2.2 I say a little prayer for me...

Last night I dreamt that I had FOUR babies. This is how it worked, I remember distinctly: one baby was born in November, the other three (all at one time, but somehow not triplets) the following February. My pregnancy dreams usually happen in this way, where apparently I begin the dream in some state of pregnancy or motherhood and have to resolve my shock and figure out how to care for the little squirming insect-like creatures in the cradle. Last night they were definitely insect-like, which is maybe a shout-out to the Franz Kafka I read Sunday night.

But FOUR babies? All at once? Clearly this is the manifest quadruple-shebang of BA/find-a-job/other-classes/date-someone. Each of these struggles and mewls for my attention, like a big-eyed insect in the cradle.

If you made it this far I assume you're committed to this update, so let's move on to the project...

After I wrote last night, I was thinking more about prayer, and about the fact that some people submit personal prayers to God, while others stick with pre-written, church-stamped prayers. I think I used to do a combination... I would do the Lord's Prayer, a childish German prayer my mom taught me when I was young that I completely muddled over the years, and occasionally a Hail Mary or something in that vicinity. A good Catholic cocktail. Then, because I was a lot more comfortable with it, I'd end with my own thoughts, issues or concerns I had with myself and a ticked-off list of people to bless, because that seemed nice.

As I thought about these pre-scripted prayers I remembered one I'd always found really touching: The Prayer of Saint Francis. In a world of meek and devotional prayers to an Old Testament God of wrath, this one seemed refreshingly Humanist. And really, I've always liked Saint Francis. He had a connection to animals and was particularly devoted to poverty.

I printed it out and read through it a few times. I prayed The Prayer of Saint Francis before bed and I've gone through it several times today. We used to sing it in church--and there's also the Sarah McLachlan version--so I quickly remembered all the words.

This is my favorite part:

...Grant that I may never seek

So much to be consoled as to console

To be understood as to understand

To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Really lovely, right? How often do I really think: I want to love more than I am loved--? Not often. It's usually all ambition in my brain, ambition and jealousy and compassion too, but I am far more focused on self-elevation than anything else right now. Forcing myself to turn that on its head is... calming. It puts me in a place where being a good person is not equated with being a successful person.

And this seems to be where we enter the valuable aspect of religion, when there is one. I am reminded of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech from several years back:

...Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you...

I suppose, if you say the same prayer over and over, it's more of a mantra than a prayer. Are they the same thing? I'm not sure. But it's a lot more centering than asking for things.