Do You Pray?

"Hannah, do you pray?"

Not really, not much these days, not in the pleading way.

But I do think.

This brain is what I prayed for, and now I express my appreciation by using it.

I prayed for a brain and body that was aligned with the love my heart and soul knew.

I prayed as a way to suspend what I knew were outdated responses, and I prayed for wisdom and love to enter that space and teach me how to BE it in that very moment.

No, I'm not praying over my breakfast. But the eggshells were hard to crack, healthy chickens, and I think about the farmers, I imagine that they thought, "store bought eggs aren't as healthy, and I want chickens to be treated right, so let's get our own chickens." I imagine how things got out of hand from there. I remember the story where my dad suggested some chickens to my mother and came home with FIFTY chicks.

I think about things. I imagine about them, and I know I'm imagining. I prayed for an imagination that would dream only about love, that imagined things working out and going well. I prayed for the eyes to see reality as it is and the heart to believe all is well and the mind to make that true for me by what I imagine.

My prayers were answered.

I think the entire course of things, the whole part and the whole that part is part of, on and on and on. I think about all I can't know, I know there are things I don't know I don't know. I use my imagination to affirm what my soul knows is true--we are inextricably linked, interdependent already.

I could grow and can all my food--someone cultivated this seed, someone stored it, someone made this jar and the lid and the pot. Someone taught me how to preserve food, someone learned the hard way, someone was poisoned, someone went hungry, someone wrote some shit down.

Someone said "this is the amount that makes up 'one cup' of flour, I know because it's how much my hand scoops up six times when I make bread."

Someone sang a song and the rhythm was the quantity of ingredients, the dance was the execution.

Sovereignty is a lie—distinction is the truth. We are distinct from one another. We are not separate, apart, independent, or self-sufficient, literally not ever.

In lieu of praying, these days I endeavor to see something of that in this now moment.