Prayer
Prayer and how to pray; For someone having no appetite for religion. How to belong to the Great Secret.
(YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS THE INVITATION AT THE END OF THIS POST.)
I begin,
with the reflection on the word ‘sacred’.
What is sacred, and how do we touch what we mean when we say the word, if we are confused about its meaning?
Wittgenstein said “we cannot visit worlds for which we do not have the language.”
My years of mystical pilgrimage have led me to the clear understanding that Sacred does not need to have anything to do with shared ideas about god, or religion, or spiritual whimsy. It is simply the answered wish to find something deep, foundational and beautiful about this world, and the very private sense of gratitude and belonging we get from that discovery.
Sacred, does not need to have anything to do with shared ideas about god, or religion, or spiritual whimsy. It is simply the answered wish to find something deep, foundational and beautiful about this world, and the very private sense of gratitude and belonging we get from that discovery.
I had been meditating for years, searching for years, growing, healing, seeking earnestly and I realised only after encountering heartbreaking limits and a door which lay yet closed to me, in the world and in my own body, that there was something missing: A Conversation, who’s Invitation had been announcing itself even when I first began, even through the suffering and the pain.
Especially through the pain.
This led me to the grace and forgiveness to reconsider prayer. This invited the obvious questions: what would I say, what might I ask for and who or what would I be entreating?
I wrote the following poem about my exploration of that deepest question.
KOSMOS
i am the shelter ,
i am the beginning of the need,
i have no need,
i am the word,
i am the silence that came before,
i am the holy breath upon the waters
i am the infinity that holds the waters and the heaven
i am the witness, to the terrible cry.
i am the love of the mother,
i am what is understanding, i am what is wise.
i am one, i am many within the one.
i am all, above and below.
i am the mover, i am stillness.
i am the very great, i am the very fine.
i am the union of choice and surrender,
i am life, the orderer of all tides and seasons.
i am that i am, the first cause.
i am the axis, and the turning.
i am gravity, i am the space in emptiness.
i am the keeper of all limits.
i am the twist in the snake.
i am the caster of the die.
i am the destination, the arrival and the road.
i am the many pilgrims and the hard stones along the way, and the bird of triumph that sets the soul to flight when the trials are done.
i am the mirror and the light.
i am the filler of the cup.
i am the rod, and the staff.
i am the eye of judgement within all clemency,
and i am the heart of clemency in all judgement.
i am the humility of majesty and the majesty of humility.
i am the sower and the harvester. i am the beginning and the end.
i am here. i am waiting. i am infinite patience.
i am awareness, i am essence.
i am the candle in the darkness and the fire in the hearth.
i am all ways home.
i am.
© Rocco Jarman, March 2022
The poem KOSMOS is available in my latest book KEEPER of The FLAME
For those of you not sure how to pray or how to connect with the Great Secret, especially if Religion is too small to stand in that sacred place, this is the prayer I have been using in my home and in my practice.
PRAYER OF REMINDING, FOR WHEN WE FORGET
i pray to the boundless
for prosperity
i pray to the timeless for time
i pray to the unknowable, to Know,
and to be known.
i pray to the invisible to, See,
and to be seen.
i pray to Love, to open the door in me
to the Giving and Receiving
of love,
i pray to Wisdom to show me a way forward
and Above All
i pray to Understanding
to caution me,
when the way is too easy,
and strengthen me
when the way is hard.
i pray for peace,
when the war is inside me.
i pray to stillness and space,
when the noise without
becomes an echo of the noise within.
i pray to greatness
when i am left feeling small by my trials.
i pray to humility when I am left feeling great by my triumphs.
i pray for storms when my fields are barren
i pray for endings,
when my season has endured
far beyond its help and welcome.
i pray.
and you are all of these.
boundless, timeless, unknowable light.
Love and Wisdom and Understanding.
healing, greatness and humility,
the prize
and equally,
the challenge of the Way.
when I forget who I am,
I follow the Way.
when I remember again,
the Way and I, are the same.
© Rocco Jarman, February 2023
ON WORSHIP
This is the piece that came to me contemplating prayer’s cousin, worship, especially given how none of my questions regarding ‘sacred’ and ‘prayer’ were answered by religion. And of my longing to belong to The Great Secret.
The words came through me serendipitously kneeling at the shoreline of the wetland of Lake Monger, casually participating in that sacred greeting the world initiated every morning at dawn: Sunrise.
THE BEAUTY OF IT ALL
is worship
the stopping to behold
the wonder of dawn;
a majesty
that wouldn’t seem
unfittingly paired
with a heavenly symphony of violins,
or the quiet getting on with it
of the small waterfowl
as they pick their way
through the tangle of reeds
by the new light of morning,
to the piping of moorhens,
and the clumsy crowing of the cockatoos
untroubled by lost moments?
is the sunrise more brilliant
in the open sky,
with its smudged clouds
kindled to a pink and golden flame,
or the mesmerizing reflection
on the gently rippled surface
of the water?
In the deep chalice of the heart,
the sound chamber of the soul,
they land both,
together,
and my heart wants to break
for the beauty of it all.
© Rocco Jarman, July 2021
PARTING CUP
The last thought I will leave you with, is the understanding that my encounters with The Great Secret yielded to me about Prayer and Meditation.
PRAYER AND MEDITATION prayer and meditation, two ways which start in the same valley floor taking different paths; one letting words fly up like doves released from the ark of a pleading heart, the other riding the wings of the breath by seemingly impassable ways up to lofty heights where they meet together above the tree line and mingle out of reach of the small cares and trivial dramas, locked as they are, below the cloying smog of thought and the brambles of emotion that had seemed so close as to bar the way, and in the clear sky, welcome our lightened hearts into the great secret of belonging. © Rocco Jarman, October 2022
INVITATION TO SACRED SERVICES
You are strongly encouraged to share this post. There must be many of us that could really benefit from this.
If you are interested in my sacred services (weekly zoom call), where we reflect on life, cadence, adversity, communication, obstacles and the deep brooding questions that hang like ancient swords over our hearts, apply via the link below:
The sessions take the place of what sermons or homilies would. We are all made tired by what our lives and our commitments ask of us. We all carry wounds and cares, we all struggle to love the world the way we wish to love, we are, many of us waking from a dream of shallowness and distraction, and story, and realizing we are hungry for Meaning.
We are all made tired by what our lives and our commitments ask of us.
We all carry wounds and cares, we all struggle to love the world the way we wish to love, we are, many of us waking from a dream of shallowness and distraction, and story,
and realizing we are hungry for Meaning.
Join me and a growing community of souls for weekly services where we are welcome to bring our whole selves, and find a door in yourself where you might find yourself one half a shade braver, a half shade lighter, stiller, kinder and more open to the beauty of life and the privilege of conscious life.