Tag Archives: Prayer

Counterattack

The two recent pieces I wrote and posted here amount to something of an epiphany.  I have been aware of my addictions and history of sexual abuse and practiced the additions for most of my life.  What came to me while writing them is the realization I have long had a reliable way to deal with the addictions: Pray.

Prayer

I have been praying for years, starting with my conversion.  Praying has continued because it works.  I have known praying works on addiction for all those years.  Problem is, I knew it works but only practiced it intermittently.  Cunning, baffling, powerful.

Insight meditation has enhanced my praying and gives me more focus while praying.  The goal is to clear out the mental clutter I used to survive in a sometimes dangerous world.  Along with developing survival skills, I also create my own world.  Some of our worlds may be congruent with reality, sometimes not.  It takes lots of energy to maintain the personal world, and I am constantly revising and enhancing what is actually an artificial construct.

My inner world is filled with stories about what is going on, what happened, and guesses about the future.  In the process of creating all this, I ignore the present.  All those creations are the basis for my addiction.  The now, right now, is not.  So, it’s only logical to stay in the moment.  It ain’t easy, folks.  I have many years of reinforcement to stay with the mostly imaginary world I created.

I can get to the now in meditation and prayer.  It is said meditation can aid one in staying in the moment most of the time.  It’s called enlightenment.  Watch the breath.  When mind wanders, return to the breath.  Repeat.  I am not enlightened, although I strive to go there.  My mind wanders.  A lot.

I can, however, pray, which is an alternate way of staying in the moment.  Another word for prayer is mantra.  “Om mani padme hum”.  It can be a collection of Sanskrit phrases or English words transmitted by a teacher.  in my case I don’t know my teacher’s name.  He is a long dead Russian peasant who became a pilgrim seeking his teachers in Russian monasteries.  In his travels he used an ancient Orthodox Christian prayer known as the Jesus Prayer.  “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  He suggested starting with 3000 repetitions daily.  With sufficient practice, it is possible to synchronize the prayer with the heartbeat.  This means constant prayer.  How is that for staying in the moment?  His book is entitled The Way of a Pilgrim.

I may have reached 3000 a few times.  I have never synchronized the prayer with my heartbeat.  I do synchronize with my breath.  After writing those two pieces about addiction and spirituality, I had a solid week of prayer, peace, and freedom from addiction.  What a glorious time!  Once I had a year of respite.

Oops! Here came the counterattack.  In these cases, it’s nearly a total absence of prayer and almost constant addictive obsessing along with acting out.  You Tube is a great aid in distracting myself from the moment and reinforcing obsessions.  During this current counterattack I had a dream about finding myself in a room with baggage stacked to the 20 foot high ceiling. That’s my world-lots of baggage.  So, what to do?  One way I have found is to open up about what is going on and not isolate.  Remember George Thorogood singing “When I drink alone, I want to be by myself.”?  That is my addiction mantra.

“Confession is good for the soul.”  Here is my confession.  Now maybe I can get back to prayer.

Treating Pain

My life has changed because of two stories I heard on NPR.  Remember the classic study of the rat in a cage with two water bottles, one with an opioid, the other plain water.  The rat always chose the drugged water?  Well, another researcher duplicated the study but instead of a bare cage, it was rat friendly.  Places to explore, to dig, to run around, and interact with other rats.  The rats ignored the drug laced water, going for plain water.

The other story is about the Vietnam heroin problem.   About 20% of the GIs there used heroine.  It turned into a major problem.  When those heroin users came home, 95%of them quit heroin without treatment.  The reason for the heroin use in both cases was the desire of the subjects to feel good in a bad situation.  Would you want to be a lone rat in a barren cage?  A soldier in the Vietnam war?

Heroin

Those stories reminded me of what a guy said in a twelve step meeting.  “I want to get my feel good.”   People turn to addicting substances or behaviors in order to feel better.  Lots of people out here don’t feel good for a multitude of reasons.  They turn to food, compulsive exercise, drugs,, internet gaming, gambling, sex, or booze.  It’s the pleasure-pain principle.

