#;;prayers

[subjectivemortality]

Something for when the creative energy overfloweth but can't find a way out into something tangible? (I hope I'm doing this right)

Don't you hate it when the energy seems to be stuck behind a wall? Luckily, the wall is only there in your mind and not actually in your ability to create. The processes, the eventual pieces are still there, and often the easiest way to get the wall to go away is to essentially ignore it. Start to write, or draw, or sculpt with no thought into where it needs to lead or whether you are being productive. Your hands know how to create, let them take over and give your mind a break from taking the lead for now, let yourself rest and settle into the feel of something taking shape without imagining what that shape is. Sometimes when we're too focused on the end, the something tangible you're after, we forget that the process is as much art as the result, and that that process lives in us whether we feel like we can wield it or not.

Drink water, put on some music, and may you create with a clear mind and sure hands

[subjectivemortality]

prayers answered:

A young and oh so talented painter who wants so badly to bring the masterpiece they envision to life that they paint and discard canvas after canvas, each one more frustrated and further from the joy of the vision, the only thing they work on for months and with only 'failures' to show for it. Until it feels like personal failing and the brushes sit empty because it hurts less to give up than continue. I give them a push to paint again, but not their masterpiece. Just a cup sitting in interesting light, a bowl of fruit, a bug on a leaf. Relax, relax, remember why you love to shape light and shadow with oil and pigment. Remember the layers that everything complex is made up of everything simple.

Prayer from a man watching his wife in the sixth hour of contractions, pushing, screaming. Let them get through this, let her get through this. The miracle of birth, everyone says, but right now it feels like a burning building he can only watch in slow motion, with everything he loves inside. It will be okay even without my help - minor complications, nothing serious, mom and baby healthy and alive. But he prays and prays and I give him a glimpse of what his daughter will look like at five, at twelve, at thirty-seven, at fifty-two.

Nerves before a performance - I know this one, my brave actor who always gets dizzy and nauseous just before the curtain rises despite the countless stages they've performed on. They know me by name, so it's easier to rub a hand down their back, squeeze their fingers in mine, and whisper into their ear to break a leg. They would knock it out of the park no matter what, and I watch with pride and awe with everyone else. But it doesn't hurt, to be seen and heard.

[subjectivemortality]

A prayer: I know that it must be heavy. At times it is all we can do to carry it and carry on. We cannot allow our minds to acknowledge, to know how much it weighs on us. But the sun, at least, rises every day. Each moment leads to another, and onto another. We cannot see the end of the path, but that does not mean that it trends ever downward.

If we turn our faces to the sun, her rays will warm us. And light will scatter, and remind us of things we have forgotten.

Maybe it feels that the words will be unheard if they are spoken, or that they will enact no change. That may be true. That does not mean that there is no value in speaking them.

Beloved, your burdens will not always be as they are.

Received and heard with immense gratitude. You're right - we can't see the end of our paths (what fun would that be anyway? I prefer a mystery)

I hope the sun's warming you today, like it's warming me 🩷

[subjectivemortality]

How long aa shadow can stretch out ,when you are there to bask in. How the space of it all bends, for you. Do you ever wonder, what the web looks like of lives you have touched, and where they inttersect? Like the view of a map all across the earth The spark of inspiration ,or the laugh of a joke caught miles away ,on theother side of a screen A million births aa million deaths endless moments of love and creativity and hope and want,

Oh 💖 My Garden. Feeding me sweetness even without the fruit

I know it's rhetorical but technically I can see the web, everyone's, in a way. It is like a map, like the pictures of earth at night, where you can see the lights that cluster and branch off and meet and cluster again, but instead of large empty spaces it covers everything. Or I guess looking up at the night sky from one of those empty spaces, if you could draw lines from every star to every other one

I like to think about it more than I used to, where my little star touches others. Thank you, Telmun

[subjectivemortality]

What does worship look like to you?

