The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on March 20, 2024 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Part of my regular prayer practice includes a movement of prostration. There are three parts to the movement. Standing shoulder width apart, I raise my arms up toward the heavens and say, “May I be spacious.” As I say the blessing, I open myself to the fullest possible meaning and scope—may I be wide-open, even out to the cosmos.
In the second part of the movement, I begin to drop my hands to my body and shimmy and dance down toward the earth. As I move, I say, “May I be supple.” In asking for this blessing, I attempt to take in all the fluidity and flow that is needed for facing life on earth, with its limits of physicality and temporality, including all the particulars of each amazingly lived life. If spaciousness opens me up to the possibilities of the heavens, suppleness fills me with the actualities of ordinary life on earth.
In the third part of the movement, I drop my whole body to the ground, kneeling, face down, like in child’s pose. As I move, I say the blessing, “May I be surrendered.” If spaciousness opens me to the cosmic heavens, and suppleness grounds me in the abundant earth, then the third movement of surrender connects me fully into the wholeness of who I am—both a creature of earth and a spirit of heaven.
Spaciousness. Suppleness. Surrender. A dynamic trio of blessing all packaged up in a body prayer of prostration. In prayer, we remember the continuum of connection between heaven and earth.
