I want to extend my sincerest thanks to all who prayed for me on Friday when I had my surgery. Your prayers for my continued healing and for positive results are greatly appreciated.
I want also to reflect on part of that experience. Leading up to the surgery I had hoped to make lots of time for prayer to prepare myself for the surgery (prayers for tests, assistance and detachment) and prayers for healing after the surgery. The day before and the day of the surgery I found myself with little of this precious time. I was able to steal a couple of brief moments to myself here and there, to say some comforting bits of prayers to myself when I was lying down on the hospital bed (a good reason to try to memorize prayers) ... but not as much as I would have liked. I had wonderful, loving people around me, but sometimes that can be a distraction from prayer.
I discovered two things related to prayer as part of this experience:
1) that I now really crave prayer, feel how important it has become to me and feel its lack when I do not find the time to center in prayer. Friday night, when I had this realization, my heart was overwhelmed with gratitude.
2) I gathered great strength and comfort in knowing that others were praying for me. Tears came to my eyes in the evening when, around midnight on Friday, in my first moment of peace to myself, I read a healing prayer my beloved had emailed me. Somehow knowing that someone else had held that energy of prayer for me felt like I had been taken care of, even when I had personally not found all the time I would have liked to take care of myself in this way.
So let us pray for one another in our utmost sincerity!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
a deep thought, casia. if there is even a chance that our prayers really do find their way to each other, it is a heartening thought to know that being there for one another may just help...
A circle of love; that's what prayer creates :). Glad to know you could feel its energy.
8&20, I've noticed you talk about Thich Nhat Hanh on your blog. Have you ever read his book The Energy of Prayer? It really got me thinking about the power of prayer, of collective prayer, of praying for others... I highly recommend it. It's a small book, so very manageable to read.
Also, I think it's possible that our prayers can reach one another even though the person being prayed for might not always perceive it. I wonder to what extent we need to be consciously open to receiving others' prayers in order to perceive that they reach us.
That's why I really appreciate what AA said about a circle of love being created by prayer. This is something I'm going to strive to visualize in the future in such situations so that I can open myself more to receiving/perceiving others' prayers.
Post a Comment