I was wondering what to post today, and so I put the words prosperity and prayer into my search bar to see what I could find, and I came up with "The Prosperity Prayer". Interestingly, it covers every single subject that I was mulling over as I considered what to write about today. The short form of the prayer is first, followed by the longer explanation of the various components.
The Prosperity Prayer
by Lynn Robinson
Copyright 2002
Dear God -So sorry to do this, but this project has been moved and can be found in its new home Praying For Prosperity at the new and improved Prosperity Project hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com. And can be found in its entirety here: A Prosperity Prayer
I surrender my financial affairs and concerns about money to your Divine care and love....
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6 comments:
OK OK, I know...
this post got a little out of hand... it's a little long.. well maybe a lot long.. and so I'm sorry.
Tomorrow I promise to put up something really really short to make up for it.
I think it was a great poem. One of those things that I would love to figure out a way to just insert it into my brain like software and just automatically have my attitude change.
I had a bit of prosperity hit me today. I have direct deposit for my paychecks and when I went to see how much it was, I was astounded; it was JUST the right amount MORE to pay the bills that needed paying! I knew that I had FINALLY gotten a little bitty raise and that it would be retroactive a month or so but I figured whatever amount it was would be eaten up in taxes, and it wasn't!
My daughter, Shari, is still in the hospital. She may get to go home today or may wait until tomorrow. She went through the surgery great and although there were some complications with "abnormal anatomy", all is well. Thanks for any and all prayers and Shari thanks you, too.
Yes it is a lovely poem with lovely thoughts but, I personally am sick of it always being our fault if prayer doesn't work. The attitude that if you receive an answer to prayer, it is all "Thank you God" but if you don't receive an answer it is because my/our thoughts, our thinking, our fault. How can a person, a human being not worry or have negative thoughts when you can not pay your bills, when your shelter is unsafe/unstable, when your world is a constant reminder of the absence of money in our lives? In the prayers at Silent Unity they keep telling me to look past the appearance of lack and limitation knowing that my needs are met. It is funny then when I look around and only see reinforcement for the idea of lack. I am not saying that a positive attitude doesn't work or help. I am just saying that it is much easier to have this positive outlook when your basic needs are met. When you are not worrying over the question bills or food? When you are not fearful of your car breaking down on the way to where you need to go and then will you get home. When you are not facing a chronic or even short term physical situation. Seriously wouldn't it be nice if we could only claim those things in our lives that turned out well and place the responsibility elsewhere when they didn't?
i know i haven't posted in a couple days, but i am still here, still following along and still praying.
i think about the responsibility we have for our own situations, and equate it to my daughters' room. two little girls, three and seven.....you cannot IMAGINE the mess they can make that room into. i took away all the toys and put them in boxes they have to ask permission to get down, and they managed to come up with all new ways to make a mess. And even though it was made quite easily with their own hands....when it comes to cleaning it up, it is too overwhelming. even for me. and i do it, because they are my children, and it is my world they live in and i get tired of looking at it. if they took responsibility and not only cleaned up the mess, but kept it cleaned up...they might feel better when they went in there. they might not trip over things when they have to go to the bathroom at night and hurt themselves. but it's just too much for them to do by themselves. it's an impossibility. trust me. even threatened with death...when it gets like that, it's just too much for them to handle alone. I think sometimes our lives can get like that. if we actually took responsibility for every mess in our lives, even if it seems like the mess just happened around us...what kinds of answers would we come up with for why we would create such hard situations in our lives? i don't know. i have these kinds of thoughts all the time. we ask god to clean up our mess...we beg like petulant children and say we will never do it again. then we do it again. i don't know what all this means, but i definitely see a parallel, and if i was god....would i be tired and cranky and want a glass of wine at night and like please just two minutes of quiet PLEASE? i really do believe that somehow, on some level, we have created everything in our reality. i'm not sure why. i think we have the ability, on some level, to fix anything we want to fix, also. i haven't figured the 'how' part out though. is the answer prayer? maybe. maybe not...but it is a way to say out loud the things that are lacking and the needs you have to be met...and a way to say out loud what you are thankful for and what you like about your life. i think that in itself can change the way you think about your life.
