Category: Prayer

A Warrior’s (Writer’s) Prayer

May 28, 2013 / Tom

Ah, the night, that time when the mind refuses its call to slumber, that time when rants and raves fill the heart with a desire unique to the tortured soul. Alone we stand even in good company, tired and crestfallen in our belief that we are deserved of something more rather than openly embracing that which we have chosen to ignore. It is here I pray, and in here I find the answer.

I beg of you, be silent you tortuous bastard! Let the body rest and let my flower bloom. Let the stars align and remove the clouds that hide them from my eyes. Clear me a path to heaven’s gate and do not stand in my way. Allow me in, and let me make a mockery of it all with the snap of my finger as my eyes open and reality once again sets in. Let me know that in the great God’s absence I am the Creator, and let such blasphemy fall upon the ears and lips of those too afraid to step outside of their cave. Let the light be seen by all, and make such fear blow away with the clouds that keep me from my Moon’s sweet light, and my risen Sun.

Give me strength to press on even in the darkness of my illusion. Let me shine the only light I see into the frayed corners of these darkened rooms and under those places where I pretend to rest at night. Give me the power to fly above the valleys of my own creation toward those great heights that await me, and do not give me cause to rest when there is so much work yet to be done. Harden in me that which is soft, and soften in me that which has hardened.

Let words be my sword and experience be my shield. Allow me no safe passage where none exists, and allow me no safe harbor in those dry lands of my own design. Let me not pass my cup to others unless it is their will to quench a thirst of which I have no judgment. Allow my shoulders to be strong to carry the crosses I chose to bear, and allow my hands their strength to shed that wood that no longer serves me well. Give me strength to suffer in silence when I must, and the power of voice to scream a prayer when it serves the fires burning deep within my soul.

This I beg. Allow this warrior to not pass without his mark clearly stamped. Let not his body rot lest it feed a forest, or his blood be spilled lest it find a meaningful place to land. Make his sweat that holy water of legends, and his story a fabled treasure for those who have lost their drunken minds.

I accept it all with an open mind, an open heart and a waiting soul.

Amen.

Ode to the Lover

March 15, 2012 / tomgrasso

I walked silently through the mist into your arms. You loved me, you cherished me, you gave me sight and showed me unending gratitude. You held me up, you showed me a way, and as you gently kissed my lips I knew I was Home.

So begins my inspiration. Imagine a love so strong yet so tender as to be a rock and a sheet of silk at the same time. Imagine the acceptance, the trust, the loyalty all combined with the frailty and the humanity of the Creator. That is the Love I feel in my heart at this very moment, the love that is inspiring me beyond these mere words.

It’s not friendship, although we call it that. It’s not sex, although we call it that too. It’s not even love, although we often entangle the egoic meaning of that word with it. It is Love, God, Being, Self…words hardly capable of accurately describing but surely necessary to communicate the feeling and sheer emotion of the moment Love hits you where the ego once stood.

It is that moment that you cast away old demons even if they do return from time to time. It is that moment that you don’t seek the self but offer the Self. It is that moment when you turn from the “lower” versions of you to the higher version of You. It is that moment when you, to borrow a Dyer euphemism, “let go and let God.” It is a moment of shear beauty when the stories you have told and live by cease to exist. It is a moment so clear in your state of being as to need absolutely no interpretation. It is Heaven, Nirvana, Enlightenment.

You are Home.

Life will interrupt these moments of shear Pleasure. It has to, as the purpose of life is to experience. Your experience would be quite absent without the Yin to Yang. The river of your life could not flow to the Great Ocean without the journey, and the Ocean itself would dry up in the midst of a drought of such experience. A Voice commands me, “Go with it my friend, hold onto the pain and the Pleasure alike. Take the loneliness with the camaraderie, take the droughts with the inundation of rain, take the earth quaking beneath your feet along with the solid ground. Absorb it all, and let each show you the way.” I follow the command.

Entangled in sweat, the heated exchange of a million moments resolved in the essence of this one you have taken me. The screams of your pleasure provide me my own my Love, the moment of climax not the end but merely another beginning. You own me and I you without claim, you are my queen and I your king; my goddess and I your god.

We discover a new chapter, and begin to write a book the world will surely read albeit in a language most will not understand. Gone are the judgments that bind us; replaced with the foundation of Spirit entangled in our human purpose. At points you will be White to my Black, and others the opposite, but we will surely meet in the middle where the purest form of Love resides. Gone will be the bars that housed us replaced by the sweet bondage of something pure, warm and selfless. Each touch will bring a chill; each moment a memory to be replaced by another.

I draw a line with my finger down the small of your back. Your skin responds, your embrace invites me to provide you more. No words are exchanged as none are needed. Heaven itself is in our midst, and we enjoy the sweet nectar of something beyond the physical. You invite me in and I accept. Such is the realm of this Divine royalty.

To be so lost is to be so found. To be near the end is to find such a sweet and new beginning. To rid yourself of the tattered and rotting clothes you once clung to is to stand naked before the Universe. I love this nakedness. I love the tear stained rags I have left discarded on the sand. I love the sting of the Ocean as it cleanses my wounds. I love the chill of the wind as it wipes me of my false manhood. “Embrace it all and know it well, for it is the only way to heal,” offers a Voice from beyond. I will never know the Truth if I hold on to the lie; I will never know reality if I refuse to wake from the dream.

