My Daily Prayer
I don’t always meditate in the way you are probably thinking: eyes closed, seated in stillness, oblivious to the outside world because I am the perfect picture of a ZEN moment. Sure, sometimes I am seated and still, but sometimes I’m at work at my desk pretending to read emails, on the deck swinging a kettlebell, or out for a walk looking at seagulls and cormorants bobbing in the bay. It’s my opinion that the only wrong way to do it is to think that you are doing it wrongly. Just make it happen, Captain, and forgive yourself if it feels off for some reason.
The goal isn’t to beat yourself up about having a noisy brain one day, or that you don’t want to close your eyes because you’ll be motion sick in the car, or that the cat is demanding attention while you’re trying to communicate with the spirit world; the goal is to be present in the moment, to be nowhere but where you are, be that petting (or feeding) the cat, looking at the ocean or bay, riding a winding highway in the car, or acknowledging your sudden thought about an upcoming anxiety or cringe-inducing memory that never seems to go away despite the passage of time.
I assure you that I have plenty of the latter.
All the wise meditation teachers say the same thing: just come back to the breath, to the room or place you are in, and be there as much as you can in mind as well as body. And if you really want to go all “Bam!” on it with the spiritual flavor, just add one ingredient: say, “Thank you.”
Though historically non-pious, since the onset of the pandemic, my meditation practice has rather curiously evolved into a daily prayer practice. Maybe in the wake of so much death, it’s made life all the more precious to me? (Or I’m just growing soft in my middle-agedness?)
It’s never the same prayer twice, but it always starts and ends the same way: “Blesser of All Blessings, Creator of All Creation, thank you for this day…” Then I usually go over a list of the things I am grateful for in life, such as friendship, love, my job, the beauty of the world, joy, my needy cat, my health, the ability to endure hardship and sickness, the San Francisco Giants, the person who invented the motorcycle, roller coasters, the first three Indiana Jones movies, what-have-you.
When I feel the worst, when my patience is tested, when I feel tears well up, when depression creeps or my anxieties surge, that’s when the prayer gets the longest. Because that’s when I believe it’s time to dig deep into all the many miracles and blessings that life gives us, which include every new day I wake up.
Blesser of All Blessings, Creator of All Creation, thank you for this day, because it is a miracle. The odds that any of us would be able to exist and think our silly thoughts on this pale, blue dot hurling through space around a giant ball of fire are beyond comprehension, beyond any damn good reason, and yet here we are, given more time every morning to see all the other miraculous things the world has to offer.
What a precious gift. What unimaginable luck, our creation and existence! And what a blessing.
Today, as in all days, I give thanks.
