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When we pray in the New Thought tradition, we pray using words that affirm a higher truth than the troubled condition that initiated the desire for prayer.  We pray using words that declare a spiritual truth that we wish to see in physical reality and that by affirming it, first in mind, we have set the conditions for which it may come to pass.  We call it affirmative prayer.

 

Can I be honest with you?  Sometimes it’s hard for me to pray like that.  Yup, hard for me, the minister, who’s been teaching affirmative prayer for 20 years, and practicing for over 40 years.  It is hard when my heart is raw with emotion, my eyes overflowing in tears.  It’s hard because I am so present to the pain and anguish of the moment that lifting my eyes to a higher vision seem nearly an impossible task….but that’s why we call it spiritual practice.

 

On days like today, it should be hard.  It should be hard because when spiritual practice is most difficult is when it is most needed.  And it should feel difficult in and of ourselves, because the power to heal is most often found in community.  The truth is we need each other.  We need our prayers, our strength and our commitment to find a way when the way seems so lost.

 

Apalachee High School in Winder, GA is less than 15 miles from the corner where I see my child off to school everyday.  And it’s the epicenter of our nations latest mass shooting on a school campus.  2 student and 2 teachers are dead, 9 more are injured and in the hospital.  15 miles from the tragedy, I picked up my child from the school bus, and on our walk home he told me that his school did a “hard lockdown drill” where they had to hide in the class room and wait for a police officer to tell them it was ok to move or make a noise. Today. The same day I was home watching the news roll in from Winder, GA.  It’s a normal part of the school year now.  Integrated into the routine, right there between math, science and recess.  

 

Hebrew scripture tells us that God hears our prayer.  From the moment Abel’s blood hits the ground by his brother Cain’s hand, we are told that God hears the groan, the cry the ache that bellows out. 

 

“The righteous cry, and the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.  The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.  Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of all.” 

  • Psalms 34: 17-19  

 

Not only does God hear, but God responds by initiating a restorative move of justice in the land.  This pattern repeats over and over again through story after story.  Yet more often than not, God’s response is not through intervention from afar, but via the intersection of hearts and minds of God’s people.  

 

God answers prayer not for you, but THROUGH and AS you.  This is why affirmative prayer is so powerful as a spiritual practice because it allows us the capacity to create the space in heart and mind where God (a power greater than ourselves) may show up, and it begins with hearing.  

 

Do you hear the cry?  Can you hear the pain and trauma from Apalachee High School, or how about the other 384 mass shootings this year alone? That’s 1.5 mass shootings for every single day.  What is the cost of numbing out, tuning out or rolling over in overwhelm?  Does our apathy, inaction or ignorance sooth the cry?  

 

I believe in a God who hears and I believe in a God who responds.  And I believe the response-ability or the ability to respond resides in God’s creation; namely you and I.  So let’s pray and affirm together….

 

Spirit of the living God, One absolute and self-existing Cause that is back of all creation.  That which is without beginning or ending, the eternal and everlasting presence of Love, Peace, and Wholeness.  That which is forever seeking to express itself as itself through all creation - I see you, I hear you, I affirm your presence in and AS my life right now.

All that I am in thought, word, deed and flesh is of this one Divine idea - made in wholeness and here to express in and as the only One there is.

In Light of all that seeks our attention today….Today I open my heart even wider to hear the cry of humanity, the cry of parents who have lost a child to gun violence, the cry of brothers and sisters, students and friends.  I hear the cry of teachers who have lost colleagues, friends and mentors.  I hear the cry of mental health workers, overwhelmed, and underpaid, counselors understaffed.  I hear the cry of young and old who feel adrift, lost, ignored, dismissed and forgotten - those whose pain has become unbearable and in their pain have lashed out via violent means.  

I affirm that we can and must build a better world that peace is possible, that belonging, compassion and wholeness is felt deeply by all creation.  I know and affirm a world where our love for each other is stronger than our defense of the right to harm each other.  I affirm that there is resources abundantly flowing into every solution that heals.  I know that peace surrounds those that grieve, that resolve fills those that yearn for solution and compassion reigns in all hearts and minds as we find our way to each other again.  I affirm that we have the will, politically and otherwise to do that is right by our children and our collective future of a world that works for everyone.  

I give myself permission to feel, to grieve and to act.  I know that through my conscious awareness change comes.  I am the place where wholeness and peace reveals itself through solidarity, justice and action.  

I know this is so, not because I say it is so, but because It says that I am so.  And so it is.  

 

RESOURCES FOR ACTION 

 

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