What are prayers?

What are prayers? Aren’t they letters we sing? A monologue creating youthful tunnels for our partnership with the sky and elements. Prayers are letters that lift our hearts and tears above the highest point of the tallest tree. Prayers are letters that spin the ink of our pens into tinctures for the rain, our seasonal showers, hearty alchemy, and finally, the firmament pours on us; giving us a peace wet with the complexities of falling. I pray to receive my falls.

What are prayers? Aren’t they calligraphy? Coughs of laughter? Aren’t they permission slips to have each item in our incarnation cupboard?

Aren’t they freedom speeches?

I am loosened from the grip of abrahamic lies like god is a gendered energy outside of me. The old templates tell me that to pray relies on (a god’s) response. Ticks or declines; ‘Objective’ Judgements, which are, of course, elevated bias. The lies tell me prayer is a gift given to glorify the authority of where it lands.

To me, authority is something that is individually done, not a stasis or status, but a protective action. In the supremacy-world; authority exists to usher in obedience to hegemony. The external force dislodges the inner world to gain access to the capacity of one’s soulful will. Necessarily imposing (upon and around it) a new set of strained negotiations, packing in impulses which gear toward resonance with the bloody epistemic capital of the supremacist-world.

Thus, humanity’s relationship to movement itself becomes outsourced. When movement becomes captured this way, when we mainly have guarded actions, one’s relationship to action is: who can legitimise my effort?

I pray through journaling.

Leaving the templates of the Jesus prayers left me with the feeling of no recipient, left me with the expectation that ears and eyes and noses and thrones were what allowed my cries or requests to be prayers. These epistemologies taught me that it is possible for someone to make any aspect of me legitimate.

Are prayers free?

I think of libations. And how they pray. Prayer, there, is the motion of falling onto earth, saturating the ground, deepening its hue with the forms of our being. Liquid prays because liquid moves. Liquid wets to receive its prayer. ‘Wettening’, causing impact by moving as oneself, necessarily, receiving purpose.

Prayer is travelling with our own being. Prayer is our authentic path of reception. Prayer is the movement of our humanity, authored by no thrones. A prayer warrior, therefore, is not the strongest petitioner but the being who travels with itself; known, seen, heard.

Prayer, then, is as complex as I am; as simple as I am; as living as I am; as receiving; as conscious. Prayer is the gait and the ground of sincerity. I pray in poetry, in paragraphs sent, in letters written,

I pray at this moment.

FAQ’s

“Who do I pray to?” - Well, where are we?

“What do I say?” - How do you feel?

“How do I end it?” - Did you hear your sincerity?

“How do I know it is working?” - Did you hear your sincerity?

“What if no one is listening?” - Did you hear your sincerity?

Earth, Honest, Yes, Yes, Yes; Ok, So, try this to close your prayers;

On Earth, voicing my honesty, I hear my sincerity, I hear my sincerity, I hear my sincerity; Yes Yes Yes.

Tell me how it feels and goes.

Lots of love,

Liz.