perception over against permanent conditions.
We, humans, have some kind of built in need to think in absolutist and perfectionist terms about conditions that for better or worse are temporal. They are temporary. They do not last.
Perfect health today and feeling as good as one can feel in this moment brings no guarantee of the same perception five minutes from now. Yesterday’s sensual and sexual bliss does not mean the same will be experienced today.
The steak we had at our favorite steak house a week ago may not taste the same today. Life is like that. We experience good things and have the idea that the possibility exists that we can be in the same feeling perceptual zone all the time.
Heaven is sold to us as a perceptual experience of perfection. That is the report of no one that has been and returned. We tend to think of death as final. Even that remains to be critically observed of all of us that are yet alive.
So what do I mean and why do I pray for wholeness and harmony? In both contexts, I do not pursue perfection because by and large perfection is an idea premised upon illusion. My and our emotional framework changes from day to day and sometimes by the hour and by the moment.
Wholeness and harmony represent for me the highest level of human condition for individuals and groups. When we experience wholeness and harmony, we are functioning well together with a minimum of conflict.
Harmony is what the body does when it is in health. The lungs breathe. The heart beats. The ears hear. The skeletal system and muscles literally hold us together as we go about out life.
Together in harmony, they work together for our experience of being consciously alive and physically active. I pray for wholeness and harmony for myself and all of us that we can be functional at our highest level with a minimum of conflict.
In Mark Chapter 10 vs 52 Jesus says to a one healed of being blind, “Your faith has made you whole.” In Luke 8 vs 48, he says the same thing to a woman now healed of uterine and vaginal bleeding, “Your faith has made you whole.” In Luke 17 vs 18, he says the same thing to a leper now healed, “Your faith has made you whole.”
It is never necessary to pray for what one has. One gives thanks in that context but for what we desire to acquire to be more whole or something we need to be free from to be more whole, we pray.
The word harmony is not used in the Torah, The Hebrew Bible Old Testament or The Gospels. The word unity is. The Psalms speak of how good it is for people to dwell together in unity or harmony. That is our goal and the goal of our prayers that we might seek to be whole and live in functional unity living out the Great Commandment; loving The Creator, loving ourselves, loving others, loving the Earth and loving all of life.
I pray everyday that each and all of us will experience this in abundance; wholeness and harmony. It is our shared privilege. Thanks for sharing this eleven days of Why I Pray What I Pray Everyday.
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad - Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
Love and Blessing to YOU each and all from your friend and brother!
Oscar Crawford
Posted by The Nine Minute Prayer Project
