Kate Loving Shenk

Dear Goddess, What can the Occupy Movement teach us about prayer?

We pray for the safety of the people who are beaten.

We pray that the message of the Occupy Movement gets heard by more and more people.

We pray that career politicians get voted out for once and for all.

Take Joe Pitts for instance. This man is like a fossil in the political scene of Lancaster County and has been for years and years and years. His followers are fossils too.

Joe Pitts held a  town hall meeting the other evening, and  Occupy Lancaster showed up and made their opinions known. Tomaso, my husband, was there. He turned it to a distraught  Joe Pitts supporter and said, “You know who the Occupiers remind me of?”

The Pitts supporter said he did not know.

Tomaso said, “The Tea Party!”

About a year ago, the tea party was making quite a scene at  town hall meetings all across the country. Joe Pitts and his supporters thought those protests were pretty cool.

But when the occupiers do the same thing, they are called renegades.

I hope that one of the Occupiers runs against Joe Pitts, and wins. Then the irony of the situation will be lost on no one.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess,  Today’s radio interview with August Gold helped me envision a  different direction for my life sharing prayers with all of you. Sharing prayers is a spiritual practice. We share Prayers with one another here on this prayer blog every day. When one or more come together in a spirit of prayer, miracles do happen.

I would like to encourage people to write their own prayers. August Gold said that prayer is a conversation we are having with life. Life is not what happens to us, but what happens for us.

This way of looking at life turns us into Victors rather than Victims.

At the end of the show, August Gold recommended a special exercise for all of us here.

As we leave the house every day, August Gold recommended that we  ask this special question: “Where are you? Let me see Your Face!”  (The face of Divinity).

Then we go about our day. August says that this is a very powerful exercise. The answer to our question will show up in ways we may not recognize.

Mother Teresa used to always call the lepers, “Christ the Leper.” I think she might’ve gotten that from St. Francis, who used to be  terrified of lepers until he saw them all as Jesus Himself.

So as we exercise our spiritual prayer muscle, we are growing our faith. August says that Faith is defined by our experience, not by ancestrial belief systems, or by faith as defined by some one else.

When we develop faith because we have lived it, then we are free.

Prayer does this for those of us who pray.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess, Thank you for surrounding my patients and their newborn baby with protection last night. The baby was living in a placenta with an undiagnosed Vasa Previa, which is a collection of blood vessels in the placenta with an umbilical cord that inserts itself superficially upon the surface of the placenta. When these vessels erupt, those babies usually die.

None of these things happened last night.

I say many a silent prayer over the course of an evening for my patients. When I see sure calamity everted, I have to think that prayer creates an aura of safety for everybody involved.

All we have to do is to actively call in the unseen helpers to orchestrate our lives.

This involves complete surrender, and a willingness to give over any control we think we ever had, to the highest power that lives within us and outside of us, too.

We do this because there is no other choice.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess, The holiday season has officially begun, and there are some people who will continue the celebration from now until the New Year, nearly drinking themselves to death in the process. I used to be one of those people. And then one day, I had enough. That day was 2/22/2002. That was when I realized that 22 was my life Path number.

The mystical meaning of numbers plays a very important part of our lives, whether we know it or not. Life becomes a lot easier once we acknowledge this importance.

For instance, a number may appear in a dream. Or an important number will show up as we drive along and  see it on a license plate. Perhaps  we look up and see the configuration of seven geese flying above our heads.

Or take the example of an address that once was very important to us. The house I was raised in was 248. Anytime I see that configuration of numbers, I feel a silent blessing from my parents, who’ve passed from this earthly life.

Today, let us acknowledge the way these signatures show up in our lives. It is possible to miss these entirely. But today, a nudge arises to let is know we are Loved.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess, Today is a beautiful Thanksgiving morning. Late autumn is a time for reflection. I am still at the hospital, after a long night of taking care of quiet patients.

I have some great news I want to share with everybody. I signed up for Kathleen Gage’s course on “How to Create a Kindle Bestseller.”
I signed up under Connie Ragen’s affiliate link, and as a bonus, I will be writing a chapter for a kindle book she is compiling. Those of us who signed up under her name, will undoubtedly become Kindle best-selling authors by the time I release my prayer prescription book in early Spring.

