#30 Prayer as Elemental Embodiment
I felt the presence of GOD while sitting on my bed.
Fires have been a yearly worry since the fire tornado on July 26th, 2018 during the Carr Fire. That same year, Northern California suffered the most devastating fire in state history starting on November 8th, 2018. The Camp Fire was only 90 minutes south of us. The Park Fire on July 24th, 2024 in nearby Chico was displacing people I loved and unsettling parts of me, annually frightened by wildfire for the last seven years. I sat crossed-legged on my bed, listening to Yaima, my husband reading something by Jeffrey Kripal. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, centering on the safety of the present moment, at least for myself. My heart ached.
I believe in the elemental oneness of all life. We’re all made of fire, water, earth and air. I wanted to call on any power I could to have mercy on the people, animals, and forests suffering. I called on the water inside my body. We are made of more water than matter. I asked that water to travel through the land and sky and help contain the flames. I focused on the fire in me becoming still and that serenity quieting the wind. I felt the power of influence in stilling the fire within me. I practiced sending that calmness down into the earth and sent all the love I could through the elements to the land, animals and people affected.
As I prayed in this new and wondrous way, I heard a song playing on my phone, repeating one word over and over… Metakuyiasin, Metakuyiasin. Jane Winther whispered the word first without music. just her lilting voice echoing this beautiful word. She was praying with me, I felt, though I had no idea what this word she was singing meant. I waited until the prayer felt complete and then asked my phone to show me the origins of this word.
Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ is a Lakota prayer meaning ‘all my relations.’ It is a prayer that recognizes we are not separate — not from each other, not from the fire, not from the water or the ancestors. I wasn’t praying to the fire. I was praying with it. Prayer seen through Lakota eyes is an action, an embodiment, a relationship being felt and honored.
Prayer isn’t a single human voice crying out for intervention by a sky god. It is the wisdom of a human soul, crying out as a still, small voice who is aware of their connection with every living thing. It is the elements of you and me, shifting to hold with the earth. Honoring the truth that we are all made of the same matter and lit up by the same Spirit and so can have influence over each other.
1 Kings 19:11-12 in the Old Testament bible says, “Then he was told, “Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. God will pass by. A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before him, but God wasn’t to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn’t in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper.”
I would enjoy a great showy earthquake of power at the precise right moment. To hear the voice of GOD by the earth splitting and swallowing up those causing evil sounds like fair retribution for some of the insanity on this planet. Fire that leads the good and destroys the bad seems like a fair godly decision. If I have learned anything, it is that the good and the bad are the same. If evil is swallowed up, then all of us will be counted amongst the digested.
Connection with GOD is not often in the big bangs and resurrections. Mystical relationships with the divine are far more simple then we would think. It would’ve been easy for me to meditate and ask some god external of me to help. It would’ve been natural to move on faster or listen less closely and miss the beauty of the song debuting to my ears. Silence. Presence. Listening within. This is the kind of prayer I can sink into.