This past summer, I drove along the roads of Whidbey Island in the Northwest and spotted a sign for a private lane that said Pray Lane. I circled back and took a picture, certain, at some point, I would consider this fork in the road, however accidental, if you believe in accidents. The sign stopped me in my tracks. Such occurrences often trigger careful consideration of a road or message not yet considered. I had to pay attention, even if I didn’t know to what I had to pay attention.
Pray Lane. How do we go along a road, any road, and pray? And what do we expect doing so? How do we live a life that moves us to center and to an awareness that is more than the sum total of our daily existence?
Taking time to pray sounds religious, but if mindful, it becomes an active and vigilant embrace of the divine within, no matter what your faith. If we truly center ourselves, the possibility that our lives has purpose and value, beyond the one we imagined, becomes more conceivable.
At points in the road called my life, I have felt lost. I plunder to depths that make me question my worth. At the end of the confusion, I consider I know less now than I did a moment ago. I question my value to my husband, my friends and those I work with. I ask if I have done all that I need to do up to this moment.
How do I create the passion and joy of living each day as if it were the last? How do I impart, genuinely, my appreciation to those around me who do so much?
Consider life a prayer. It is not the begging to something outside of ourselves. Rather it is the passionate embrace of a truth that given attention is possible within. It is the heartfelt thanks we give to those we love and all we have.
Pray Lane. Wouldn’t it be amazing if our days sauntered along such a road? We would stop, take a deep breath, and encircle our self, our hopes, and those we love, and say: Thank you, G-d, for these gifts. Naturally, being a gardener, that road would be blessed with endless flora and fauna. Truly a vista, inside and out, of amazing options: to be more ourselves, more grateful, more of the everything for which we wish.
Amen.
Leave a Reply