Jeff Russell

Another fairly short write-up of a book I read of late, this time The Sunlilies by Graham Pardun. Though this book is written from very much within the Eastern Orthodox worldview, I found it to have a number of useful spiritual insights for those of us outside of that, but your mileage may, of course, vary.

Besides the post, I also have a request: I would very much appreciate it if you enjoy my writing if you either a) subscribe to my DIY mailing list, or b) let me know in a comment whatever reasons you'd prefer not to.

While I am mainly writing as a way to gather and sharpen my thoughts, it's nice to have some idea of whether what I'm writing is worthwhile to folks. Email subscriptions tend to be a pretty strong indicator of genuine interest, and should writing ever turn into a part of how I earn my keep, email lists are very helpful (promoting new books, soliciting more direct feedback, and so forth).

So, I'm starting to feel my way around that whole process, but refusing to do it the easy way and just creating a substack. Not that I'm going to start selling anything any time soon, and if I ever do, I will give everyone on the list a chance to get out of Dodge before the shilling commences, and after that, I will do my very best to make it occasional and non-annoying.

Oh, and btw, if you are not interested in subscribing, I will in no way be offended, but I would be just as glad to hear your reasons, as that also helps me understand the landscape I'm dealing with.

For the past week or so, I've been giving it a go saying the Heathen Rosary in its almost-done shape, and I thought I'd share how to do that in case anyone else wants to give it a go.

If you do try it out, kindly let me know how it goes, as so far, I've been feeling this one out with little but prayer and divination to guide me, so hearing if it's helpful for others would be very big indeed.

I've put together four more tries at the "All Father" prayer. I'm getting closer, but still not totally happy with what I have, so even more so than usual, I welcome and ask for comments on how these might be stronger.

Thank you if you feel called to share!

I've been meaning to move to posting on Wednesdays for a while now, so I reckoned I'd use my sloth in wrapping up my latest book as a good excuse to do that. As such, please enjoy my thoughts on Prayer: A History by Philip and Carol Zaleski.

As always, your thoughts are most welcome, and if you'd prefer to get my posts more directly than via dreamwidth updates, please shoot me an email to sign up to get my posts emailed to you.

Cheers,
Jeff

A shorter post this week, I talk a bit about what I miss about mindfulness meditation and the two techniques I turn to these days to get the kind of break from stress and anxiety I used to look for from mindfulness meditation. If you have any ways that you look for stillness amidst the chaos of life, I more than welcome hearing about it!

I have found it helpful in my own spiritual practice to say regular prayers for a few things I do every day (or most every day). Personally, I find it helpful to find excuses to turn my mind to the spiritual when otherwise going about my business, and these prayers help. As always I welcome feedback, but for this one in particular, I'd love to hear what kind of habitual/regular prayers you say or spiritual practices you engage in, whether monotheistic, polytheistic, or otherwise.

So far, I keep on with getting a blog post out for each week, if only barely. This week, my thoughts on the book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn. I found it helpful in thinking about my work on a "Heathen Rosary", and I think anyone who thinks the Rosary might be helpful or at least interesting, but is not all that Catholic, might find this book worth checking out.

I've finally gotten my personal website up and running more or less how I like it, and I've decided to start publishing my stuff there. That being said, for anything likely to be relevant to the Ecosophia community, I'll post a link here and take comments here, as my current very-static set up doesn't have any way to handle comments.

At any rate, my latest post is doing a deep dive on what the Council of Trent had to say about the "Our Father" and then taking what I learned from that to propose a framework for writing a functionally-similar prayer for other religions. I'd be delighted if you check it out here:

Looking Into the "Our Father"

After asking for some resources on prayer on a past Magic Monday, samchevre pointed me to The Catechism of the Council of Trent. Sure enough, despite its explicit Catholic Christian focus, I found a lot of good thinking on prayer as a practice, and I'd like to share what I thought were the most helpful takeaways for folks of any faith.

1. Kinds of Prayer

Asking for Things: Maybe the most common kind of prayer, the Council of Trent held that it was right and proper to ask God in prayer for anything it was right for folks to have. While it is certainly possible to ask for the wrong kind of things in prayer, and it takes some practice to ask for the right kind of things (more on both below), the evidence we have from just about every spiritual tradition that has recorded prayers shows folks asking the Gods for things that they want. If done right, this is not just a "gimme, gimme!" or a business transaction, but instead a way of acknowledging that you can't do anything in the world without your wider context and the help of the Holy.

Thanksgiving: Even if you are uncomfortable with asking for things in prayer, I think it's hard, if not impossible, to find anything wrong with prayers of thanksgiving. Even materialists acknowledge how worthwhile being consciously thankful is. Even more so than asking for things in prayer, giving thanks for what you have in this life is a good way to acknowledge that you are dependent on wider and higher things.

2. Outcomes of Prayer

Bringing You Closer to the Holy: I think the biggest thing prayer does for you is to bring you closer to the Holy and open you up to its influence. However you pray, it's a way to take some time to think about and reach out to whatever you think of as Holy, and hopefully to listen for some kind of answer. Many spiritual practices can do this, but prayer has the strengths of being ready to do whenever and wherever you are, and being changeable to whatever your needs are right now.

