Do we have to reinvent ourselves?

Praying involves heartfelt listening…

It entails a resolute attitude…

It implies a personal version of ethics, aesthetics, beauty, love.

To pray is making oneself worthy of Creation, through seeing oneself correcting oneself, changing oneself, becoming more flexible, making oneself available…

To pray is to embrace oneself, to become part of the Creative Mystery, to feel oneself in Him, of Him, through Him, and toward Him. To feel oneself in Him, through Him, and toward Him, without this implying any point of structure, form, or sculpted presence.

Incorporating the Mystery, becoming an accomplice to the unforeseen, the unexpected, the discovered, the creative.

To pray is the Mystery of everlasting Love. It moves us. It stirs us deeply.

We discover ourselves in the Infinite, in the Eternal.

There are no owners, no hierarchies, no powers. There are glimpses, brushstrokes of colour, of sounds, of comings and goings.

There is continuous creation. Every heartbeat is a creation. We are constantly being created and recreated.

And through this, we feel ourselves to be one, integrated amongst the clouds, the winds, the sands, the reptiles, the birds, the fish… This seemingly dispersed versatility, yet integrally a single sound.

^[1]There… There is… Oh!...

“There, there is, oh!”. Unified tones that indicate where we are: there; that show us what is there –that show us what is there- and that astonish us: oh!

There. There is. Oh!

And all of this, which seems unapproachable –to pray-, is expressed without being spoken –as now- in each Prayerful Call.

Each Prayerful Call carries this message of what vibrates when we pray, of what prayer entails.

And when we become conscious of this, each prayer, each call in one direction or another, is imbued with what it means to pray.

Through stories, patterns, frameworks, and blocks of identity have been established in different parts of humanity, adorned with beliefs, customs, norms, laws.

And in every era, humanity has proclaimed what it is, who it is, what it does, where it is going.

And every attempt –yes, attempt- is treated as definitive. It expands and dominates and weakens and becomes corrupted and…

And we end up seeing Roman ruins in every corner –for example-.

Undoubtedly, vanity, pride, power have failed as strategy for “speaking about ourselves”; for us to know who we are, why we are here, what we do, where we are going.

And the empires left behind their spoils. And those that followed tried again, tending ruins and creating… new ones? No. They were the same ones, but with a different nuance, a different appearance.

Oh! And one contemplates the pyramids –the most famous ones, like the Egyptian ones- surrounded by an emporium of past powers and… And what became of them? What became of their truths? What is it now? A tourist magnet of photos, for interpretations…; for subjugated, ignorant, mediocre populations, surviving in the heat of the harsh and wounded friction.

And it would seem that these humanities never came to like one another, never came to care for one another, and even less to love each other. And they committed suicide… corrupting themselves through disputes and vanities that fragmented, separated, tore them apart…

And so now, as we contemplate our humanity in prayer, all that remains is a sigh. Yes; a sigh, because everything that has happened has been meaningless, incapable of defining us, clarifying us, revealing ourselves, learning, attuning us, to help us get on with one another.

Nevertheless, the attempt is made once more. And “new” –in inverted commas; hardly new- attempts at hegemony, at power, now arise amid the clamour of haste, of profit, of triumph… A factory of using and discarding life. A factory of disillusionment, rage, and of continuous empowerment.

That is the new empire upon which the species, humanity, intends to define itself… leaving trails of hunger, disease, wars, unfelt promises, unfulfilled of course; a trail of divorces in affections, in oaths, in promises…

That is the new order. The new “bivalve” order between riches and poverty, with skirmishes in between. Oh!… An indigestible sandwich.

Rich… poor… like two slices of bread, filled with desires, attempts, laws, and skirmishes, trying to climb while others fall.

A filling, a contaminated filling to which, globally, humanity turns to feed itself, while talking about health, achievements, well-being, progress…

While all this is happening, a small news item slips into this version with the headline: “Beware of shopping carts” –those that housewives push, seemingly innocent-. And like just another footnote, it sneaks into the summer newspapers. Until we catch sight of the title, and, as if compelled by a curious need, we go to find out more, and they take us to a city of saints: San Sebastián. Oh! The promenade, the tourism, the beauty of its beaches, the fervour of its food, the taverns…

And lo and behold, some mature women pushing a shopping trolley, and at a certain moment they stop, and three, four, five young people come over. And the venerable woman takes three, four, five sandwiches wrapped in aluminium foil to keep them warm from the shopping cart. The young men take them and leave. But as they're leaving, the police arrive –yes, you read that right: the police themselves- to ask the old woman what she's doing. The old woman, hardened by dictatorships, democracies, and terrorism, replies:

.- Give sandwiches to those who have nothing to eat. I don't want anyone in my city to go hungry.

.- It's forbidden! –says the police-.

.- What's the crime? –asks the woman-.

And the policeman replies:

.- Trespassing on public land.

Orders from the mayor's office of a city named after a saint, which condemns giving a sandwich to a hungry person. Of course, they're progressive and... and other things.

Meanwhile, another trolley appears nearby, and another! And of course, the hungry people move away –the police have more power- while the woman walks away dejected, having suffered yet another defeat.

Nevertheless, she gets up and remembers: "Feed the hungry". And she turns to the clergy, to the church –as stated in the article- and the ecclesiastical authority responds that... that there's nothing they can do: it's a social problem. They abstain, like Pilate.

And that's where the excerpt ends. That's where the short story ends: no opinion; simply a description of some women who found it very hard to see anyone in their city going hungry. And with their own resources, they set about helping.

It's a detail –yes, surely- of no importance. Just another detail. But it embellishes… –“embellishes”- the nature of the new imperial order; of those who shout about freedoms, of those who clamour for riches, of those who timidly insinuate themselves as religions.

Therein lies a deterioration. Therein lies a… pain.

Is it necessary to stir things up inside –inside!- to break free from that enveloping spiral that repeats itself endlessly, leaving ruins and ruins and ruins in its wake?

Aren't there already enough examples?

Is it really that everything remains to be done?

Is it that our mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, intellectual structures are not where they should be, as they should be, in the existential, soulful form of creation, of eternity? Is that it?