I've been experimenting with the Lord's Prayer as a structure of meditation and surrender, as a way to cope with fear and ineptitude, and as a way to deepen my understanding of the path of least resistance. If the unconscious is a dark foreboding monkey-shaped shadow jumping in the middle of a curve in the road at the edge of perception, the most profound form of that I've experienced is a feeling of fear akin to Anne Lamott's assertion she was fucked the day her son was born, the day she encountered the truth of her vulnerability. It does not get deeper or truthier than that, as far as I can tell. I'm using prayer, this one specific prayer, to face that truth. I know it makes me sound nuts. But what else have I got?

I used straight meditation from my early twenties up till recently, off and on. Which works just fine, but after 20 years leaves me wondering if I can't do more than counting to 10. I mean, yes, using the structure of 1 through 10 breaths to encounter sacred stillness is immensely helpful. It is an important and useful tool. But Stephen Levine tells an interesting story of meditation. (I keep typing medication accidentally.) He once spent a month meditating on the color blue. He quit the day he hugged an old friend who pulled back, laughing, and said, "when I hug you all I see is blue." That day he began to meditate on love, instead.

Now is a dark cool drizzly morning. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. I'm in my husband's favorite chair with a hot cup of coffee. I am undeniably blessed. My fear is huge. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I can not keep everyone safe. There is no quarter. Give us this day, our daily bread. I tell the cows: Milk Time, girls. Everyone has a job to do in life. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. My mind is filled with a vision of the universe in motion. Can higher power get any more obvious, or mathematical? Words layer over wheeling "day blind" stars in my mind. Lead us not into temptation. We are broken and radically free. But deliver us from evil. What I have seen again and again is that force doesn't work. Fear nurtures chaos. Ego is hindrance. For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever. Meanwhile, I'm free to wield enormous ego and chaos. Now its raining. The dogs have shifted, the cats gone outside, my children are still asleep. Begin again.