Took my time to answer this one because it's a question I mull over quite a lot and it's difficult to be concise

Worship, in regards to when it's targeted at me, is more dependent on the person doing the worshipping than it is my perception of it. This was a lesson hard earned - having to get over myself, to decenter my own biases and focus instead on how it feels to them. That's a difficult thing! I'm a god, but I'm also a person with thoughts and feelings and a past, and no matter how much time you spend self-actualizing you can't ever fully remove your perspective. I did my best with it, tried to make myself just a vessel for it, to feel neutral toward it, but that only felt disingenuous. At the end of the day, funnily enough, the thing that worked was giving myself over to faith in them. It's okay that my knee-jerk reaction is still to feel like it's unearned, there's no getting rid of that I think, but letting that feeling not be my focus and instead just accepting in spite of it, that's been progress.

So I suppose it looks like forming a connection to someone else in spite of internal biases and fear, taking what you're being given with gratitude for the intent rather than adding a question mark to every period. And giving parts of yourself to others because you can, because it matters, because that's what we're all here for.

[subjectivemortality]

a prayer: Sometimes I feel like my life has been nothing but a long stretch of grief. I don't struggle as deeply with grief borne from loss, because I know that it is in answer to something I once cherished. But other times that grief is a response to emptiness, to things that I never had and will never have. That feeling is the one I don't know what to do with.

I hear you and I feel you. There's something bittersweet in how our lives and experiences are limited, whether by choice or circumstance. There will be things we never get to experience, people we never get to know or hold - even if you live forever, it's impossible to know everything firsthand. We have a beautiful, fleeting existence that can only fit so much joy and sorrow into it, so much less than what the world at large has to offer. Sometimes I look at all the books I've read and think about how, even if I spent the rest of my life until the end of time reading, I would still only ever know a fraction of the written word.

It can be beautiful though. For all the endless possibilities throughout the universe, for all the myriad ways our lives could have been different for better or worse, we were in the exact right time and place to live the life that we're in. Your favorite drink, a cherished memory, a glance up at a clear night sky, an embrace- unique to you, because of you. And so many lives you've touched, more than you could ever count, unique to them but shaped by the ripples of your existence. Grief is natural, it's a part of being alive to crave and to want and to reach out for things that you may not be able to touch in this lifetime. But like with everything else there's balance if you know to look for it, and where there's grief there is always always celebration.

[subjectivemortality]

a prayer: I really hope things get better for me. I want to feel safe and secure in the places I live in, and I never do, even if there's periods of calm, inevitably I get those pangs of anxiety and panic. I know it's ridiculous, and I'm seeking help but I hope things get better sooner than later. Do you have advice for someone who's anxiety disorder seems to ruin everything? Love, sincerely.

an offering: flowering weeds from the front yard. a worn down river rock, the wear is from rubbing a thumb against the surface in worry

I have good news, my love: it will get better. There will be periods of time where it feels worse, where you struggle, but as long as you are here and seeking solutions or at least healthy coping mechanisms, the overall trajectory will always be upward. I'm so proud of you for where you've gotten to with this already, to be able to look at it? Talk about it? These are accomplishments.

As someone who also has an anxiety disorder that has made quite a lot of things more difficult than they should be, my best advice is to treat yourself kindly, including the parts of you that are scared or hurt or angry, especially if the world around you right now is unkind. Those feelings, the anxiety, serve an important purpose in keeping us safe, keeping us from harm, and there's nothing wrong with you for the way your mind tries to protect you. That isn't to say not to seek treatment or help, whatever will make your day to day easier. But I find that it's hard to recover from a bad day if I'm beating myself up the whole time, and it makes it easier to put things into perspective when I can embrace my thoughts and the feelings behind them with gentler hands. A little grace can go a long way. 🩷

Thank you. Know that you are cherished, that you are more than any one aspect of yourself, and that this, like all the other things you've overcome, will eventually be behind you.