Acknowledging Something Greater than Yourself: I talked about this in both kinds of prayer above, but most any kind of prayer leads you to acknowledge that you need the wider world and its God(s). Even for things you did "by yourself", you still have your parents, teachers, employers, and culture to thank, to say nothing of any Gods or Goddesses. While humility can go too far into abasing yourself or groveling, most of us can use a timely reminder that we are not an island and that the world has given us a great many gifts that we ought to be thankful for.

Giving a Gift: Prayer can also be a gift to the Gods, the same as incense or a candle or mead. The more care and thought you put into the prayer, and the better it is said, the better it works as such. This is the most helpful when you lack the means to give something else, but is still worthwhile even if you have all of the offerings you might wish for.

Helping the Dead: Most faiths believe that the dead can use some help in the afterlife, and that prayer is one way of offering that help. For Christians, you pray for souls in Purgatory, other faiths might pray for souls to learn the lessons of their past life as smoothly as they might so they can move on to another life, and so forth. Whatever you believe about the afterlife (well, I guess, unless you don't believe in one), it seems that prayer is helpful to those in it.

3. How to Pray

Prayer Works Best as a Habit: The Catechism talks about prayer as a "duty", not something nice-to-have or optional. I don't know if that way of thinking is true for all faiths, but I think it is very much true that prayer works best as a habit, something you do at least every day. Much of the good of prayer only seems to come when you have done it for awhile with unalike things going on in your life. From what I have seen, it seems best to find many little ways to bring prayer into your life - something to say when you wake up, when you go to sleep, before you eat, when you put on a worn holy symbol, and so forth, as well as a "main" prayer set aside as its own thing. Of course, all of this doesn't have to be piled on at once, as that's not how good habit-building works, but over time, adding such things helps to make prayer a given, rather than something that takes will and forethought.

Pray in the Right Frame of Mind with the Right Feeling: For Christians, the Council of Trent recommends that Christians go into prayer with 1) utmost humilty, 2) sorrow or regret for sins done, 3) a lack of unworthy feelings like wrath or pride, and 4) faith in God. Once praying, the prayer should be heartfelt, with the ideal being that you "pour out" what is in your heart and soul with great warmth. I feel like the strong weight put on humility and sinfulness may not fit with every other faith, but the heart of the thought, that you should put yourself in a frame of mind in keeping with what is best to your Gods and then pray earnestly and with true feeling, seems like a good one to me.

Ask for the Right Things: The Catechism gave what struck me as a remarkably good rede about asking for things in prayer. First, get in the habit of asking God(s) for all things that you want in your life. Second, practice only asking for things that bring you closer to God(s). This is a really good way to build habits - you start by harnessing your natural yearning to have stuff to get you to pray often. Hopefully, as you do this, you start thinking about and acknowledging the role of the Holy in bringing good things into your life. Having gotten used to thinking about God(s) shaping what comes into your life, you can more readily think about what kinds of things God(s) might most want you to do in the world, and you can start asking for that. Through this change, you learn to ask for the right things, which makes even your prayers asking for stuff into a way to come closer to the Holy.

Beware Prayer Becoming a Way to Do Unworthy Things: For all the good that prayer can and does do, it can also become hollow, or even worse, truly harmful. If you only say the words or go through the motions, not only won't you get much out of prayer, you might sour on it or even on the Holy. There's some place for "fake it till you make it" in any kind of habit building, but if prayer feels hollow for a long time, it's likely not doing you any good, and you might need to work out a new way of doing things. Still worse is if you let prayer become a tool for your pride - showing off, making a big fuss about how strong your belief is, or the like. The Council refers to Jesus's well-known rede to pray indoors, out of the public eye. I think there's a role for public prayer, but a good rule of thumb seems to be that if you only pray when others are watching, you're likely doing it wrong.

A Lone Sufficient Prayer Can Be Helpful to Have: The Catechism puts forth the "Our Father" as a wholly sufficient prayer by itself. In other words, as a Christian, if you only pray the Our Father, you're doing everything you need to do with prayer. Other prayers are helpful and do a lot of good, of course, but they say that you only really need this one prayer. I found this a highly interesting thought. I think it would be very helpful to look at your faith and ask yourself "if I could only say one prayer for the rest of this life, and I wanted to get at everything that is most important in my faith, what would that prayer be?" I think that most faiths likely don't have a ready-to-go answer the way Christianity does (perhaps the "Bond Among Druids" for Revival Druidry), but that writing it would be a worthy goal to strive for.

Some Hands-On Tips: The Council also gave a handful of more hands-on tips that I thought were helpful: 1) "Mental Prayer" (praying without speaking out loud) not only works, but is often best suited to sharing strong, deep feelings. That being said, praying out loud helps you stay focused and can be a spur to feelings of devotion. 2) Food and drink can make it harder to have the right mindset or feeling for prayer, so it might be best to pray without having eaten or had drinks besides water for some time. Fasting can also bring on an even stronger feeling for prayer. 3) Try to make your deeds outside of prayer line up with what you ask for in prayer. If you ask for help, but give no help to others, you shouldn't think that will work out well for you.

Edited 8 August 2022, 11:52 central time: removed "(1829)" from the link to the Catechism of the Council of Trent, as that is the date of the English Translation, but the Catechism was originally published in 1566, so that was misleading!