Lord, make me a channel of your peace, where there is hatred I may bring love, where there is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, where there is discord I may bring harmony, where there is air I may bring truth, where there is doubt I may bring faith, where there is despair I may bring hope, where there are shadows I may bring light, where there is sadness I may bring joy. Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted. To understand than to be understood, to love and to be loved. For it is by forgetting self that one finds, it is by forgiving that one is forgiving, it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen.
When we reach deep inside to access the power of prayer, it not only
can change our life or our heart or others’ lives, but it also has the ability to change the world in myexperience.
I want to start today with a funny story about prayer. It happened in a small town in India, and a person decided to open up a bar business, which was right opposite of a temple and the temple and its congregation obviously we’re not so happy about this bar opening. So they started a campaign to lock the bar from opening with petitions, and they also prayed daily against this business. Well, as work progressed when it was almost complete and was about to open just a few days later, a strong, excuse me, lightening happened and struck the bar and it was burnt to the ground, but temple folks were at the smug in their outlook after that. Until the bar owner began to sue the temple authorities on the grounds that the temple through its congregational prayers was ultimately responsible for the demise of his bar shop, either directly or indirectly through their actions.
So this went to court and it’s reply to the court the temple vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection that their prayers were the reason for this bar’s demise. As the judge looked over kind of all the paperwork and listened to everybody’s comments, and he just didn’t know, he said, ”I really don’t know how to judge in this case and what I should do, because it appears we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer and we have an entire temple and it’s devotees that do not.”
Whether you believe or not, I invite you to continue to take this prayer challenge over the next severaldays. See what you experience, what changes you discover in your own heart and also in the world. Eachtime of day, there’s also different energies. So experience and try out these prayers during the different times of the day to see how that affects your physiology and understand the different times of the day and the different energies that happen during those times of the day.
I want again, remind you to set your intention today for what you want, what you need. Could be world peace could be healing, could be justice because there’s, again, a power in your intention and a power in our collective praying together. So you want to feel deeply that your prayers do make a difference.
The prayer that I have for today is probably one that you all know, but it is one of my favorites. Mother Theresa, was also one of her favorites and she’s a role model of mine. She used to say that prayer in action is love and love in action is service and the fruit of silence is prayer and the fruit of prayer is faith and the fruit of faith is love and the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is priests.
So I hope you find this prayer gives you some peace and opens the door to a deeper connection for you.
In Sufism we talk about dying before you die. Experiencing that eternal life of your spirit now in this life to live God’s light and share God’s light in the world now. We call this the fana or the annihilation or absorption in God. It represents a breaking down of the ego and a recognition of the fundamental unity of God in our enlightened state. We begin to recognize that there is no existence, but the one.
So I hope this prayer today gives you an experience of that totality. It gives you an experience of
reaching out beyond your ego, into something greater. Thank you for joining me today and I look forward to our next time together and our next prayer. Salaam alaikum, peace be with you.
Maxine Salima Adelstein M.Ed., D.D.
Salima helps people to discover and embody the deep truth of their beauty and essence through her work as a healer and teacher. She is a Murshid Murabbi Ruhi, (Sufi Spiritual Guide) in the Shadhilyya Sufi tradition, a rank given to her by her guide, Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal. Her heart is filled with the joy and compassion that result from living in the heart of God.
