Some of my earliest memories are of praying. At 5 years of age I knelt and asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my heart. Justo, my Sunday School teacher, led me to that prayer. My mother was so happy.

At the age of 10, I prayed and rededicated my life to the Lord at summer Bible Camp in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.

My father was an ordained minister of the Evangelical Free Church, getting his degree from Trinity Seminary in Chicago. He died very young from lung cancer at the age of 45 while I was in college. I didn’t dance, smoke, drink, go to movies all through high school. I tried hard to convert the girls I wanted by taking them to church and Billy Graham Crusades — not much success there. The guest speaker at the Church Youth Group Dinner that substituted for the prom was from a Creation Science Institute. I invited him to visit my high school and speak to my high school class — lots of heated discussion.

Prayer was a big part of my life through all this.

Then came college, philosophy courses, comparative religion classes, a BA in anthropology, all night talks about God, prophecy, religion, yoga, zen, meditation.

I remember around 1970, in the middle of February: midnight, walking alone along a frozen Lake Michigan bordering Northwestern’s campus, a gusty minus 10 degree wind blowing, biting my face. I shouted into the wind (absolutely no one was around to hear): “God, if you are real, you won’t abandon me. Please let me know if you are real. ”

Around that time I finally started going to movies — first one? The Graduate. I began a wonderful time of experimenting with all the free love available (before AIDS). I thought I was so free. No more fundamentalist Christian rules rigidly prescribing my behavior.

But a painful end to my 1st marriage (no kids) taught me there was more to living the happy life than just leaving behind my rigid fundamentalist morality. 5 years of Jungian psychotherapy helped me grow out of the pain and restructure.

In the mid 80s I “took refuge” in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha at the LA Zen Center, Maezumi Roshi gave me my dharma name, Dokan (do=tao, kan=intuition). I became a dad. I finally finished getting my degrees and settled into my career as an English teacher.

In the 90’s I studied with Lama Wangchen, a Kagyu teacher from Tibet, a nephew of Kalu Rinpoche, and became fascinated with Tibetan practice. I started a Chenresig practice which was easy to add to my shikantaza Zen practice.

Currently, I enjoy the teachings of Dzogchen, Stoicism, Zen, and Kashmiri Shaivism.
But, the enjoyment is “heady,” I miss the emotional quality of the kind of praying I grew up with. I have forgotten how to pray as I did when a child and teen growing up in Evangelical Christianity. Those prayers were warm, felt real, like talking to a loving parent.

Two things happened this evening that start me thinking about how I used to pray.

First.

My brother-in-law, a math professor at William Jennings Bryan College in Tennessee, his wife, and my mother-in-law are visiting, and we went out to dinner. Our salads came, and I took a bite, but no one else did. My wife took the cue and asked, shall we say grace? My brother-in-law offered to ask the blessing; and proceeded to do so: ” . . . in Jesus name, Amen.”

Second.

On my way home (my wife and I had driven separate cars), I stopped to see my mom at the nursing home. She has Alzheimer’s and is always glad to see me, but doesn’t know my name. One of the ways I can be close to her on these visits is to sing old hymns. She was a very talented singer and musician, played the baritone, recording records with Salvation Army Bands. Tonight we sang:

Old Rugged Cross
Up From the Grave He Arose
I Come to the Garden Alone
When Morning Gilds the Skies
Make Me A Blessing

She remembered some lyrics I had forgotten.

Then the thought came to me. I wondered if I could enter witness consciousness, and somehow really pray with her. I’m always telling her I pray for her everyday. But it is not in a way she would understand. To refer to insight or breath-watching meditation, or everyday activities like driving or washing dishes — calling any of these prayer would be just too exotic and alien to what she would call prayer, to what I called prayer in my childhood.

So, I took a few minutes to collect my thoughts and feelings to see if I could really pray. I thought my way first to the witness and was able to relax and remain there in the witness as the witness. I got as close as I could to feeling the Non-Dual.

Feeling the Non-Dual I then realized the Non-Dual was also the warmth, energy, and awareness that was simultaneously informing, breathing, and holding my mother.

I then prayed out loud, something like: “Thank you for holding us in your love and power. Thank you for giving life and helping us to realize that you alone are the reason we are and the reason we will be. Be with my mother tonight in her sleep and dreams. Amen.”

I then said good night to her and drove home.

That felt like the kind of prayers I used to make. So, I prayed again tonight—for the first time in many, many years.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 at 7:02 am and is filed under Notes to Self, Spirituality, religion.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.