When I was fifteen I started drinking.  My buddies and I stole hubcaps for the thrill.  I climbed rocks and canyon walls for excitement.  I always wanted to go just a bit faster or jump higher on my motorcycle.  I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day to stave off the craving.  Anything to feel good or not feel bad.

My early years were troubled.  I had undiagnosed ADD which tended to lead me into trouble.  I was a somewhat lonely only child.  In adolescence I was not a good athlete, had bad acne, and was afraid of girls.  I also had a history of abuse.  I turned to alcohol and risky behavior.  Later, I bought marijuana by the quarter pound.

A tremendous amount of my awareness is consumed by craving, staving craving off, indulging the craving, or obsessing about craving.  I think it’s called addiction.  Addiction has ruled my life to some degree since puberty.  I know I am not alone.  I have been in therapy for years, take my ADD medication, doing 12 step work again, and do lots of prayer and insight meditation.  Slowly it is working.

I will always be an addict.  What is saving me is spirituality.  After a lifetime of searching I have found what works for me.  It is Buddhism with Jesus at the center.  In Buddhism, emptiness-letting go of the thinking self-is the way to the emptiness and true consciousness of being.  For me it is asking Jesus to take the craving and suffering.  2000 years ago he offered to take all our suffering and leave us whole.  I take him up on the offer many times every day.  It works.

Jesus was a man.  He died, but for some reason his spirit lives in me.  I can turn to his spirit to take my pain and leave me whole.  This has always worked for me since I learned about it, but I have often walked away.  Addiction is cunning, baffling, powerful.  It takes lots of work to stay on the path.  (All these biblical references keep coming up).  I had a profound spiritual experience based on turning my life over to Jesus.  I have often walked away from him, but he is there when I come back.

The Buddhist way is taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (Buddha’s teachings), and the Sangha (the spiritual community.  For me it is taking refuge in Jesus, the gospel and the dharma, and the faith community.  It gains strength every Day.  I have to avoid getting tangled up in doctrine.  It’s about letting go and giving it to Jesus.

“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God.  Have mercy on me, a sinner”.  My prayer.

Pain

Pain

Pain, suffering, anxiety, fear, discontent, hate, sadness, on and on.  We have lots of names for conditions making life difficult for people.  Let’s lump them together under suffering.  All the world’s faith traditions offer either solace or hope.  Some offer healing.  The healing even works sometimes.

With the possible exception of pain, all the conditions creating suffering have the same origin-us.  All we really need are food, clothing, and shelter.  Everything else is desire, things created in our minds.  “Make it go away.”  There are more strategies for making it go away than there are people on the planet.

The strategies do offer some solace.  Another beer, a horror movie, ice cream, new car, getting laid.  Problem is, the craving always returns.  So, do it again.  And again.  Try something else, maybe jumping out of an airplane will work.  What about Everest?  Running a corporation, getting elected. Trying a long kiss in the stairwell and an affair.  We spend our lives trying to satisfy desire.  All the wise ones offer a supposed cure, usually requiring some degree of sacrifice in pursuit of deliverance.

Often, the sacrifices have to be repeated because the ones asking for a sacrifice are attempting satisfy their own cravings.  It don’t work, folks.  All the attempts at gratification just feed the craving.  Thus, we have a world of suffering.  It’s the wrong approach.

Now, I am going to tell you what to do.  Problem is, I am also trapped on the wheel of desire.  I know the technique works because I have experienced it in my life, once for as long as a year.  It’s simple, let go of desire.  No desire, no suffering.  Bad things still happen, but they don’t result in suffering if the desire is gone.

We all have in our core a condition of pure being, absent of all the world’s clutter.  The task is getting back there.  As we are in a body, to stay alive we must satisfy the body’s needs.  It means  going to school, working, forming associations and partnerships.  All this is hard work and we build our own little mental world and fill it with needs.

Let it go, give it up, just breathe without thinking and you will begin to rediscover the place in the center of your being. Now, do what I say, not what I do.  I built my own little ego world and constantly strive to keep it satisfied.  Sometimes while meditating I am able to enter the peaceful state.  Other times, all I do is think, often about what to write about not thinking.

When I am having a hard time letting thinking go I pray.  I pray for myself, for others. For the earth.  Prayer takes me away from my self.  I stop praying and am sometimes able to re-enter the empty space.  Often all I can do is pray.  And pray.

