“If a writer is one who writes, and a singer is one who sings, then a prayer is one who prays. We are all living prayers. Together we will explore prayer as a way to engage with all the seasons of our lives.”
Dates: October 23 & 30, November 6 & 13
Time: 7:00 PM – 08:30 PM ET
Event Program Fee: $300
Prayer for All Seasons with Elizabeth Cunningham
Week One: A child shall lead them. Childhood experiences of connection with /disconnection from the divine. We will revisit the memories that shaped our understandings and misunderstandings of the divine. Through guided meditation, dialogue, and crafting our own prayers we look for ways to release the hurt and reclaim the grace of our earliest years.
Week Two: Wandering in the wilderness. Spiritual emergency and emerging. From the blaze of a desert noon to the various dark nights of our souls, we will explore the distance and closeness, the appalling absence and mysterious presence of the divine in times of crisis. Through voice and silence we will find ways to pray our fiercest, often hidden, truths.
Week Three: Tending the Garden. Spiritual practice and vocation. We will examine the relationship between the inner and outer worlds and the continuum from active to contemplative as we identify what we feel called to do and be in the world. We will turn our questions and doubts into prayers and explore how to recognize when we are answered and how we are guided.
Week Four: Facing the Unknown: Making peace with ourselves, others, life, death. The one thing we know (and often deny) is that we don’t know what’s going to happen. Both life and death are unpredictable. What will happen to us, the people we love, the very planet is uncertain. We will discover and share ways to pray for, and embody, the peace that passes understanding.
Meet the Presenter
Novelist, poet, and interfaith minister, Elizabeth Cunningham recently published her debut work of nonfiction, My Life as a Prayer: a multifaith memoir. She is best known for The Maeve Chronicles, a series of award-winning novels, featuring a feisty Celtic Magdalen. In addition to writing, Cunningham has been a counselor in private practice for more than twenty-five years. She is also a prayer, as in “a prayer is one who prays.” She lives in the Valley of the Mahicantuck (the river that flows both ways aka the Hudson) on unceded land that was home to the Lenape.
From workshop participants and in response to presentations at Unitarian Fellowships:
That was magical! Thank you for facilitating and gathering that workshop and mostly for being you! -LC
Thank you so much for a beautiful service this morning. You touched many people! -JK
It was a lovely and inspiring service, Elizabeth! Your ability to voice our shared experience, to articulate the things the rest of us fumble to convey, and to do so with grace and humor and a beautiful singing voice is a joy to behold! -AM
Readers response to My Life as a Prayer.
I have been reading your book and feel so blessed to have it as a companion on my journey. So much of what you write about I can relate to in my own life. When I curl up with my cup of tea or coffee and pick up your book I feel like you are here with me, talking to me as companion. -BH
It is hard to put to words the impact this book has had in my heart and soul. I feel that it has stirred an awakening and has called for a change. -CL
I love your honesty, your amazing poetry, and all that you contemplate as I have in my own way–what can we do? It clearly includes prayer every morning and any other parts of the day and more. I just wanted you to know just how impactful your book is. -LS
“My Life as a Prayer is a wise and careful religious memoir written by a sympathetic contemporary religious seeker—a prayerful touch point amid a world of difficulties.”
—Foreword Reviews
Opening Excerpt
I don’t know what prayer is. I don’t know what it isn’t. I don’t know how prayer works or if it works. I don’t know who receives prayers or who answers them. Or if not who, then what. I know only one thing for sure. If a singer is one who sings, and a writer is one who writes, then it follows that a prayer is one who prays, which means….
I am a prayer…
…[Prayer is] one of the great mysteries and consistencies of human existence. And why just human? Who is to say that trees don’t pray, or rivers, or rocks, or all the life (the one life) that is this earth?
Maybe everything is a prayer.
Thanks for pondering with me.
Chapter 18 Excerpt
My will, Thy will, Whose will?
Once, between sleeping and waking, I heard these words:
“People misunderstand God’s will. It is not imposed. It is not opposed. It is more like a seed that grows. Not my will or thy will. It is tending a garden.”
I remember entering into relationship with my mother-in-law’s long untended garden, how patient and tenacious its life, how willing it was to teach me if I was willing to pay attention. That’s what tending is, paying attention, to light, shade, soil, water, what conditions does this or that plant need to thrive.
Maybe all relationships are or could be such co-creations. Friendships, marriages, the ever-changing balance between parents and children, communities, nations. What if, before we willed anything, we asked, what is thriving here, what is needed here, what is or isn’t my part to play?
It would take patience, we would make mistakes, but maybe something would grow. It always seems like a miracle when a seed breaks open, puts down roots, reaches for light, becomes what it is.
Chapter 20 Excerpt
Daily Prayer Practicing the Presence
I confess: I have been praying more as if I were a god, an ineffectual one, than to whatever divine mercy or mystery I want to believe exists. I know I know nothing, but I forget. I pray for what I think would be best for the people, the planet. I pile cares on my back and shoulder the world. How can I fail to stagger under the weight, and, more than likely, fall on my face, fall down on the earth I love so much. I want to pray like leaves falling when it’s time, flying on the wind. I want to entrust all the ones I love to love. I want to believe they, we, all of us will find our way. The earth knows how to circle and spin. All green life knows how to die and rise, responsible for everything or for nothing.
Read Elizabeth's Exclusive Article for The Rowe Community