I love mySelf so that I may love You. I see the Divine in mySelf lest I ignore the Divine in You. I am joyful in your joy, pleasured by your ecstasy, emboldened by your bravery. You are more than the Moon, more than the Sun, more than the Angels themselves. I honor you by honoring me, and I love you with each breath of my soul. I bleed drops of blood made red by your Being. The arms I extend are not empty, and they are strong in the resolve to give all I have to give in them.

Peace to you, my Love. I hold you now in my heart, know you in my dreams and sing for you in my Soul. I humbly reside in my Aloneness and cast away all that I was for all that I am.

A Conversation with Mike

June 25, 2011 / tomgrasso

Dad, guess who?

My 4 year old son, Mike, is a special kind of guy. First, he is my son, which makes him special regardless of how many spiritual teachings I hear to the contrary. Second, he seems to have his eyes wide open and his head on a swivel. His open eyes allow him to focus intently on any given topic, while the “head on a swivel” means that such intense focus comes in only short spans. Even though the attention is short, he absorbs nearly everything a 4 year old can in that brief moment of attention. The following is an excerpt from a pretty brief conversation we had; a conversation that made the student the teacher and the teacher, well, astounded.

We were driving to my daughter’s dance recital. The radio was off, giving us both time to talk to each other and to share the ride without distraction. This portion of the discussion went went something like this:

Mike: Dad, I want to go play tennis.

Me: Really Mike? Where’d you learn how to play tennis?

Mike: In my brain (he still pronounces his “r”s as “w”s, adding to the cuteness of his methodology).

Me: Wow, so you learned how to play tennis in your brain?

Mike: Yeah Dad, and I could kill you with the ball!

Me: Mike, why would you want to do that?

Ok, so not very spiritual and not very peaceful but that’s my Mike. A more sensitive boy you’ll never meet, even if he says he want to join the Army to “kill bad guys”. See, he

Before I slay you, did you order the pepperoni or the mushroom?

follows that statement with, “and I want to be a pizza delivery boy so I can help people get their food.” Needless to say I am not that concerned at this stage about him becoming a Special Operative who assassinates bad guys in between deliveries of a large cheese with mushrooms. One of those I can certainly see him doing as the kind of boy he is now. The other? Well let’s just say I don’t see high-powered rifles and black makeup in his future. Of course, I could be wrong.

So, to continue our conversation. As I mentioned, his head is on a swivel as we pass an exclusive country club. There are people putting on a green near the highway.

Mike: Dad, is that golf?

Me: Sure is Mike. You like golf?

Mike: When we are done at Gianna’s dance thing, can we go there to play golf?

Me: I don’t think so Bud. That is a club that only allows members, and your Dad doesn’t want to pay to be a member.

Mike: Can I pay then?

Me: Sure Mike. Go get a job and earn the money. Then, if you decide you want to use that money to pay for a membership you can.

Mike: Dad, can you get me a job?

Me: Depends. Do you have any skills?

Mike: I have lots of skills. I can go potty, I can put on my shoes, I can cut down trees, and I can pick flowers. I can talk to birdies too, watch…

(rolls down car window and draws that focus on a robin sitting on the curb next to the traffic light we are stopped at)

Mike: tweet tweet tweet…oops scared him away. Dad I can scare birds. Tweet tweet tweet!!

Me: Mike, those are some cool skills. What others do you have?

Mike: I told you I can cut down trees and flowers. (Laughs) I can’t cut down flowers Dad, but I can pick them. (I laugh because I know Mike would cry if he ever hurt a tree).

Me: Well, maybe soon you can get a job. Then you can earn money and decide how to use it.

Mike: Dad, can we get ice cream?

I bet you can't see me, can you?

I love that swivel. I used to have one until adulthood stole it from me. How can I get it back? I mean I wonder when I made life so difficult and stopped seeing it in such simple terms as my 4 year old son. When did I make life so difficult? Probably when I decided that I needed a car to get to dance recitals and kids to do the dancing. I guess in most aspects I would not trade any of my life for the short attention span and swivel my son now enjoys. No, now is his time to use those gifts, and my time to allow him to use them. Someday it will be much different for him, but his Dad will always remember a simpler time when Army men delivered pizzas in their spare time (or was it the other way around?). I will remember these special little moments that not only remind me of who I am, but also of a world long left behind. It will be moments like this when I fondly remember the boy who stopped chasing butterflies and started chasing dreams.

Peace.

A Prayer of Remembrance

May 30, 2011 / tomgrasso

Dear God,
Please give me the courage and strength today to Remember.
Remember those who have had their light extinguished so that another light may shine, and to give evidence that in Truth all light is One,
Remember that in Love life holds supreme value, and that life itself is not to be wasted on ideas, fear and emotion.
Remember that the service of restraint must surpass the service of vengeance.

Dear God,
Please give me the cause today to Remember,
Remember those who suffer at the loss of a loved one,
Remember those sacrifices as so enormous as to be made only with the true and utmost reluctance.
Remember that Peace is the victory we seek, not vengeance, not retribution, and not satisfaction of a blood lust.

Allow us to remember that we cannot find Peace unless Peaceful,
And that we cannot find Hope unless Hopeful.
And that we cannot find love without first opening our arms to embrace it.
Today allow me to remember that we cannot forgive others until we have forgiven ourselves,
And that there is no liberty until we allow others to be free.

Dear God of Love, Unity and Compassion,
On this day allow me to remember there is no glory in killing,
There is no true glory on the battlefield, or in the upraised arms of the victor,
For thine alone is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory,
Forever and ever, Amen.

Peace. ☮
©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