Raincoast Prayers

These were written when I was on a sufficient-to-be-hospitalised manic high. I am manic/depressive, mostly depressive. They do not represent my usual conscious thoughts. I post them because I valued these words most highly at the time I "channelled" them. To me now, they seem saccharine and insincere. That also applies to a lesser extent to the Wisdom, Enlightenment, and Proverbs.

Why Pray?

Why bother to pray if God reputedly knows your heart even before you open your mouth?

A prayer gives God permission to clean up one of your messes.
A prayer reminds you to get out of God’s way.
A prayer opens your mind to a solution that actually works.

Gift of Doubt

Dear God,
Please teach me to give the benefit of the doubt.

Break It To Me Gently

Dear God,
Please, gently open my mind. Make me aware of my errors, without overwhelming me. Please, show me better ways to get what I want without hurting others.

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Dear God,
Please, tell me the secret name you wish me to call you today that I may keep it holy.

Planetary Consciousness Prayer

Dear God,
By example, let us teach forgiveness, apology, caring and concern for the whole planet.

Cosmic Consciousness Prayer

Dear God,
Let us respect all God’s names. We apologise for all we have done wrong, unconsciously, inadvertently and deliberately. We forgive for all we have done wrong, unconsciously, inadvertently and deliberately.

Permission Prayer

Dear God,
You have my full permission to correct any of my errors and to block me from doing anything really stupid.

Patience Prayer

Dear God,
Please teach me that you God, know the best time to grant my prayers.

Dovetail Prayer

Dear God,
Please teach me to patience to fit my prayers in with everyone else’s.

Gentle Prayer

Dear God,
Please, Gently open our minds; gently open our hearts.

Emergency Prayer

God, please tell me what I should do.

Yet Another Serenity Prayer

Dear God,
Please grant me the serenity to change those things that must change, the courage to accept those things that must not change, for now, and the common sense to known the difference.

Serenity Prayer, Emergency Form

Dear God,
Should I tolerate this?

Shoelace Prayer

Dear God,
Lou Doe needs help. His/her life is a mess. It’s like a wet shoelace that has dried and pulled into a tight knot. Please soften the laces so Lou can easily untangle it.
Thank you.

Smokers’ Prayer

Dear God,
What should I do to distract myself from this desire for a smoke?

Quadran Grace

Thank-you God, for the bounty, beauty and wonder of our island. Let’s not spoil it.

Ann’s Prayer

I already know that a fancy desert can have strong appeal, and it is not good for me. Similarly I understand that I can be strongly attracted to men whom I know are not good for me.

Let me resist the temptation to be guided by my desires, and instead let me be guided by wisdom in seeking a partner. He might have no more flash that a plate of steamed broccoli, but in the long term may he deeply nourish me and I him.

Personal Prayers

Roy’s Prayer

Dear God,
Please teach my voice to sing you. Saya cinta kamu. [I love you, in Bahasa Indonesia]
Thanks,
Roy
composed for Roy Nikijuluw of the Netherlands

Joyce’s Prayer

Dear Bud,
Thank you for all the opportunities you have offered me to love and serve.
Please teach me to pass them on to others rather than try to do them all myself.
Love,
Joyce
composed for Joyce Cousins of Quadra Island

Roedy’s Prayer

Dear Allah,
Please help me find a comfortable modest rural home with wood heat or something even more ecologically sound.
Please steer me to broad-minded loving friends, right livelihood and an ethical lifestyle.
Please let me join my lifetime partners who are supportive of my desire to be a planetary citizen.
I’d like a little kinky sex too where no one is harmed or alarmed.
Please help defuse the tense situations between myself and others, particularly Ian, Wendy and Jimmy.
Love(,)
Roedy
composed for Roedy Green

Your Prayer

I would be happy to compose a prayer for you and post it here. Just email me telling me the problem. A good prayer has to work out well for everyone, not just you. You don’t want to be so specific you tie God’s hands. The answer to the prayer should make you a more effective planetary citizen. I suspect that the more people see your prayer the faster it gets handled, since other voices get added to yours.

Prayer Errors

There are errors in two famous prayers — the Serenity Prayer and St. Francis’s Prayer beloved of Mother Theresa.

The classic Alcoholics Anonymous Serenity Prayer goes like this:
God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Other than forgetting to say please, the prayer, if taken literally, encourages people to randomly change anything they can in a wild thrashing to solve problems. Further, people usually have quite enough courage to make changes; what they lack is the serenity and tact to effect them. Finally, with sufficient time, nearly all things change of their own accord. There really is no such thing as something that cannot change. The following reformulation of the prayer avoids these difficulties. This formulation also makes it clearer that there is plenty of middle ground where change is optional.

Dear God,
Please grant us the serenity to change those things that must change, the courage to accept those things that must not change, for now, and the common sense to known the difference.

Mother Theresa prayed that the poor should be delivered food "through our hands". Taken literally, this would condemn the poor to misery since the nuns could not possibly deliver sufficient food solely through their hands. The Sisters of Charity should pray instead that the poor be given the ability to feed themselves and that the nuns should augment and fill in any cracks.

Links

reader feedback on this essay.

	You can get the freshest copy of this page from:	or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/mindprod.com website mirror)
	http://mindprod.com/deepthoughts/prayers.html	J:\mindprod\deepthoughts\prayers.html
	Please email your feedback for publication, letters to the editor, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to Roedy Green : . If you want your message, your name or email kept confidential, not considered for public posting, please explicitly specify that. Unless you state otherwise, I will treat your message as a letter to the editor that I may or may not publish in the feedback section. After that, it will be too late to retract it. If you disagree with something I said, please quote it and cite the web page where you found it, tell me why you think it is wrong, and, if possible, provide some supporting evidence. Threatening to kill me or spouting obscenities has yet to persuade me to change my mind.
	Canadian Mind Products
	mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
view	Your face IP:[38.107.179.212]
Feedback	You are visitor number 17,538.