Faith Kaufhold Ray: September 2023

The Buffet

When Trapper got sick this week it sprung a coil in me. I reached out to everyone I knew for prayers

And they all prayed - even Marcus.

Its a strange thing, prayer.....I don't know precisely how it works.

So much of what I believe have changed; I think I am done with church for this life.....

My days of sitting in a pew are over.

And yet I pray.

Every time I walk, I look to the heavens, or to the clouds, or the canopy of trees with light shining through. I look to the heavens and the blooming of the dawn and a calmness overcomes me.

I feel a thunderbolt of "Otherness" arrive. I feel a great, expansive Source. I let it fill me and reset me, and point me in the right direction for another day. I breath it in and I am renewed, grateful, filled.

Surely this too is prayer

And the reliance on this power may be a sort of organic faith.

Yet, sometimes my old ways awaken in me again.

When Trapper got sick, I pulled out all the stops and brought in the big guns....I went back to deliberate, old fashioned Biblical prayer. I asked Source directly to intervene on his tiny behalf. Instead of relying just on the buffet of delicious nature to help me, I began to order directly from the menu:

" God....Source...Ian, Momma, Glen....all of you who keep an eye on me and mine, please help Trapper." I talked directly to the cells in his little body, to his immune system, to the very neurons and white blood cells fighting for his health. I prayed for the hands of the doctors and the people helping him, especially his Momma...."Don't let them miss anything!"

I called forth all the mighty forces and it felt good.

It is like being bilingual;

Like people I have heard of who speak mainly English, but dream in their native tongue.

Except for me it is the reverse.

Mostly now my native language, the natural world, prevails. I feel a member of a vast community of souls,

And we are all Source belying the notion of a Father God, above and away from us.

Pieces of us are here on Earth walking around in meat suits while other pieces vibrate at a different frequency around, yet are still so near....around, between and beyond. We are many and we are One, woven of the same fabric and there for one another.

A family, a whole bucket of energy all together, moving in a dynamic sway and expanding through the fuel of love.

It may sound like a wacky way to describe this circus of a thing we call life, but it works for me and it gives me great peace.

Yet still......

Yet anyway...... in this urgent moment I reverted back to my old religion; my old way of asking for help and turned it into a direct plea, once again like a child to her father, rather than to my Source of souls.

And by goodness, that is ok, too.

Here's a funny thing.

In my loving and worrying about Trapper, I wanted my old memorized prayers that I relied on for most of my life. Not just the Lord's prayer or the 23rd Psalm, but two specific long prayers that I used to repeat over and over when I was desperate with worry for Ian. I needed those words again, but I could not remember the words.

It was frightening. I felt frozen and lost, like losing an important phone number.

I asked for them back.

Suddenly, the two prayers popped into my mind like an old song. I knew them instantly and entirely, without a word missing. The entire verses found my tongue and poured forth again and it was lovely and delicious.

Then is when I knew.

Then is when it became clear.

All these ways of knowing, of thinking and of grasping at the unknowable God, elusive and quiet and often so still....they are all true and ok.

Source is God.

Source is the Jewish God.

Source is Allah and the Great Spirit, and Abba and Jahweh.

Source is undefinable and will never be completely known or perfectly defined by any religion or sect.

Source is a particle and a wave, as a physicist might muse.

That is the point.

To be elusive is to be sought;

And Source desires that we seek.

As long as a small creature, such as myself, is willing to wonder and read and ask and search for Source, she will find Them.

It's ok, no matter how or where I go to get my fill, to dreink the magic in-for me it is lately the dawn sky-but it might be a pew or a Bible.

As long as I do it with love, I will be heard.

Sometimes I will raise my arms to the sky and pull from the buffet, and dance in a community of souls. Sometimes, I will plug my cord directly into the socket and I will be charged and solace will be found that way. It's all good.

Seek and ye shall find,

Ask and it will be given.

As the God of my parents would say.