How I Try To Pray - a poem about freestyle, belief-free prayer for personal liberation

Try to forget.

Forget every lesson ever learned
about so-called worthiness.


Santa Clause’s Naughty or Nice List,
grown-ups’ hot and cold love.


The classroom’s gold stars and cruel words,
the playground’s hunger games.


Religion’s heavens and hells,
society’s carrots and sticks.


The spiritual olympics measuring
how ‘high’ our vibration is.


The second-hand violence,
second-hand trauma,
second-hand footsteps.


I try.


I open my mouth,
in silence or aloud, and call out:
“Dear Beautiful Rascal,
Great-Open-Source-Dream,
BlablaHalleluyeah,
Divine Kink,
Beloved Whatever…”


Maybe my brain’s cracked,
maybe Grace likes playful names.
Either way, I keep tasting them as I try.


Try to remember.


Remember prayer is the unknown
reaching out to the unknowable.


A human being speaking to Spirit,
whatever the fuck Spirit is,
whether or not it exists,
whatever the fuck human is,
whether or not it exists.


Sometimes it flows bang on,
but sometimes I call out:
“I don’t even know why I’m doing this,
if anything is out there,
or in here,
if all this is
just skull-cinema
so be it.”


It cracks me up enough
to get me lit to the touch.


Sometimes my mouth’s a sublime instrument,
sometimes a wretched, spasmed orifice.


It doesn’t matter which.


Give the bullshit regiments the slip;
lay in hedge-row or windowsills
yelling anything
with such gusto
that love, grief,
gratitude, forgiveness,
laughter and weeping
become exactly the same thing again.


Many prayers are simple:
“May this being find safety and freedom
to live within life’s gift,
and give back to it.
May all beings find the same.”


Other days though it gets interesting:
“May the girl with the blue hat be safe,
may the stupid sky be forgiven,
may we fall on our arses towards heaven,
may all trees come home.”


There’s no need to know
who the girl with the blue hat is,
or why the sky needs forgiveness.


“May all beings find the same.”

What would you pray for today, if you chose to, and if you gave yourself permission to pray with no pre-conceptions of what prayer means? Add yours in the comments and we can make a freetyle prayer thread together.