{"id":150,"date":"2022-11-04T08:21:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T08:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/?p=150"},"modified":"2022-11-04T08:21:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T08:21:21","slug":"give-us-this-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/04\/give-us-this-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Give us this Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been an intense season of change in my life. \u00a0Last spring I started studying with a meditation teacher after a synchronistic meeting. \u00a0I had already been engaged in a meditation practice- survival meditation as I thought of it. \u00a0I did not start meditating to enhance my life, or because I thought it was something I should do as a spiritual person. \u00a0I started meditating because I felt like if I didn\u2019t, I might just lose myself in the Universe and be unable to manage being alive. \u00a0And my practice deepened further when my healer\/teacher withdrew from my life. \u00a0By last spring I was ready to get some guidance and focus to stabilize and enhance what I was already doing. \u00a0The method I studied was a hindu\/yogic style practiced and taught by Paramahansa Yogananda. \u00a0As soon as I began the techniques of this path, something happened that surprised me, but maybe shouldn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

Daily Bread<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jesus returned to me. \u00a0I think this happened for a number of reasons. \u00a0Firstly, I had not engaged in devotional prayer for a very very long time and praying that way brought me back to practices I had engaged in many years before as a serious disciple of Jesus. \u00a0Secondly, well, Jesus and I had a thing. \u00a0We had a deep and committed relationship until I up and left him in the late 90\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Since Jesus came to me again, I have found myself closing a large circle in my life. \u00a0I find myself feeling comfortable thinking of myself as Christian\u2026.almost. \u00a0I have found a few Christian mystics who feel like my tribe and my people, something I searched for with very little success early in my life. \u00a0I find myself reading the Bible again with eyes opened in a very different way than they ever have been. \u00a0Jesus and I made up.<\/p>\n

I am in the midst of transition where I cannot see what will happen next and it seems terrifying at times. \u00a0I would never ever have thought I would find myself praying something as traditional as the Lord\u2019s Prayer, but I seem to be profoundly coming back home in an alive and authentic way that has included saying and appreciating this prayer\u2026.almost. \u00a0Some things about Christianity still chafe. \u00a0The almost exclusive referencing of God as male, the literalism that sometimes dominates reading of biblical text, and especially the institutional atrophy\u00a0that has reduced some churches to rote supporters of a social status quo. \u00a0All of that feels dead. \u00a0However, there is a reason the Lord\u2019s Prayer is said so frequently. \u00a0I incorporated it back into my personal prayer mostly for the line, \u201cGive us this day our daily bread\u201d \u00a0which I feel is another way of recognizing that the whole Universe is a gift running through my hands and doesn\u2019t belong to me at all. \u00a0And yet, in this moment, I have everything I need and so much more.<\/p>\n

It is hard for me to pray this\u00a0prayer without modification. \u00a0It holds powerful truth, but for me it also holds some pain. \u00a0So, what does one do? \u00a0Retranslate.<\/p>\n

Here is my Lord\u2019s Prayer that I\u2019m trying on in the morning and evening:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been an intense season of change in my life. \u00a0Last spring I started studying with a meditation teacher after a synchronistic meeting. \u00a0I had already been engaged in a meditation practice- survival meditation as I thought of it. \u00a0I did not start meditating to enhance my life, or because I thought it was something I should do as a spiritual person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}