I am not sure what I think about it, because on one level I agree with Daniel - I think it's a cop out to say that if you don't have prosperity, or if you aren't healthy, or if everything in your life isn't happy and grand, that it's YOUR fault because YOU are not thinking properly.
I was reading about the "placebo effect" in the national geographic. And it occured to me to wonder if that is what prayer actually is. The effect are real and measurable.. but they only work on some things.. not measuralbly effective on tumors and heart attacks.. which (if my life can be compared to a health issue..} I think I might say that I am in the midst of a rather large heart attack right now..
And I really don't like it when nature analogies are used. My weeping willow will probably die next year if we don't get more rain. Is this nature's bounty? My tree didn't get enough of what she needed to even survive, much less flourish and grow.
And how about all the little wild things, all the little wild families displaced by "progress" when developers go into a perfectly beautiful wild place and tear it all up and turn it into a housing development. Are they experiencing "God's bountiful good"?
Mother Nature can be quite dangerous and cruel. Most truly beautiful "things" are. I was reading in that same National Geographic about volcanic eruptions.. lava flow.. fire balls.. rivers of melted rock engulfing towns.. ash falling like rain.. etc.. it was very beautiful.. and dangerous
At the same time I do agree that we do create our own reality on some level. I have seen it happen over and over again in my own life. I have "made" things happen, and "created" change simply by changing my thinking. And I have received things I have "asked" for when I just put it out there, and then totally let go of it.
I agree with Michelle that if we continue to make huge impossible messes in our lives, we are ultimately responsible for cleaning them up - just as we were responsibile for making them.
I don't know who "God" is. I know who I WANT to think God is. It is comforting to me when someone says to me that God is good, and that God is all powerful, and that a good and all powerful God is an integral part of me.. that I am that.. it sounds nice and it feels good to think that.
On the other hand, I have this sneaking suspicion that God is a lot like Mother Nature. A gentle summer breeze and a level 5 hurricane.. a sunny day at the beach and a tsumami.. beautiful, kind, and infinitely dangerous.
I guess I believe in a great and terrible God.. "good" like the Sun.. We can count on the sun, it warms us, it heals us, we need it, we love it, we drink that sunshine in.. it "comes up" every single day even if we are really really "bad". And it shines down on everyone. No matter who you are, the sun will shine on you. There is no possibility that on a sunny day the "good" people have sunshine and the "wicked" people walk around in the dark.
And if you get too close - it will burn you to a crisp, the desert sun is absolutely relentless and cruel, look directly at it, and the sun will blind you, we need clouds to cover it up, we need our earth to spin so we can get away from it for a while every single day. And isn't the ozone depletion a problem because it takes away our protection from the sun?
Ok. Now I am rambling.
So I guess what I am saying is that I just don't know. I would like to think that I can change my thinking and have what I want. I would like to think that I have help cleaning up my messes. I would like to think that God is a benevolent being who exists purely to serve my needs. I would like to think all that .. but then I look around .. at my life.. at the lives of other people in other places.. and I just don't.
And if what this Lynn person says is true, then wouldn't if follow that only right thinking and grateful people can manifest money? So, wouldn't that mean that every well to do person in america must be grateful and good and etc..etc.. And maybe the word "good" isn't the right word.. but you know what I mean. I think there are plenty of people in our world that have a lot of money because they are selfish and greedy and grasping and competitive and even sometimes dangerous..
And being grateful for what you do have is - I think - always a good idea. On the other hand, to be in la la land and pretending that everything is just "peachy" when you are clearly suffering and just barely making it.. that to me is a lie. And as I said yesterday, I don't think we can manifest anything by our "word" if our "words" cannot be trusted to always be true.
so..
Ok I'll shut up now.
" if we continue to make huge impossible messes in our lives, we are ultimately responsible for cleaning them up - just as we were responsibile for making them"
It depends on so much about your perspective of what "messes" we make or are they just obstacles to add to life's collective conciousness. Wouldn't it be so nice to really believe that we are just in mortal shells and our vision and images don't disappear with our shells! We sure might tolerate our shells knowing this!...
We would just have another different perspective ...
just another image melded together with our ancestor's images!
Maybe, just maybe we will wake up feeling the warm sun on us again to toil away without any of this knowledge but happy in our new found innocence ...only images stored away in our collective conciousness...
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