My chapter will be about prayer as a spiritual practice. This will perfectly dovetail with the release of my book. I couldn’t have planned this kind of promotion if I tried.

And this is the point. Planning can get in the way of spontaneity. Too rigid of a plan can make it impossible to see alternative roads to freedom.

So today we give thanks for everything that has already happened and we give thanks for the moment at hand. We give thanks for the fact that we are breathing. We give thanks for the fact that we are moving and laughing and celebrating.

My love to you all on this beautiful day.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess, Today’s picture represents another episode of the flooding of the Conestoga River, 11/23/2011. We have had a lot of that lately. I hope and pray that everybody is safe as we go about our Thanksgiving holiday.

Even the warning of a flash flood probably created a post traumatic syndrome kind of experience for many people in this area. So many people lost everything in the last floods when two hurricanes came back to back to Lancaster County.

Dear Angels, please wrap your wings of protection around everybody on the East Coast today, and everywhere else, too!

May everyone be safe in their travels.

May we help those who need it when the time comes, with gifts of food, love, money or understanding.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess,  The occupy movement has underscored the desperation of our society. The nuclear family is over. Extended families are more and more becoming the norm of the day.

What are the hidden lessons in desperation? No one likes to admit to being desperate, but let us  name the truth and move on.

The holidays are here.  With more and more people out of work, creative gift giving and creating will be the experience of this season. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge comes to mind. He had an epiphany. His story rises desperation to its highest level.

Many years ago, I lived with an Iranian man who could not tolerate the hype of the Christmas season. That experience taught me that I could not tolerate the hype of the Christmas season either.

As I was writing these words, an eagle took flight out of the beautiful tree before Ulysses and I.

What was the eagle telling us?

Soar like an eagle.

Claim your rightful place in the universe.

Be who you are without comparing yourself to someone else.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Embrace your enemies and heal the world.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess,   Thank you for the earth upon which we place each step during the course of all of our days. The earth receives our vibrations. The more we practice a gentle and deliberate placement of our feet upon the earth, the earth mother thanks us  in return.

I have the opportunity to receive the nature of trees, flowers, now Autumn leaves into my every day life. Today the sky is gray, the leaves have fallen to the ground. The river is the color of a dark blue green.

Not too long ago, the river raged nearly to our door during two hurricanes that were timed back to back. Now you wouldn’t ever guess the river could be so violent. Today she is calm, like the surface of glass, in this moment in time.

If we catch it right, we see the magnificent Heron soaring just above the tree line, following the curve of the winding river.

The geese who talk back to Ulysses, are ever present in our lives, especially this time of year and early spring. In fact, I just placed the video of the geese on the Video Blog talking to Ulysses recently on one of our walks up river.

Thank you for the gift of just noticing all of the beauty in our lives.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess, Today, Ulysses and I made a video of us skipping. That was really fun. Some of the videos have Opera background music and I like that one the best, but I never know which one has it and which one doesn’t. Go to the video blog tab at the top of this page and scroll down the page to find the video.

Ulysses makes it easy to celebrate every moment of every day. What a great mindfulness teacher! No wonder his nick name is: Zen Master.

Today was our second Customer Service presentation of this year. Our theme is survival. Our next performances need to go straight up Maslow’s Pyramid, theme by theme.

The next one up is safety.

Safety and corporations may not go hand in hand but we must insure our own safety, however we are led to define that. Even if it is taking care of ourselves before we take care of everyone else.

I hear nurses say that in the space of a 12 hour shift, they did not even once go to the bathroom or drink one glass of water.

So safety must first of all, begin with me taking care of me.

Om Peace Amen

–>

Dear Goddess, Napping is one of my all-time favorite things to do. Especially when it is raining outside. And foggy.

I am going out to the hospital later to do a customer service presentation. We used to do four hour marathon performances, which reminded me of a mini spiritual retreat.

Now because of all of the cutbacks, we are only doing one half hour.

The four hour marathons were a good way for the staff to relax. Now that our performance is part of staff meetings, it just isn’t as much fun as it used to be, mainly because staff meetings have a punitive overall feeling to them.

However, adding our performance to those meetings has a way of making the experience more upbeat and happy.

So we are performing a service to our staff and the hospital.

Our theme today is: Survival.

In reality, survival is at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Something tells me we have a long way to go.

Om Peace Amen

–>