What is prayer? Have you ever asked yourself this question?

I never did.

Prayer was simply what we did as a child.

No one sat me down and talked about what prayer is or who we’re praying to or why. It was just assumed. It was in the air.

And I didn’t question it.

Just as you may not have questioned the way your family prayed or didn’t pray.

I prayed as a good Catholic girl for 19 years until, in my sophomore year in college, I stopped going to church.

And I didn’t even think about prayer until I woke up 40, unmarried, and pregnant. That got my attention!

Suddenly prayer mattered.

Although I couldn’t articulate exactly why. I just felt I needed to give some kind of spiritual foundation to my son. But what?

I tried reactivating my old Catholic prayers and they didn’t work. They didn’t feel like me. They felt like putting on old clothes that no longer fit and don’t look good any more.  

Now what?

I didn’t know it but prayer was waiting for me. She’d been waiting a long, long time.

She said hello on my first teacher’s living room floor. A friend told me Charlotte Starfire was starting a “Women’s Spiritual Empowerment Group” and I showed up, not knowing why I was there or what I would learn. But there I was.

And the first thing Charlotte did was teach us to pray. Only it was a form of prayer I had never experienced.

She taught us to pray in the way of the First Peoples: outside, turning to the directions, speaking aloud, and offering gifts of tobacco and salt.

From the very first time I held my right arm up to the East and called on the powers and spirits of the East to awaken the new day and the new dawn in me, my heart said, yes, yes, yes, yes! This is prayer!

I’ve been experimenting with prayer ever since. And discovering prayer is endless. She has no set form, no formula, no tight rules or rituals.

Prayer is alive.

Just a few favorites are:

• Prayer of the 8 Directions
• Sacred Fire Moon Ceremony
• Hawaiian Shamanic Ho‘oponopono
• The 1 of Hearts
• Full Body Anointing

The more I pray, the more I fell in love with prayer. And, the more prayer reveals about her cosmic nature.

But still. Still. I was shocked to hear one year ago this mont, that I am a “Prayer Artist.” Really? Me? Don’t you think you should check in with someone who has more credentials? How about a larger audience?

But no, this is mine to do.

Prayer is my sacred medicine—my contribution to the healing of the world.

But one day, a woman in one of my intensives said, “I really don’t like that word, prayer.”

And I did something I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t done. Me, a writer! I looked up prayer in the dictionary.

ICK!

Prayer, this word I love so much, has truly creepy, limited, and very patriarchal meanings including:

1. supplication of a god
2. form of worship
3. proscribed formulas and rituals

And the inference, so pervasive in the culture it doesn’t even have to be stated, is the god being supplicated is distant, judgmental, and male.

This what prayer has meant for five thousand years.

But it’s not what it means to me. At all.

So I decided to redefine prayer.

It may not show up in the dictionary in my lifetime, but I feel it is incumbent upon me to rewrite the definition of prayer.

So I started in deep soul writing asking, “What is prayer?”

Here’s where I am right now.

I believe that prayer in its ancient pre-patriarchal and yet utterly modern essence is:

1. love songs of the intimate, embodied, sacred marriage of you and your Beloved
    
2. relationship with yourself, your soul, with prayer itself, and with all who have ever prayed
    
3. vibrations of love that radiate throughout the universe
    
4. sacred medicine that expands the body, embraces the heart, elevates the mind, and enchants the soul

Not exactly your father’s definition of prayer!

My whole life is about prayer now—this ancient yet brand new river of love flowing through my heart and through yours.

And now this new awareness of prayer’s true nature is calling us to gather together to pray.

When we pray, no matter where we are in the world, we become one body of love, expressing love, experiencing love, sharing love, and spreading love.

This is my formula for prayer now:

Prayer = the vibration of Love squared!

Would you like to pray this new kind of prayer—love songs to the Beloved, to ourselves as the Beloved, and to Everyone as the Beloved?

Then, please join a global prayer community gathering in The Creation Choir.

We open in two weeks on Sunday, March 3 at 1pm eastern (12 central, 11a mountain, 10a pacific, 8a Hawaii, 6p UK, 7p Europe)

And we open with a Prayer Tea!

Emma Kupu Mitchell (originally from York England) will teach us how to make a proper cup of British tea. As we sip, we’ll go around the circle sharing our own histories and experiences with prayer.

Then, I’ll teach you the first prayer practice: the ancient Position of Invocation to the Divine Feminine. Praying in this powerful stance changes something in the body. 

Then all month long, we’ll spread this powerful Love squared vortex of grace around the whole world.

Please watch the video I made. I tell the funny story of how prayer herself handed this idea to me.

You can register for the whole year (March through November) or pay monthly.

Come and feel the power of the vibration of Love exponentially multiplied by every one of us in the community of prayer.

Prayer truly can change the world.

The Creation Choir

to being the Vibration of Love Squared!

Janet