Thoughts from my Notebook: Prayer and God

September 2024

Today’s newsletter stems primarily from entries in my notebook throughout the month of September.

Prayer

September 8th:

“How do I engage my soul in prayer? I must sit and push against the wall. When it feels like it’s just me and the room (because that’s how it always feels), I must sit and pursue to pierce the wall. I must put forward effort. And after much pushing and striving, and after nothing happens, I must get up and go about my day, maintaining a prayer in my heart. And the next time I kneel, the next time I pray, I will see the unmoved wall, and against it, I will push.”

///

From

Megan Armknecht

’s article Kaleidoscopes of Memory:

“We stood in a holy place, a place where our prayers mingled with the prayers and supplications of countless others throughout the ages, from wandering kings to determined tourists. This place was not only holy because of the past, but because we, ourselves, living and breathing, with bonds of friendship and love stood in that place with our own hopes, fears, and dreams. We stood in a place of timeless moments, within walls which had witnessed both transcendence and banality.”

God, Mediated

September 14th:

“I realized I haven’t thought much about God today. And when I did, I think it was mainly a function of duty. What a tricky thing (drawing nearer to God) when the things that lead us to Him so subtly replace Him.”

September 15th:

“How is it possible to know God if every bit of the relationship is mediated?

“Come to know God through the word ≈ knowing the word, not God.

“Would I know a different God if I were born 100 years ago? ≈ I do not know God but my generation’s conception of God.

“How to know a God that is infinitely away/elsewhere? Or is God everywhere and in everything? Is He in the rain? The sound of water steaming out between the burner and pot? The phone playing music: something written and recorded miles away? Is God in the solitude of my apartment? The crowd of strangers crammed together? Can you know the Creator from His creations? Is He His creations? Or is He separate? And even if He stood before me, what would the filter of self obscure? Or is His presence so pure that it can only be fully, immediately known?”

The circumstance of mediation reminds me of one of my favorite poems, “Altruism” by Molly Peacock. Here’s the first half:

What if we got outside ourselves and there   

really was an outside out there, not just   

our insides turned inside out? What if there   

really were a you beyond me, not just   

the waves off my own fire, like those waves off   

the backyard grill you can see the next yard through,   

though not well -- just enough to know that off   

to the right belongs to someone else, not you.  

Photography

Morning Moon; Ice Cream; Kids Chasing Balloons; Football; Jazz

Three More Excerpts from my Notebook

i.

September 14th (edited):

Anything you can think of is happening now somewhere on this planet of ours. An airplane, like a needle pulling contrails through the sky, sends its passengers elsewhere: some arriving, some returning.

Around the corner someone’s crying or swearing or kissing or sleeping.

Everything that could ever happen is happening now.

Every emotion, radiating right now, singing off this rock, spinning as a record, in the dark vinyl of space.

Space the vinyl, earth the needle: eternal is the song.

ii.

September 17th:

All eyes seem to be on us. The precipice generation. Do we tip the world over the edge into a chaos that cannot be retrieved/restructured into peace?

iii.

September 27th (edited):

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could open up the parts of our heart like an advent calendar and see with clarity the things that make us who we are. Like that one high shelf behind the cupboard door where grandma’s wedding china is stored. Dad’s old baseball glove. The old box of knick knacks that switch your mind back into your childhood. I wonder if, in some way, we could set up little stands and put out the items that have made us. It’d look like a flea market, and we’d be tempted to call it a me market, but really it would be a we market. And no one would sell things because we’d just give things. We’d give each other our stories and our listening and our hugs and smiles and tears and laughs. And I bet we’d see similar items on each other’s shelves, and say look at all we have in common. I think we’d realize how alike our patchwork is to someone else’s. The sun might set and the moon would rise but we’d set out lights to look and talk all night.

Goodies

What You Get Is the World - L. M. Sacasas ☞ This is my main reading suggestion for you.

“In both cases, the reward of attention is the disclosure of a multifaceted reality: the things themselves, the places they shape, the times they mark. By our attention we gain the world and the world becomes a home.”

What You Get Is the World

T.S. Eliot’s East Coker (No. 2 of “Four Quartets”) ☞ Just a portion of it:

In order to arrive at what you do not know
    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
    You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
    You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

About Abandoning Books ☞ a quote from

Andrew Campbell

:

“One sign of a wise reader is a mastery of the art of abandoning books. Give up on a book too early and you miss out on hard-won treasure. Slog through the wrong book at the wrong time and you’ll rue the day. The best readers know exactly when to say ‘maybe later.’”

English Teacher Weekly for Sept. 5th

wave to earth ☞ A new band, discovery a gift from an almighty algorithm, and one that I can’t get too much of.

The Wind by Ann Annie ☞ Definitely the album I listened to the most in September. The intro is perfect.

Cheers!

p.s. This video had me laughing.

p.p.s. I’m writing this on my porch, and the blue of the sky with the pinkorange of the mountain right now cannot be beat.