A Subway Ride to the Divine

Since living in NYC I find my subway rides a great space for my Spiritual work.  It started as a place to catch up with my reading and it has progress to a place where I can catch up with my contemplation.  My favorite exercise is to look around and ask my self if I can observe the Divine in the faces I see.  Yes, I can probably be the creepy guy staring at you now and then.  You would be surprise what you will find when you look for the sameness in your commuting brothers and sisters.

I found this poem from the always inspiring OnBeing website.  I just love the way Ms. Simmons captures the extraordinary presence of Grace on a mundane subway ride.  

Subway Prayer

BY DENA SIMMONS

From her neck, a plastic rosary dangles
like a child, swinging.
With poker-player precision,
she rations coins and cigarettes with her man
who drinks Jack Daniels
on a Bronx-bound 2 train.

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.

On-lookers drink in faded lipstick lips,
older white woman,
her younger black lover,
his hair, small,
cotton-ball knots,
crimson eyes and lipstick-stained lips.
Intoxicating lust.

Blessed art thou amongst women,

A beggar, heavy, duck-taped like his wheelchair,
stumbles into the train car,
fragrant with human waste.
He speaks of a world that hurls him
into subterranean fundraising.

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

He makes his rounds,
wheelchair, clinking against iron poles.
Open hands,
empty,
in front of potential donors.
He wishes God blessed him
with a winning deck of cards.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

To the lovers,
he huffs.
Despair.

Pray for us sinners.

The gambling-pair captures him
in the midst of trading nickels and Marlboros,
gives the begging man
everything,
hoping for a better hand.

Amen.

A Prayer of Thanks to Nature

We may tend to attribute ego-driven behaviors to Nature (i.e., wrath), but I know that Nature is Love, because God is Love.  And Love has no Ego.   As we prepare to gather for Thanksgiving,  I want to share this beautiful prayer that was written a century ago, but its connection with Grace and Gratitude is permanent and as relevant today as it will a hundred years from now.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Prayer for Nature by Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918)

O God, we thank you for this universe, our home; and for its vastness and richness, the exuberance of life which fills it and of which we are part. We praise you for the vault of heaven and for the winds, pregnant with blessings, for the clouds which navigate and for the constellations, there so high. We praise you for the oceans and for the fresh streams, for the endless mountains, the trees, the grass under our feet. We praise you for our senses, to be able to see the moving splendour, to hear the songs of lovers, to smell the beautiful fragrance of the spring flowers.

Give us, we pray you, a heart that is open to all this joy and all this beauty, and free our souls of the blindness that comes from preoccupation with the things of life, and of the shadows of passions, to the point that we no longer see nor hear, not even when the bush at the roadside is afire with the glory of God. Give us a broader sense of communion with all living things, our sisters, to whom you gave this world as a home along with us.

We remember with shame that in the past we took advantage of our greater power and used it with unlimited cruelty, so much so that the voice of the earth, which should have arisen to you as a song was turned into a moan of suffering.

May we learn that living things do not live just for us, that they live for themselves and for you, and that they love the sweetness of life as much as we do, and serve you, in their place, better than we do in ours. When our end arrives and we can no longer make use of this world, and when we have to give way to others, may we leave nothing destroyed by our ambition or deformed by our ignorance, but may we pass along our common heritage more beautiful and more sweet, without having removed from it any of its fertility and joy, and so may our bodies return in peace to the womb of the great mother who nourished us and our spirits enjoy perfect life in you.