Jan 1, 2010

A prayer for 2010

The new year begins.

I am borrowing the poem/prayer below and offering it to you as a sign of gratitude. As a gesture of love. As a symbol of where I am right now. My new year's resolution is to repeat this prayer and reap its deep beneficial effects. I hope you will too.

This is a perfect moment. It’s a perfect moment because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I’ve been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of us—even those of us who ­don’t believe in the power of prayer.

And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods, the God beyond all Gods... the Girlfriend of God... the Teacher of God... the Goddess who invented God.





DEAR GODDESS, you who always answer our very best questions, even if we ignore you:

Please be here with us right now. Come inside us with your sly slippery slaphappy mojo. Invade us with your silky succulent salty sweet haha.

Hear with our ears, Goddess. Breathe with our lungs. See through our eyes.


DEAR GODDESS, you who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads or hears this benediction.

I pray that you will give us what we ­don’t even know we need—not just the boons we think we want, but everything we’ve always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.






DEAR GODDESS, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Many of us don’t even know who we really are.

We’ve forgotten that our souls live forever.

We’re blind to the fact that every little move we make sends ripples through eternity. Some of us are even ignorant of how extravagant, relentless, and practical your love for us is.

Please wake us up to the shocking truths. Use your brash magic to help us see that we are completely different from we’ve been led to believe, and more exciting than we can possibly imagine.

Guide us to realize that we are all unwitting messiahs who are much too big and ancient to fit inside our personalities.


DEAR GODDESS, you sly universal virus with no fucking opinion:

Help us to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.

Teach us to know the distinction between oppressive self-­control and liberating self-control.

Awaken in us the power to do the half-­right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.

And arouse the Wild Woman within us—even if we are men.



DEAR GODDESS, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions, and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed all of us wise and sexy virtuosos.

Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to us, no matter how long we have suffered from it, and even if we have become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.

Conjure an aura of protection around us so that we will receive an early warning if we are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague into our lives in the future.



DEAR GODDESS, you psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:

I pray that you will inspire us to kick our own asses with abandon and regularity.

Give us bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.

Help us learn the difference between stupid suffering and smart suffering.

Provoke us to throw away or give away everything we own that encourages us to believe we’re better than anyone else.

Brainwash us with your compassion so that we never love our own freedom more than anyone else’s freedom.

And make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for us to be in love with anyone or anything that’s no good for us.




DEAR GODDESS, you riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:

I pray that you provide us with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws, and traditions that hinder us from loving the world the way you do.

Show us how to purge the wishy-­washy wishes that distract us from our daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach us that we can have anything we want if we will only ask for it in an unselfish way.

DEAR GODDESS, you who just pretend to be crazy so you can get away with doing what's right:

Help us to be like you—wildly disciplined, voraciously curious, exuberantly elegant, shockingly friendly, fanatically balanced, blasphemously reverent, mysteriously truthful, teasingly healing, lyrically logical, and blissfully rowdy.



And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these pregnant moments you have begun to change all of us in the exact way we needed to change in order to become the gorgeous geniuses we were born to be.





Amen


Om


Hallelujah


Shalom


Namaste


More power to you




Oh, but one more thing DEAR GODDESS, you pregnant slut who scorns all mediocre longing:

Please give us donkey clown piƱatas full of chirping crickets,

ceramic spice jars containing 10 million-­year-old salt from the Himalayas,

gargoyle statues guaranteed to scare away the demons,

lucid dreams while we’re wide awake,

enough organic soup and ice cream to feed all the refugees,

emerald parachutes and purple velvet gloves and ladders made of melted-down guns,

a knack for avoiding other people’s personal hells,

radio-controlled, helium-filled flying rubber sharks to play with,

magic red slippers to contribute to the hopeless,

bathtubs full of holy water to wash away our greed,

secret admirers who are not psychotic stalkers,

mousse cakes baked in the shapes of giant question marks,

stories about lightning strikes that burn down towers where megalomaniacal kings live,

solar-powered sex toys that work even in the dark,

knowledge of secret underground rivers,

mirrors that the Dalai Lama has gazed into,

and red wagons carrying the treats we were deprived of in childhood.


~Rob Brezsny

















Happy 2010!











26 comments:

  1. happy new year lola! everyone else is taking a quick nap before the new year...wonderful prayer...donkey clown pinata! yay! crazy for creation! oh how i love it! warm wishes for filling the blank pages of tomorrow will amazing stories!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just got around to reading this in San Francisco, about 15 minutes before the new year arrives. What a wonderful way to welcome it in. Thanks so much for this beautiful prayer!!! I will read it again tomorrow and again and again throughout the year.

