Maggie Oman Shannon - Prayers for Hope and Comfort: Reflections, Meditations, and Inspirations

First published in 2008 by Conari Press, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC With offices at: 500 Third Street, Suite 230 San Francisco, CA 94107 www.redwheelweiser.com Copyright 2008 by Maggie Oman Shannon. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. ISBN: 978-1-57324-319-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. Cover and text design by Donna Linden Typeset in Futura, Garamond, and Handsome Cover photograph Philip Harvey/Corbis Printed in Canada TCP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

Dedicated with deepest love
to my precious daughter,
Chloe Xin Shannon,
who graces each day
even the ones that feel hard
with everything that is bright and beautiful
and to all the children of our world

Some say that there are no accidents; and if that is true, then it's not surprising that I would be working on Prayers for Hope and Comfort during one of the hardest times in my own life. Thankfully, I faced nothing severe or shockingjust a period in which challenges in almost every arena of my life converged at exactly the same time: sudden and unexpected responsibilities in my workplace; the requirements of a weekend graduate program; the looming deadline of this book; the daily demands of rearing a three-year-old; a marriage in low ebb because it kept getting relegated to the back burner; the saddening need for increased involvement in my mother's medical matters due to dementia associated with Parkinson's disease; and, because I wasn't taking care of myself, my own minor but lingering health issues. Though I remained acutely aware that many, many people face situations like this or indeed much worse, still, the collective weight of what I was juggling frequently felt overwhelming. As a trained spiritual director, I have witnessed how God speaks to us in and through the circumstances of our lives; and as I worked on this project I tried to notice how I was handling this particular hard time of my own, how I wasand wasn't reaching out to God. To tell the truth, I found it hard to pray during this periodI was too caught up in the erroneous sense that I didn't have time to pray, that I had to make use of every spare moment for the seemingly endless array of things on my to do list. Sometimes it seemed that if I stopped to feel all the emotions I was so carefully erecting fences around, I wouldn't be able to complete what needed to be done on any given day.

Mixed in with the daily pedestrian concerns about taking the car in to the repair shop, or the cat in to the vet, my heartstretched by a growing sense of social justice and a deep desire to be of servicelonged also to be addressing far larger concerns about the world. When I had no choice, when those little structures that we erect to keep ourselves going started cracking, I did stop. And in the stillness I realized anew that comfort, renewal, and deep peace can always be found in the present moment, if we allow ourselves even a few minutes to rest with our Source. No matter what the circumstances of our lives are, we can place ourselves in the presence of the Divine the moment we decide to be still, to breathe, to release our worries and our heartbreaks to God, to ease ourselves gently into the silence of the Sacred. I also found great inspiration in these pieces that you are about to read, and believe that you will, too; they demonstrate how deeply the written words of others, expressed with a fierce authenticity born of pain, can touch us to the core. Here, you will find the words of men, women, and children from around the world and throughout the ages as they address the Spirit of their understandingprayers that, though they may be written in noninclusive language that reflects the historical period in which they wrote them, remain resonant expressions of the heart.

Because these authentic, and very human, passages are so powerful, I made the decision not to include a large number of passages from any faith's scriptures, believing that more power can reside in an original voice grappling with pain and unknowing than in a codified, and perhaps well-known, scriptural passage. It has been made very clear to me that we do need to come from a place of renewal and groundedness ourselves before we can truly be of service to another; and I have always found great comfort and beauty in the awareness that we each have the opportunity to become alchemists with our painto transmute our own sufferings into something golden when we can offer that great gift of empathy, and the greater gift of compassionate action, to another who is experiencing a painful life situation. Therefore, you will see a clear bias in the choice of selections, a bias toward hope and healing. Developing this project, whose working title was Prayers for Hard Times, I didn't think it would be helpful only to have a collection of lamentations. It seemed increasingly important that this book contain wisdom, that it point to things that would give its readers faith and inspiration, and ultimately that it contain a visioneven a callwith which to move into our fragile future. For as Helen Keller wrote, Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

Therefore, this book is organized into five sections, representing the concentric circles of compassion that extend naturally as we heal and grow spiritually. First, there are prayers for ourselves, as we each always begin there; it is difficult to focus on another's suffering when we ourselves are in pain. Then, as we begin to look outside of ourselves, come prayers for our relationshipsparents, children, partners, friends, pets, colleaguesfollowed by prayers for our community and for our world. The final section contains prayers for our planet, words devoted to seeing oneness not only among all peoples, but among all beings in this great web of life. While working on this book, I created a little shrine under my computer monitor with elements no more than five inches high: a Peruvian clay figurine of a girl praying; a crystal Quan Yin, hearer of the world's cries; a small metal Ganesh, destroyer of obstacles; a raku heart rattle, transformed by fire into a musical instrument; a prayer locket containing this tiny printed prayer: May the footprints of the Lord lead me in times of strife; a depiction of Jesus, illustrating his example of compassion-in-action; and a candle imprinted with the word hope. Maggie Oman ShannonSan Francisco, California

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. Maggie Oman ShannonSan Francisco, California When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your home tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet Confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. David Whyte, Sweet Darkness

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