I think choosing a prayer is a personal, private thing.  It can be a mantra, a quote from the dharma, a prayer of thanks or for mercy.  It can come from any faith tradition or none.  It doesn’t seem to matter where the prayer is directed.  It doesn’t have to be directed anywhere.  What is important is the act of praying, of getting outside of the cluttered world where we spend most of out time.

The next time I meditate it can be easier to enter that space of peace.  Or not.  I used to say writing is the hardest thing to do.  Now I think it is meditation.  How to be without striving, without suffering, without escaping.

I think I will go to the store and then meditate.

My Meditation Practice

The Buddha

The Buddha

As I mentioned in the last post, for years I was unable to meditate.  I have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and as soon as my eyes closed my brain would go into high gear.  The idea of meditation is to let those thoughts go so you can be aware in the moment.  For ADD’s, the moment is often chaos, with thoughts leaping from subject to another, or hyper focus, with the thoughts totally engaged on one topic or task. 

After a diagnosis and treatment, I can meditate.  Now meditation is not spending all one’s time in the moment.  At first and often those thoughts arise and with my addictions, they can be compelling.  So, sit, watch my breath, the thoughts arise, I let them go, and they arise again.  It can be excruciating, dealing with all that meaningless thought.  I find a prayer helps me instead of just focusing on the breath.   

Paradoxically, my prayer is Christian.  At its core, Buddhism is essentially atheistic and in my view a psychology, not a religion,  being 2500 years old from a culture soaked in religion, it adopted all the trappings.  I grew up nominally Christian and became a toung-talking holy roller Christian in my forties.  I don’t do that so much any more, but Jesus is in my life to stay. 

I use the Jesus Prayer, an ancient Eastern Orthodox prayer dating back to the desert fathers.  “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  The most famous book about the prayer, “The Way of a Pilgrim“, suggests starting with 3000 repetitions per day.  I recite the prayer a lot, but never 3000 times.  I sit, start praying, and time the words with my breath.   When those thoughts rise, as they always will, I return to the prayer.  Those times of being in the moment come, and I drop into watching my breath.  Thoughts arise and I gently return to the prayer. 

I find the moments of stillness are slowly growing.  I also find the poisonous thoughts are diminishing.  When poisonous thoughts about pretty girls arise, I pray for them.  “May she be happy, may she be free, may she be safe”.  Then back to the Jesus Prayer until more thoughts arise. 

The thoughts aren’t just about pretty girls, I find myself planning, plotting, reviewing past mistakes, feeling guilt or shame; being angry, sad, sick, hurting, happy, horny, old, tired, loving, lonely, excited, the entire range of feeling and thought.  All that stuff comes from my past or is about the future.  Thus, they are all meaningless.  The past is gone, and the future is unknown.   

All there really is is the moment.  My brain tends to disagree.  I experience all those thoughts and feelings as real because they are wired neural connections.  The task of meditation is to rewrite those connections so I can spend more time in the moment. 

Now, lots of those connections are important.  I need food, shelter, my long baths, some rags on my back, all the stuff of daily living.  I don’t need Donald Trump or the Kardashians.  I mention those because I was in the  doctor’s office yesterday reading those stupid magazines.  Why didn’t I have my book or just pray? 

I find myself wanting to meditate more.  The toxic thinking is diminishing, although lots of people continue to be prayed for.  I have purged the computers, my library, don’t watch the wrong television or movies, and am able to spend more time in the moment (still not much time, alas). 

Next is some retreats.  Retreats last from one day up.  I have done them in a Christian context and found them useful.  I am looking at attending a four day retreat in the mountains.  There are lots of retreats available, mostly led by Dharma teachers who are therapists or in other helping professions.  Retreats allow intensive meditation with little interruption from the outside world.  I need that.

 

Meditation

Meditation

Meditation

Humans have been meditating ever since our brains got big.  There are seekers who look around the world for answers to what is essentially unknowable, but we still wonder.  There are always people who will tell you they have the answer, and most people are willing to accept what they say.  I am one of the exceptions.  I am one of the seekers, always have been.   

