I am always struck at comments on this list about the "benefits" of having
PD. This morning I read the message from Lynda McKenzie concerning her up
coming trip. Her comments about the very good friends she has made since
being diagnosed were very touching. I do not have PD-my father does. So I
hope it is appropriate for me to comment on this. Everytime I read one of
the poems someone posts and hear comments such as Lynda's I think of the
introduction to an inspirational book I give to alot of people. The name of
the book is The Prayer Tree. It's a very small book and the introduction is
really the part that touches me. I take it down and read it sometimes when
I am feeling defeated by life. It reminds me that God has a purpose for my
life and he intends for it to be good-even if I don't sometimes understand
his methods. I thought some of you might enjoy it also. So here it is.
A person kneels to comtemplate a tree and to reflect upon the troubles and
joys of life.
****************************
It is difficult to accept that life is difficult: that love is not easy and
that doubt and struggle, suffering and failure, are inevitable for each and
every one of us.
We seek life's ease. We yearn for joy and release, for flowers and the sun.
And although we may find these in abundance we also find ourselves lying
awake at night possessed by the terrible fear that life is impossible.
Sometimes when we least expect it we wake up overwhelmed by a massive sense
of loneliness, misery, chaos and death: appalled by the agony and futility
of existence.
It is difficult indeed to accept that this darkness belongs naturally and
importantly to our human condition and that we must live with it and bear
it. It seems so unbearable.
Nature, however, requires that we have the darkness of our painful feelings
and that we respect it and make a bold place for it in our lives. Without
its recognition and acceptance there can be no true sense of life's great
depth, wherein lies our capacity to love, to create and to make meaning.
Nature requires that we form a relationship between our joy and our despair,
that they not remain divided or hidden from one another. For these are the
feelings which must cross-pollinate and inform each other in order that the
soul be enlivened and strong. It is the soul, after all, which bears the
burden of our experience. It is the soul through which we love and it is
the soul which senses most faithfully our function within the integrity of
the natural world.
Nature requires that we be soulful and therefore requires a dimension within
us where darkness and light may meet and know each other. Mornings and
evenings somewhere inside, with similar qualities to the mornings and
evenings of the earth. Qualities of gradual but vast change: of stillness
and tender transference, fading and emerging, foreboding and revelation.
Mornings and evenings: the traditional times for prayer and the singing of
birds, times of graceful light whereby the heart may envisage its poetry and
describe for us what it sees.
But how do we find the mornings and evenings within? How do we establish
and behold them and be affected by their gentle atmospheres and small
miracles? How do we enter this healing twilight?
The matter requires our imagination. In particular, it requires the aspect
of imagination we have come to know as prayer.
We pray. We imagine our way inwards and downwards and there, with heartfelt
thoughts or words we declare our fears and our yearnings: we call out for
love and forgiveness: we proclaim our responsiblity and gratitude. The
struggling, grouded soul speaks to the higher spirit and thus we exist in
the mornings and the evenings of the heart: thus we are affected and changed
by the qualities we have created within ourselves.
Might not prayer then be our most accessible means to inner reconciliation:
a natural healing function in response to the pain of the divided self and
the divided world? Might not prayerfulness be part of our survival instinct
belonging more to the wilderness than to the church.
And just as we have become somewhat alienated from nature and its cycles,
could it be that we are also estranged from our instinctive capacity for
prayer and need to understand it afresh from the example of the natural world?
The person contemplates the three.
The tree sends its roots beneath the surface, seeking nourishment in the
dark soil: the rich "broken down" matter of life.
As they reach down and search, the roots hold the tree firmly to the earth.
Thus held and nourished, the tree grows upwards into the light, drinking the
sun and air and expressing its truth: its branches and foliage, its flowers
and fruit. Life swarms around and into it. Birds and insects teem within
its embrace, carrying pollen and seed. They nest and breed and sing and
buzz. They glorify the creation.
The tree changes as it grows. It is torn by wind and lightning, scarred by
frost and fire. Brances die and new ones emerge. The drama of existence
has its way with the tree but still it grows: still its roots reach down
into the darkness: still its brances flow with sap and reach upward and
outward into the world.
**************************
A person kneels to comtemplate a tree and to relect upon the troubles and
joys of life. The person imagines mornings and evenings in a great forest
of prayers, swarming and teeming with life.
The person is learning how to pray.
God bless you all!!
Nancy Walker
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