A Pandemic Prayer

Dear Ones, I think of you daily and hold you in my heart.

I send you and your beloveds love, light and prayers.

I hope you are being gentle with yourselves; not going faster than your heart can carry you.

I hope you are surrendering the things you can't control.

I hope you are counting gratitudes and meditating.

I hope you are caring for your souls through your morning spiritual practice and walks in nature.

And if that's not how it is, that's okay too.

Writing a new chapter of life takes slow steady progress. A paragraph a day will get you there.

Open the pages of Hope. Use the pen of Grace.

Slow and steady are perfect.

Hope and grace are here.

On the surface, this new chapter we're writing seems to be about health, family time, online learning, financial challenges and provisioning.

But beneath the changes lives a spiritual challenge.

Can we rise through this? Can we find our calm center in the ultimate storm? Can we truly be grateful in the midst of loss? Can we look beyond our needs with kindness and compassion when our very survival is at stake? Can we hold a space of hope for a better world when the world as we know it is ending? Can we surrender our need for earthly control and open to Divine direction?

These are vast questions but the miraculous thing is: the answers arrive in simple, everyday packages.

By beginning the day with gratitude.

By taking ten focused minutes for meditation and a prayer.

By helping a neighbor with one small task or offering a small act of kindness.

By noticing the miracles of nature.

By being immensely gentle with yourself so you might find more patience for your family or your students.

By remembering we have spiritual guidance that directs our steps.

All of this happens when we look up. When we put down our precious phones and look up at the precious moment we are in with gratitude and awe.

All of this happens when we look within. When we dedicate time to getting comfortable with our inner world and with the magnificent spirit that resides there.

Look up. And look within.

We can do this. With love. Together.

I love the together part. xo

(During the lockdown, I'm with you 6 days a week on Facebook with expanded posts, and we are together on Instagram almost daily. I treasure our connection.)

Today I share with you my new daily prayer. I wrote it as a conversation with my Guardian Angel. Feel free to address it to the guardian or deity of your understanding.

May the upcoming Easter and Passover holidays bring the gentle reminder that great light always arrives after the darkness.

Always.

I am with you in spirit, sweet friends.

With great love and so many blessings, Mary xo

A PANDEMIC PRAYER

Dear Guardian Angel,

Help me to wake up each morning knowing that I am supported and guided, and that when I listen, I will always know the way.

Help me to slow down and make space for uncertainty.

Help me to trust in an outcome that I cannot see.

Help me to lift my fears and point me toward a ray of hope.

Help me to be grateful even in the unknowing.

Remind me to treat myself gently and to notice the smallest miracles of this precious day.

Lift me up in an ocean of grace.

Please enlist an army of angels to watch over our health heroes, first responders, and those sick with the virus and their caretakers.

Cover them in blessings, protection, health, strength and peace.

Guide their hearts and hands when they are unsure.

Renew their energy when they are depleted.

Hold them steady when they are shaken.

Lift them up in an ocean of our deepest gratitude, love and prayers.

Please send strength and patience to our teachers, students and parents as they forge a new language of learning for our children.

Lift up each and every worker who provides essentials for our daily lives.

Energize the volunteers and visionaries who selflessly make an offering of their gifts.

Bless the souls who are rising from the earth and flooding the heavens.

Lift them up in an ocean of peace.

Lift us up in an ocean of grace.

Amen.