Prayer II

My last post was on prayer but I do not think that I have exhausted the topic by any means.

This morning I woke to the sound of thunder. The sky was ominously dark and the wind was beginning to pick up. In short, we had a classic Western New York thunderstorm rolling in and, sure enough, as I dressed, the rain began to come down.

I have to walk a third of a mile, in the open, and then stand out waiting for my bus each morning. I am exposed to the elements for 15 minutes or more as I wait so I have rain gear for days like today. No matter how well prepared you are though, you are going to get a little wet.

I have been working on being grateful of late so, as I stood making my lunch this morning, I focused on what the Lakota would call the wakinyan, the Thunder Beings, and thanked them for bringing rain to the land and norishing our Mother, the Earth. I asked, quietly, that the rain might be soft and nourishing so that the Earth could derive the maximum benefit from it and so that I might avoid getting soaked as I made my way to work.

Long story short, the rain had subsided by the time that I left the house and continued in abeyance even after I got downtown. It seems to be raining gently outside now - a nourishing rain that will benefit the earth. Could be a coincidence, I suppose. Then again, I think that, were I a Thunder Being, I would be more likely to listen to someone who spoke respectfully to me rather than all the folks who look to the sky and curse the rain as an inconvenience.

The Lakota end their prayers with the phrase "mitakuye oyasin" - all my relations - as a way of acknowledging that all beings are their relatives and that they pray for the sake of all their relatives and not just for themselves. I like this idea; prayer is simply talking to your relatives or to the One Power from whence those relatives come.

As I said in my last post, offering prayers is not for everyone but it is something for every person on a spiritual path to investigate. My experience is that prayer makes me more deeply aware of the One and of the infinite diversity of "all my relations".