Wednesday, July 08, 2009

A Request for Prayers


Solstice is the white kitty.

Solstice, our kitty, is back in the hospital. She has both chronic renal (kidney) insufficiency and congestive heart failure diagnoses--which have opposite treatment so it's been a balancing act. She wasn't doing really well last night so she's back at the vet.

Please say a prayer for her...THANK YOU!!!

Healing and transforming God, your love knows no boundaries, and in your sight every life is precious; look with compassion on [name of animal], and make us your agents of healing in a broken world. Amen.

From Beliefnet Multi-faith Prayers for Animals

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

"Imprecatory" Prayer

Ever since Pastor Wiley Drake declared not once, but three times, on national radio that he was praying for the death of President Barack Obama, he has been trying to clarify.

Yes, he really does want God to smite Obama. No, it's not a partisan prayer. Yes, it's in the Bible, he says, and no, he wasn't kidding. He's deadly serious.

See whole news article here.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, said Shakespeare—and a curse by any other name is a curse. I honestly had never heard of “imprecatory prayer” until some Twitter friends brought Pastor Drake’s practice to my attention.

I am not speaking of the normal, less-than-angelic thoughts that some of us might have in traffic… Yes we’d love to be able to curse the guy who just cut us off with poor gas mileage or a flat tire sometimes—but none of us would think that this was “good”—let alone something to actually pray for divine assistance with! This is something that is a human failing I actually pray for—that I pray for forgiveness and help with my temper, not help with vengeance.

I am also not speaking of the normal, human response to watching a loved one’s life slowly ebbing. Sometimes people pray for death while watching someone slowly die of cancer, for example. This isn’t imprecatory prayer—it is a plea of the heart of compassion.

That said, can our prayers affect the length of someone’s life? Can we curse people with prayer? (I want to say that I absolutely think this is wrong and confess that my initial thought upon reading this article was a rather judgmental “how un-Christian” of him—but I wanted to ask what the angels had to say.)

Jesus said to bless those who curse you. There is nothing righteous or Biblical about this pastor’s hatred of the President or of the late Dr. Tiller. One can disagree with the policies of the current administration or disagree with abortion, without wishing ill upon particular people. And the concept of “imprecatory prayer” is a misguided attempt to justify hatred with the Bible.

The Psalms are beautiful poetry. In them, the full range of human emotion is expressed, from praise and wonder and thanksgiving to Psalms asking God to smite Israel’s enemies. Yet even the imprecatory Psalms are not about seeking the death of individuals in the vein of Psalmist-as-divine-adjudicator—they are more akin to people who are praying for the US troops in Iraq or for the Allies in World War II. Yes, people die in war—but it is not the people praying who are asking God to kill particular individuals—it is a more general prayer.

What you fill your mind and heart with, fills you. This pastor thinks far more about President Obama than most of the President’s most ardent supporters, even if he says it’s 2% of his time spent in prayer. This pastor raises his blood pressure and sends adrenaline and toxic chemicals into his body through hatred.

God is the God of love, of goodness, of truth, and neither God nor the angels in His service would answer a prayer of hatred by striking down the object of hatred. On the other hand, the praying person is praying for anger and for judgment and for retribution in his own life, and his life will reflect his own prayer. There is a reason for the Lord’s Prayer saying “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”—holding onto resentments is toxic.

Send blessings to people like this pastor and pray that you be able to easily forgive and let go of anger, that you are able to bless all… And even as you bless people like this, avoid them. There is no need to pollute your energy by associating with those who hate and curse and have those energies within and around them—particularly those who think of these things as righteous.


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To contact Sue to get angelic guidance, to contact your animal companions both here or beyond the veil, to schedule a shamanic healing session, or simply to say "hi" and give me some feedback on my blog,please click here to email Sue. Please go to http://budurl.com/grcn to follow my Twitter feed. My rates are in the "About Me, My Rates and What I Offer" section in the Links Section to the right of my page. Many blessings and thanks to you!

Monday, July 06, 2009

Abandoned by God?