    Blessings and all joy to you!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Happy 2010, Lola, from snowy Dublin!!!!!
    Amazing prayer, I particularly like the "one and just one more thing..." and the mousse cakes baked in the shapes of giant question marks.
    Thanks for sharing it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. A wildly wonderful and provocative poem!!! A good wake-up call to brain cells stuck in old habits.
    Thank you. Happy New Year to you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wonderful wonderful post! Where on earth did you find that prayer? Just love it. And the pics! Happy New Year and thanks for sharing :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Happy New Year Nathalie.
    Thank you for posting that wonderful prayer. I am going to copy it to my special ideas folder and reread it regularly.
    Martha

    PS: The lentils and Prosecco were brilliant.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Life Is Beautiful!!! Thank You:)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you all for your lovely comments. Best wishes for a very happy new year to all.
    Brian~ YOU are the master at the art of filling blank pages with wonderful stories! You inspire us. Smiles.
    Natalie~ Kisses to you, dear and to the family.
    RNSANE~ We all need a little inspiration, no? Happy you liked it.
    Mimi~ Glad you enjoyed it, doll.
    Bonnie~ We need to start anew!
    Ruth~ The author is Rob Brezsny, a very interesting fellow. Happy MMX to you too!
    Martha~ I'm glad you liked it. My name is Eleonora!
    Chuck~ It is, it is!!!

    Ciao!

    ReplyDelete
  9. What a wonderful succulent wild woman prayer! I wish for you the best year ever, Lola - one filled with all and only the very best of everything! xxx

    ReplyDelete
  10. Happy 2010 to you, too, Lola!

    ReplyDelete
  11. WOW! I'm speechless. Some prayer!
    Same to you, kiddo.

    ReplyDelete
  12. The very Best!!!
    thankn you!
    smiles.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Lola - that is one of the most beautiful blog posts - the words and pictures - that I have ever seen. I particularly loved (although it is hard to single any of them out) the three older ladies in their swimming hats. I hope I look as good as that when I reach their age.

    Is the young boy in the picture your son? If he is then he is very handsome.

    Happy new year
    x
    Julie

    ReplyDelete
  14. An amazing post, so beautifully written and with fantastic photos.

    Happy New Year..and thank you for the wonderful post.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Grazie for this wonderful prayer! Felice L'Anno Nuovo!
    I look forward to reading more of your wonderful posts in 2010!

    Baci e abbracci,
    Rosemary

    ReplyDelete
  16. Sorry about that Eleonora! I think I was still feeling the effects of the previous evenings Prosecco.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Thank you all, wow I'm so happy you enjoyed this post.

    Nicky~ We are all goddesses. Thank you for your kind wishes!
    Saretta~ Buon Anno!!
    Rosaria~ auguri, Maestra.
    Ellen~ Grazie!
    Julie~ I am touched by your words! Yes the colorful ladies are my favorites too, but the befanas with the laptop aren't bad either...
    Anne~ It was my pleasure!
    Rosemary~ Happy New Year to you too, and thanks!
    Martha~ No worries, I'm still a little hung-over myself!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Lola you are so beautiful, clever and loving...

    all the very best wishes for you always... ribbon :)

    ReplyDelete
  19. I say what Ribbon said, plus TALENTED. I will have to go back and read this a second time, just to take it all in!
    Thank you for all that you share dear Lola.
    xoxoxox

    ReplyDelete
  20. I missed two favorite ladies in my replies!

    Ribbon~ you have been a very inspiring figure in this past year!
    Lori Ann~ My sweet mermaid, I am so lucky to have met you. Among the most precious gifts from blogging.

    Ciao!

    ReplyDelete
  21. I wish you the happiest and healthiest of years, my wonderful friend from Italy! Buon Anno!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Hello Elonora,
    I just popped in to say you post such lovely photo's. i have enjoyed reading your prayer. I miss Roma & all it's wonderful places to visit! I wish you a Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Mi hai lasciata con una piccola lacrima negli occhi... troppo bello questo posting!

    Tanti saluti dalla Germania e buon anno,

    Petra

    ReplyDelete
  24. Jim~ And I to you, my giant friend from Boston.
    Lesley~ Well you can come back any time you like. Happy new year to you too.
    Petra~ I'm thrilled it moved you like that. Happy 2010 to you too!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Your generosity cup runneth over, Eleonora. Heart-stopping photographs and words coming straight from the heart. Thank YOU for a gorgeous year of reading, eating, and friending.

    ReplyDelete

Share!