Scripps Sunday- Alaska Edition #16

The following post is from The Book of Belonging Substack: Weekly Sabbath Practice: Mother, May I: 

This week’s practice was inspired by conversations in my real life.

It’s February - arguably the bleakest month of the year- and I can’t name a single friend who is not on the struggle bus. And I would know: I am the driver and I take roll call.

We all have our different ways of coping and - having loaded my bus with a ragtag gang of spiritual hooligans ranging from deeply liturgical to fantastically woo-woo - prayer is a coping mechanism often discussed. If you’re new here, that term might not mean what you expect : as Rumi says, there are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground. We’ve explored Scream Prayer and something I now refer to as Bug Prayer, based on Rachel’s iconography. And this week, one of my fellow riders on the struggle bus shared this video of Tracee Eliss Ross talking about her personal prayer practice.

In short, she lists out all of the uncomfortable feelings she is having - her fears, her shame, her anxiety, her rage - and flips them into a “May I…” based prayer.

For example, if her fear is:
“I am afraid I will never find a partner,”
she writes that down and then offers:
“May I remember that I am worthy of belonging and connection.”

At first, my Spiritual Bypassing Alert beeped gently.

I love the idea of meeting our biggest emotions with connection to the divine. But I always want to ensure that the process doesn’t leapfrog over embodiment. Because embodiment is how we move emotions through and close the nervous system loop. Otherwise, we’re just squishing them down and calling that trust.

And yet.

Another friend recently shared this quote with me:

“Both optimism and anxiety require us to imagine something that hasn’t happened yet. If we have the ability to worry about the future, it also means we have the ability to imagine a better one.” — Jess Ekstrom

And my busy brain can’t help but weave a web of meaning here.

Because anxiety and prayer are both acts of imagination.

Anxiety uses imagination to rehearse catastrophe.
Prayer uses imagination to rehearse possibility.

Not by denying what scares us, but by imagining ourselves resourced inside it.

So perhaps the invitation isn’t to silence fear.
Perhaps it’s to redirect imagination.

And maybe, just maybe, this practice requires the simplest act of faith:

To imagine that Goodness is actually as good as we hope it is.

That the belonging we long for is not a childish fantasy.
That the safety we ache for is not naïve.
That our deep desires are not evidence of deficiency,
but signposts pointing toward something true.

If we can imagine disaster,
we can also imagine a future where Love holds.

This week’s Practice: ‘May I’ Prayer

This is not a practice of erasing fear.
It is a practice of listening — and responding.

You’ll need:

• A pen

• Paper

• A few quiet minutes
  

1.Name the Fear: Write one fear that has been circling your mind.

“I am afraid I will never find partnership.”
“I am afraid everything is falling apart.”
“I am afraid I am not enough.”

Let it be honest.

2. Feel Where It Lives

Pause and notice where this fear sits in your body.
Tight chest? Heavy stomach? Clenched jaw?

Place a hand there if that feels grounding and take one slow breath.

3. Listen for the Longing

Ask yourself: What does this fear reveal that I deeply want?

Fear of being alone reveals longing for connection.
Fear of collapse reveals longing for safety.
Fear of failure reveals longing for purpose.

Write the longing down. Underneath the fear is a desire for something good.

4. Use the Longing to Form a May I Prayer

Sometimes we just need to ask for Goodness to be Good.

If your longing is connection:
“May I remember that I am worthy of belonging.”
“May I trust that you are near.”

If your longing is safety:
“May I trust that I am held.”
“May I remember you sit with me in uncertainty.”

If your longing is purpose:
“May I believe my life matters.”
“May I notice the good I am already part of.”

Let the prayer be a welcoming, a turning toward Presence.

5. Read Them Together

Read your fear and then read your prayer, noticing the space between them.

Anxiety imagines catastrophe.
Prayer imagines companionship.

Not by denying what scares us, but by daring to believe that Goodness sits with us inside it.

Stay there for a moment and notice what happens. Maybe it’s peace, maybe it’s blankness, maybe it’s exasperation. That’s okay.

May we all remember that loving and safe relationships can hold difficult conversations.