It begins with a prayer
On prayer, ritual, and the creative practice.
Lee en Español aquí.
I first learned about prayer with my hands together in the shape of a pyramid. My nasal bridge is perfectly nestled between my thumbs and metacarpals. Kneeled by the side of the bed like a good Latina daughter, I prayed and said thanks every night before bedtime.
“Gracias Diosito por las galletas y mi tía Cristina”, “Thank you for a good test result, and please, please, make the Backstreet Boys come to Maracaibo soon”.
I would pray for a good night’s sleep, and a good day tomorrow. Ask for my health and that of my family, thankful while at the same time, hopeful Diosito y la Virgen kept protecting them.
I can’t remember when was the last time I visited a Church and took the time to pray. Catholicism and I amicably parted ways a long time ago, but I still remember praying, somehow, for the rest of the time I’ve known that I could.
Even as my musical tastes evolved, and Nietsche told me I should kill God, I would still find myself praying in one or another way.
As I destroyed the relationship with God I had been taught my whole life, I realized prayer was simply beyond that.
It was a ritual, a meditation. A conversation between a deep, vulnerable self and who/whatever else is out there to hold, protect, and accompany my path through this Earth.
When we pray, we place an intention out there.
A Padre Nuestro or a Holy Mary is not that much different from a Buddhist mantra, or the reciting of the Quran in its intentions - uttering them one enters into a state of deep meditation with oneself, opening a line of communication between the person praying, and whoever they are trying to reach to.
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” - Simone Weil.
I may breathe in deeply and make up my phrases and prayers as I go, but the intention is clear: I aim to communicate with something greater than my mortal self.
One of the various elements I admire about Julia Cameron’s writing is the importance of prayer throughout it. One of the first exercises one finds in The Artist’s Way is to write your own “Artist Prayer”.
Raised Catholic, her idea of prayer always seemed very formal. Once battling alcoholism, she found herself continuously coming back to a line from a Dylan Thomas poem:
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”
A creative energy source.
Spiritually speaking, it became the highest power she could imagine. Something big enough to be incorporated as prayer.
Julia’s Artist’s Prayer is her recitation towards these highest powers. A written conjure to evoke who (or what) ever is needed to let the artist within oneself work.
In a whole different context, that of the native communities living deep in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, north of Colombia, the Arawaks play their accordeons, singing and dancing in an open field.
It is a party, a celebration, but also a prayer.
Native cultures around the world are built over the pillars of gratitude, saying thanks and giving back before asking for just enough.
The Arawaks sing and dance as a way to engrace the elements surrounding them, at the same time praying for good harvests and better times ahead.
This is all to say that today, after a much-needed pause (and reinvention) in this publication, I decided to begin once again.
This time with a prayer instead…
I pray for this digital space and the words to bring it to life.
For the will to come back to it, to spread the word, to put out here a barely cooked piece of myself.
I pray for all there is about and around the practice of writing.
How it helps me process life in this delusion of time.
For the moments I give myself to draft, edit, rewrite, and source whatever it is I am compelled to put out there.
I pray for the strength to hit “Publish” and the confidence to show it.
Consider for a moment your work as analogous to intimate prayer in which you address God, and thereby divineness, in all matter. - Melissa Pritchard.
The bridge of my nose rests perfectly on the side of my hands as I thank, while at the same time begging for whatever extra push there can be out there.
To sit in front of a blank page and share stories beyond myself.
I pray to hold, honor, and acknowledge everything that goes beyond each text written, placed in the world for someone else to read, and, hopefully, find a bit of themselves in it.
Writing, I realize as I work on this prayer, is on its own an invocation.
I am opening space for a conversation between my innermost self, and the unfathomable greatness out there. A bridge to hold and communicate. Find a connection between I as the individual self, and who/whatever else is out there.
some readings
On Ceremony, wonder, and saltwater situations - A conversation with Alexis Pauline Gumbs published at one of my favorite substacks lately, Our Medicine.
Art as a form of active prayer, and what writers really labor for - A short essay based on the writings of Melissa Pritchard, published in my favorite newsletter ever, The Marginalian.
some questions
What does prayer and intention look like to you?
How do rituals guide us into being?