At first when I was taught the verbal meditation that we practiced, I was first taught to pray for whatever I wanted. My concept of prayer changed when I became a Buddhist many years ago. How can you make something in the world change just by wishing it so? And should you have such a selfish wish? Why should your prayer be answered and not someone else’s? All these thoughts occur to some of us when we think of the idea of “prayer”. This is a problem for many not only because we may not believe in a powerful deity that is in control of the world, but also maybe because it seems like magic. For many of us having grown up in Christian or Judaic backgrounds, the idea of prayer takes the shape of asking for something from a higher being outside of ourselves. Prayer is a difficult concept for many UUs. I felt confident that I had the inner strength to go through this and that I was not alone. Not only did I feel that the universe had brought me wellness, but I also felt that I was not alone. Even when my life was in crisis with Scott’s illness, the gratitude I felt for being well enough to visit was overwhelming.
But all of a sudden, I knew that I was well, that my body was fine and contained no harmful germs and that I could visit with Scott. I sat there for, I don’t know how long, It might have been 30 minutes, it might have been an hour. And I kept affirming to myself that I was well, that I was healthy. I kept feeling my body almost reaching up and pulling down more strength and energy. My prayer was simply feeling the sun soaking through my body bringing nourishment and wellness to every pore. Sitting in that sun, I felt like I was praying. After walking for a while, I stopped at a park bench and sat basking in the warmth of a spring sun. So, I stopped at the Riverfront Park and decided to spend some time walking to really see if my sore throat was a reality. I knew that if I had any infection at all, I couldn’t visit even with a mask. But one day on the way down, I suspected that I felt a tiny bit of a sore throat. Scott received this treatment at Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati and I traveled down there each day to visit. But during the time of the chemotherapy treatments, a patient is so susceptible to infection that they are placed in an isolation unit. Then blood containing healthy white blood cells is re-introduced into your body. Scott had been undergoing a bone marrow transplant which is a serious treatment involving such heavy doses of chemotherapy that all your white blood cells are essentially dead. One of these moments for me was during the time of my first husband’s cancer treatments. Moments when you interact with the universe in a way that you can’t explain but that you feel like you received what you need in an inexplicable way. Sometimes there are moments of grace in your life that you don’t forget.
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