Things are moving at the speed of love, aren’t they!
2024 a year of sacred memory, dreaming dragons, and original prayer
Week 9--in which things start moving at the speed of love
NOTE: This is the last week you can register for ART 3 on Original Prayer. It will not be repeated live.
Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,
I have used the phrase “speed of love” ever since “prayer artist” arrived. I knew prayer artist would change everything, but I didn’t realize how fast! It took all of two minutes to say “yes” to prayer artist in my deep soul writing for the first prayer to come flying through my hand. I felt my hand moving on its own, sliding over the page, ink dripping out of the pen without a whole lot of help from me.
I have reread that first prayer often, and each time I am stunned at the profundity. Far beyond anything I could have imagined at the time. That prayer, “Sometimes I Pray,” is a radical and yet totally accurate description of what happens when we pray in the Theatre of the Miraculous—one soul inter-weaving into another and another until we form one prayer. Different voices, different bodies, different needs, yet we are one breath. One song. One love.
That first prayer opened some kind of invisible floodgate and prayers came pouring through. Sometimes as often as once a day. But never when I expected them.
- A prayer might nudge me awake at 4am to take dictation.So I kept a pad of paper beside me in bed.
- A prayer might surface as I’m staring out the window.So I always had an open journal on my lap.
- A prayer might start singing in the shower.So I got a small pad of waterproof paper.
It was obvious that saying no, please wait, come back when I’m ready was NOT an option!
The prayers wouldn’t wait. They wouldn’t wait for my pen and they wouldn’t wait for my work. Before a month had passed, I announced I would no longer teach courses connected to my books. I had to make room for Prayer Intensives. Minor detail, I didn’t know what prayer intensives were, and I had no idea if anyone wanted them, but I knew I had to create space for them.
And next, prayer demanded a whole new website to support prayer.
I did it. I did it all. And I did it at the speed of love. By the end of 2018, I had offered three prayer intensives, created an entire new website, closed my radio show, and opened a podcast on prayer. And I had amassed a whole portfolio of prayers—prayers that did not look or feel or sound like any prayers I’d ever seen before.
I knew that I wasn’t writing the prayers. The prayers were writing me. I didn’t know where this was all heading but it was too delicious to question. And moving way too fast.
The prayer train had left the station. And where it was headed, I couldn’t see.
Here I am six years later and I’m still moving at the speed of love. This morning (Saturday) in deep soul writing I reviewed all that had happened since just last Sunday and I had to stop and stare off in space for a moment. Is this possible? Did all that happen in seven days? I need some time to digest, but here’s the rundown:
Sunday: I taught the first Learning Gathering for ART 3 on who your mystic family is and how to write your own Mystic Family Call. I know how powerful this prayer is. It was sheer joy to teach it to others.
Monday: I made a paper labyrinth, carried a question about the meaning of prayer, and was surprised at the center to realize the original purpose of prayer is celebration. Period.
(All patriarchal religions have consciously tapped down the joy and celebration in real prayer and turned it into one more tool of fear, domination, and control.)
Tuesday: I received a handmade prayer stole from a sacred weaver who infused every thread with prayer.
When I put that stole over my head, I was transported into the original truth of prayer. The original WitchArt. And I was unable to talk.
(In a week or two, I’ll write about this sacred stole and what it is revealing about prayer and introduce you to the artist.)
Wednesday: I met with friends to read a chapter of The Gospel of the Beloved Companion and pray an ancient rosary.
(We do this every Wednesday and it’s the holy center of my week. If you want to know more, ask me.)
Thursday: Cathy Stevens Pratt led the members of ART 3 on our first Experiential Journey to meet our Mystic Family. I put on my stole, got down on my mat, closed my eyes, and followed Cathy’s voice into the Imaginal Realm where I met my eternal family. I saw them. I saw us.
When the journey ended and I opened my eyes, I realized that this kind of journey has no beginning or end. I understood my mystic family not as an idea but as a felt reality. I am a part of an eternal whole.
It was a sweet embrace, but also more intense than any Imaginal experience I’ve had before. I needed to keep my eyes closed. So when our zoom ended, I closed the curtains, curled on the sofa, covered my eyes with a blanket, and rested in my eternal family’s love. I slept long and deep that night.
Friday: I listened to Emma Kupu Mitchell talk about the intense cosmic energies in March. She ended the afternoon saying that March is the wildest month of the year. That is, until April. March is the preparation for April. Everything changes in April.
Cathy and I didn’t schedule the dates for ART 3 around this cosmic dance, but it couldn’t be more perfect that we are exploring Original Prayer with other mystic witches throughout March and April. This feels so right.
I capped Friday by attending a free concert by Alana Levandoski of her folk opera on longing.
What a week!
Saturday: I made a 7-circuit labyrinth and asked the labyrinth for guidance on why my prayer stole had such a profound impact on me. Well! Carry a question like that onto the original ancient feminine womb labyrinth, and you will get an answer! And it won’t be anything you expect.
I need to write about this at length in a future newsletter, but the short response is that weaving is an original WitchArt. We women infused everything we made with prayer. Prayer came alive as we prayed and turned and twisted the threads with our fingers.
My prayer stole is not a stole, not an object, it IS a prayer. And my body recognized its power.
How could seven days be so full! It could only happen because we’re moving at the speed of love.
Here’s how the speed of love feels:
The Speed of Love
©Janet Conner March 26, 2018
Are my prayers light?
They are infused with light
written in Light
by the Hand of Light
When you read them
read them out loud,
slowly and see
if you can feel the Light
The Voice of Light
vibrates in your heart
it opens your pores, expands your cells
so you can hold more Light
That Light is alive
It clears the eyes of your soul and you see what wants to be seen
It awakens the ears of your heart and you hear what wants to be heard
The Light of Love is somewhere in these letters
but I didn’t put it there
It moved in on its own
at the Speed of Love
Light travels very fast
186,000 miles a second, they say
Love travels even faster
because it doesn’t travel at all
I love and you are loved
in the same moment
I move and you are moved
I can’t tell who moved first
I forgive and you are forgiven
before either of us can take a new breath
I change and you are transformed
you change and I am transformed
I pray and you are prayed
We are prayed
We are prayed together
at the Speed of Love
This is the LAST WEEK YOU CAN REGISTER for ART 3.
In order to create space for all 7 intensives in The Witch Sequence, ART 3 on Original Prayer will not be repeated live.
to praying at the speed of love
Janet
website: janetconner.com
facebook: janet conner prayer artist
YouTube: Janet Conner