Tag Archives: Spirit

A Prayer for Our Bodies

At every age, in every form, our bodies are with us, holding us. They are the embodiment of our hearts, our spirits, and our minds. So today we offer a prayer for our bodies.

Oh Divine Essence of the Universe,

I am praying for my body, for the ways it moves, and the ways it doesn’t,
for the parts of my body that provide me pleasure and the parts that are causing me pain.

My body is the temple of my soul, my spirit, and my heart. It is a place of embodied beauty.

My body has not always been kind to me, nor me to it. Sometimes I have not loved my body, sometimes I have not treated it well.

Let me meet my body in a place of peace.

I want to love my body, I want to be grateful for the things it does provide me, in its own unique way.

I also want to value the bodies of others, as temples of their souls and spirits.

I pray for the wisdom to honor all bodies.
I pray for the strength to love all bodies.
I pray for all bodies.

Amen.

Like all the prayers on this site, this prayer is just a beginning, so everyone is welcome to modify it, customize it, and re-create to better fit their own journey and beliefs. If you would like to share you re-creations, we welcome you to do so in the comment section, or to submit your reworking of this prayer or your own prayer.   

Loose Thread: Thankful Thoughts

Albert Schweitzer  once said,

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

For our part, we here at Searching Sophia’s Pockets are, as always, grateful for all of you for being the people who “rekindle the inner spirit.” Thank you for being part of this community And sharing your ideas, your spirit, and your traditions.

We invite you to share something you are thankful for with the community of Searching Sophia’s Pockets.

What prayer of thanks do you want to share this week?

Breath and Spirit

Today’s post is from Hailey Kaufman. Hailey is a student of  philosophy, biology, and religion at Webster University in St. Louis, MO, where she also organizes the school’s secular student group, encourages interfaith dialogue, and furthers scientific understanding. You can find more of her work on Tumblr and on her personal blog. 

What are the origins of the word “spirit”? Middle English borrowed it from the Old French word espirit, which could have referred to a variety of things but overall expressed the life essence, the vibrancy of life or something resembling life. Espirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which means breath.

Breath. Let’s think about that for a second. At its heart, to be spiritual means to exchange a life-giving wind with something, in some way. Breath is a fundamental constituent of a living being. When we breathe, we exchange particles with the world around us. To breathe is to ingest one thing for ourselves while chemically changing it into something else, then releasing it back. It’s cyclical, simple but powerful at the same time.

One of my religious studies professors once pointed out to me the resemblance some holy words have to the act of breathing. Amen, a kind of exhale to a prayer. Ra, the Egyptian sun god. Yahweh is a powerful word, so mighty that saying it has historically been taboo.

Think of the way we use the concept of breath in everyday language. We might say something about which we are passionate “breathes life” into us. When we feel existentially stressed or cramped, we say we need to “take a breather” or find “room to breathe” To return to our senses during a panicky moment, we “take a deep breath.”

This all indicates that for us, breath is to some extent associated with a much-needed sense of peace. Whether that peace comes in the form of relaxing us during our suffering, or whether it comes when we feel a connection to something meaningful, the principle is the same: breath is an orienting force, something that stills our worries and brings us into homeostasis.

Gods, prayers, angels, ghosts, fairies, alternative medicine…none of these things are necessary for a sense of spirituality. What is necessary is breath. What fills us with spirit can be anything that leaves us feeling tremendously small yet linked to a larger picture, like a knot in a net. There’s a fire in the heart that stirs us as that breath passes through. Spirituality is nothing more than that fire, and it burns somewhere in all of us.