Mostly, then, I think we awaken to the brokenness in our world and in ourselves and discover that we are alone. We awaken to a world without God or, even if we continue to believe in God (as I do), we awaken to the realization that, when it comes to God, we have all been betrayed; we have all been abandoned. We are, all of us, Georgia Lee lost and dying in a lonely place, waiting for the God who never comes. Or who comes too late.

So one can believe in God or not. In the end, it doesn't seem to make any meaningful difference.

-Dan Oudshoorn


This blog posting was brought to my attention by a fellow Twitterer (Thank you, Gideon!) It is a really poignant blog by someone who has faith in God but doesn't feel that God participates meaningfully in the world, and I encourage you to click on the author's name to read the full text. And in a way, he's right--innocent children are molested, murdered, die of cancer. Innocent animals die in shelters all over the country. I was deeply saddened reading his blog posting. From this perspective, this world is neither safe nor just, and how can a God of love allow this?

Yet I still believe in God, I still believe that God is a good God, a caring God, a loving God. And I don't believe we have been abandoned. I have asked the angels, God's messengers, for a divine viewpoint on this feeling of being abandoned by God.

You are never abandoned, you are never betrayed by God. From a human viewpoint, from a viewpoint wedded to having a body and to seeing the ending of that body and pain in that body as negative things, you believe that when bad things happen, that God is not there, that God is not fair, that your guardian angels have abandoned you.

Those that suffer have many more angels around them than those who do not. The angels are necessary to give strength and support... God did not create a world of unfairness and tragedy. But as much as people debate the question of free will, it does exist--and people interact and lives intersect in ways that may seem joyful, as when people "happen" to meet and fall in love--or seem tragic, as when people ignore intuition and somehow meet an accident, or a criminal, that terminates their human life.

God could intervene--and yet God does not. God is eternal, immortal. God's perspective is timeless. He sees a soul, a soul that existed before it incarnated, and a soul that continues to exist afterward. Just as you may have a cathartic experience in a highly dramatic or frightening movie, but emerge unscathed, this is how a soul might be compared who experiences suffering or tragedy in incarnational life. This is not to negate the experience, only to see it in a larger perspective. If you have an opportunity to relieve suffering or better the world in some way, you should certainly do what you feel led to do.

There is tremendous joy and love in Heaven. Heaven isn't a location--it is an alternate viewpoint, the soul's viewpoint--and God's viewpoint. Suffering is something that is limited to the perspective of an individual in time. Open your heart to the greater perspective, to the greater soul self that is also you, and you will see that most of you is not subject to the economy or to illness. The soul is beyond external sources of harm.


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To contact Sue to get angelic guidance, to contact your animal companions both here or beyond the veil, to schedule a shamanic healing session, or simply to say "hi" and give me some feedback on my blog,please click here to email Sue. Please go to http://budurl.com/grcn to follow my Twitter feed. My rates are in the "About Me, My Rates and What I Offer" section in the Links Section to the right of my page. Many blessings and thanks to you!

Sunday, July 05, 2009

The Labyrinth

I have found the Labyrinth to be a wonderful tool for prayer, meditation or both. I particularly resonate with the symbolism and path of the "Chartres Cathedral" pattern of labyrinth which reflects my Christian faith; others might be more interested in some of the other pre-Christian forms of labyrinth. The key difference between labyrinths and mazes is that there is only one path in/out--unlike a maze, there are no dead ends or confusing aspects.

There are three stages of the walk:

* Purgation (Releasing) ~ A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind.
* Illumination (Receiving) ~ When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.
* Union (Returning) ~ As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for.

Courtesy of Grace Cathedral San Francisco, an Episcopal church famous for its labyrinths


I encourage you to find physical labyrinths in your area, but if you cannot find one, there are a few online labyrinths. Two examples:

Grace Cathedral's
Labyrinth Online's Chartres Labyrinth

Labyrinth Online also has a classical pre-Christian labyrinth on its site. Strangely, they associate the seven circuits with the chakra system. Although there are other cultures besides the Indian that recognize energy centers in the body, including the same seven main centers as in the chakra system, I don't believe that the Cretan/Greek culture was one of them, so I am not sure why they chose this association. That said, you may find their labyrinth to your liking:

Classical Online Labyrinth