Raised a Catholic, I repeated the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday at mass. One night, when I was a young teen, I lay awake with a question on my mind: What did all those words in the prayer really mean? Religion, I had come to believe, was a mystery. Perhaps the words of the prayer held some secret clue to living a good and purposeful life. I repeated the words again and again, stopping at each phrase to puzzle out the meaning.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be
thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Though I discovered no secret meaning then or since, I was soothed by the poetic resonance of the words. Decades later I am agnostic but still love the Lord’s Prayer. I repeat it to myself on dark nights, on long walks, and in moments of stress when I need to flood myself with calm.
Prayers and Sankalpas
Though yoga is no substitute for organized religion, I practice it about as often as I attended mass as a child. In the last moments of class, right before we stir from shavasana, the instructor invites us to call to mind a prayer or a “sankalpa.” Raised in a Christian tradition, prayer was familiar to me, whereas sankalpa,a Hindu practice, was not. With a bit of research, I learned the difference. A prayer is an entreaty, a request of someone or something. In contrast, a sankalpa is an expression of intent — a way of being or a resolution born from the innermost part of ourselves. A prayer looks to another beyond the self; a sankalpa calls forth the self. But both point to the existence of something mysterious, something just beyond the reach of words and reason.
Ordinary words fail to capture this mystery, but poetry gets close. Poetry is ingested through our minds, but digested by our senses. The cadence of the words, how they sound in context, the images they create, even the mouthfeel as we say them, contribute to the power of verse. Poetry is something more than the sum of its parts. While I am no longer religious, I believe we are all something more — that there is something more — to our existence than the biological bookends of birth and death. We are not just words; we are poetry.
Perhaps this is why the Lord’s Prayer still speaks to me even if organized religion does not. More and more, I find myself reciting the prayer to bring me peace and calm. While the verse comforts me, it doesn’t have the same resonance it once did. My notion of God no longer lives outside me, but suffuses me. The power is not outside me, but within. The sankalpa form of reverence is more aligned to my present sense of the mysteries of the human spirit.
Sankalpa for Peace and Comfort
My version of the sankalpa is addressed not to myself — the thinking, feeling, speaking, moving being. The part of myself I think of as “me” is a combination of biology and experience. My brain thinks, interprets, and understands. My personality colors my experiences and frames them for my brain. But I am no more my brain and personality than a business is its executives, operations, and marketing departments. Though important — even critical — what makes me me is not any part of myself, but all parts linked together and more besides.
Words and language are communication tools of the human organism. They facilitate our self-talk and help us interact with others. Yet, as good as even the best communicator may be, words fail to describe this greater-than-the-sum part of ourselves. We have all felt this part that knows no words. We can describe around it, but cannot describe “it.” I know it not as a “thing” but as a feeling. In those moments when I touch the infinite, time slips away and all is openness, all is peace, all is joy — a melting between definable self and all. I have felt this ineffable whatsit many times, but never for more than the space of a few heartbeats. Knowing it’s there is some comfort, even if I cannot touch it from one moment to the next. Like an underground river, I sense its nature is flow, its availability variable with the density of matter obscuring it. The words are mere tools — earth-movers — to lessen the space between what appears on the surface of myself and what lies beneath. My words, Sankalpa for Peace and Comfort, need not be your words. I share them because you, like me, may revere the poetry of prayer, but need new language to commune with the underlying mystery to which prayer speaks.
Love fills me to wholeness.
In my wholeness, I am resilient to harms; courageous in my pursuits; humble with self-knowledge; and compassionate to others.
In my wholeness, I am home.
In those moments when I feel bereft, despondent, lost, tired, overwhelmed, sleepless, anxious, or impatient, the poetry of these words guide me back to the place of peace and belonging. The spirits of both the human and the holy are mysteries. But the mystery also flows through me, it flows through us; it is us — the best of our selves.
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Previously published on Medium
Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash
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