Las Amazonas: Attempts at Prayers

Upriver on the Amazon.  Morning #1 on the trip to Yurimaguas.

I came up here at dawn—the top floor of our large boat—to pray.  Or meditate.  I struggle at 'los dos.'

Start to pray.

Overwhelmed by "Really?  You're listening?"

"Really? It matters?" 

How shall I crawl back to the foot of Your sweet presence not knowing if you're really there?  It seems to be beauty that pulls me away from You and beauty that pulls me toward You.  I read Eva Luna or experience a dinner or a symphony and ask "Why would I linger in cold prayer and brittle scripture when there is a lush world?"  But it is that song, that sunset, that novel, the praise of love-making, that cold fresh morning that proclaims and celebrates Your existence.  So I sit here, trying to join them.

I try to pray.  For K'd decision and lonliness.  For D's well being, and the words he makes that change us.  For Gs and C.  For D' broken heart. For precious J and for D.  For A and E.  For V and W. For Gs.  For U—as individuals and their brittle marriage.  For S and W and C and…T.  And.

Maybe it's more to take my heart off myself.

Or in search of something I swear I once knew how to do:

To pray, convinced.

Or in search of that sliver of life that is about more than me, in 24 hour days dominated by my tyrant happiness.  

Not everyone will change everything on a global scale.  So I look at my quaint perimeter: of people, of compost, of justice, of speaking the truth in tender love.  Lord, I don't know how to be a Christian "like I once was."  I don't know how to "buy it."  And why does it always seem like there's something being sold?   But I ask that you keep me in your hand, keep pulling me closer by whatever means and by the best means.

I feel like it's slipping away.  Not that I've found some intellectual block or invalidator or even suffered some personal crisis negating it all (though perhaps South America has been all those things), but like I'm falling out of love--the enamoration fading.   Someone "I will always love" nonetheless, at least in memories.   What I mean, my Beloved, is:  I'm not exactly sure where You are, nor how to get there.  And the road--be it silence or dancing, Christianity or Taoism--is not that essential to me.  I want to be where you are.  (If you are that close.)  Where your love permeates and invades and where perhaps I am capaz --to love you, to love others—as much as myself.  That fantasy world.

Open me up.  Cut out this heart of stone and replace it with one of flesh.