As a way to dig up the root of fear, to uncover the source of craving, to open up to surprise, to reorder, reconstitute, recreate my experience.
It's an intentional, proactive kind of thinking rather than a passive suffering of thoughts and free floating, unidentified anxiety.
Maybe the Psalms are an example of praying in poetic form. And interestingly, I've heard numerous recommendations to pray the Psalms, but if I had not been searching them out, I would never have found a recommendation to write my own Psalms, songs of lament and praise and rage.
This is so typical of religion. Rather than create like the creative God in whose image we were made, we're taught to simply, repetitively, recite an approved text. Safer to imitate than create.
But the work of creating is joining in the divine dance. It is thickening experience through visceral, contemplative attention.
A thick experience fills the whole person, without artificial ingredients.
It's an intentional, proactive kind of thinking rather than a passive suffering of thoughts and free floating, unidentified anxiety.
Maybe the Psalms are an example of praying in poetic form. And interestingly, I've heard numerous recommendations to pray the Psalms, but if I had not been searching them out, I would never have found a recommendation to write my own Psalms, songs of lament and praise and rage.
This is so typical of religion. Rather than create like the creative God in whose image we were made, we're taught to simply, repetitively, recite an approved text. Safer to imitate than create.
But the work of creating is joining in the divine dance. It is thickening experience through visceral, contemplative attention.
A thick experience fills the whole person, without artificial ingredients.