I looked for the answers with the organizations that say they know.  I was never quite satisfied.  I was raised a nominal Methodist, but it never resonated with me.  For many years I was a rabid agnostic, challenging every belief.  It worked, too, except with those persons grounded in their faith.  I looked into lots of beliefs.  I investigated various flavors of Christianity, existential philosophy (the ultimate refuge of the sceptic), the power ideologies, Zen, radical politics, straight humanism, and scientific atheism.  Nothing worked, and I plunged into some of them fairly deeply. 

I attended college during the turbulent late 1960’s.  Parallel with politics were the drugs. I smoked lots of dope, and it helped me to get more in touch with my feelings.  Paradoxically, marijuana is useful if you just want to numb out while feeling good.  I did that a lot.  Then there was LSD.  Lots of people used acid to have fun and maybe explore a changed way of perceiving reality.  Others, myself included, attempted to use acid in the Quest.   

My friends would take one hit of acid, I tended to take three.  By lying down at night and looking straight up I saw the matrix of universal existence, how the entire universe is interconnected.  The problem is that I always came down, and a lot of what I had seen retreated.  I finally gave acid  and pot up. 

I continued to seek, but I also despaired of finding any answers for the Question.  I did the regular stuff, got married, had a career, and engaged in lots of activities.  I explored the wilderness, bred and showed dogs, hunted, drank quite a bit, and had most of it fall apart. 

I was divorced, lonely, depressed, and starting a new career that was technical rather than person-oriented.  I was in the dark night of the soul.  I fell into Pentecostal Christianity, which puts a lot of emphasis on experiential activities.  In other words, I was a Tongue-Talking Holy Roller.  I experienced the divine.  I literally felt the love of Christ.  I plunged in all the way for a couple of years, but the fundamentalism and the underlying Calvinism did me in. 

I went from the Pentecostals to Charismatic Episcopalian churches.  The evangelicalism pushed me out again.  I ended up a mainstream Episcopalian.  I love the liturgy, the ceremony, the openness to religious exploration.  I had trouble with the Church.  The only time the Church contacted me directly  was to ask for money, and I had been steadily giving.  I had to write the Bishop to get accommodations to my shift worker schedule in order to take the course leading to confirmation. 

I left.  I still think of myself as an Episcopalian, but my churchgoing has lapsed.  During my time as an Episcopalian, I began doing Christian Contemplative prayer.  For most of my life, meditation was almost impossible because my ADD-addled brain would never quiet down. I was finally able to meditate.  

I stayed with the contemplatives for quite a while, going to a weekly group, going on retreat, and reading widely.  The Christian mystical tradition is as ancient as Christianity.  In the west, it survived mostly in a monastic setting.  The Carmelites, the Trappists, and a number of other orders have kept the tradition alive.  Today it is moving out of the cloister into the lay community.  It is still mostly Roman Catholic.  The Roman church has always tolerated the Mystics, as they are vital to the Christian tradition, but they have never very good at following all the rules.  That divine spark within all of us have grows in a mystic.  The presence of God within, and following His will is not always compatible with the Church’s teachings. 

My dissatisfaction with the institutional church eventually drove me away.  I am still a Christian, but not able to belong to anything but the Body of Christ.  I need a spiritual community, however, so I began a search into Buddhism.  Why Buddhism?  Buddhism is grounded in meditation and the search for enlightenment.  It is also essentially atheistic.  All those Buddha statues you see in Buddhist places of gathering and meditation are of a man, not some deity.  The Buddha was simply a man who entered into extensive study and meditation and began to teach.  His teachings were extensive and are expanded into a huge literature.   

The Buddha, one hand touching the earth - staying grounded

The Buddha, one hand touching the earth – staying grounded

There are many strains of Buddhism, not just Zen and Tibetan, although those are biggest here in the U.S.  They all share the same goal, which is identifying suffering and seeking the end of suffering.   There are many practices and beliefs, but they all share the goal of ending suffering. 

My first attempt to find a teacher and sangha was in Zen.  Must of what I had read was in that tradition so to The Denver Zen Temple I went.  There is a strong tradition in Zen to continue almost all the practices followed in Japan.  That means robes, chants, a hierarchy of spiritual attainment and ordination into the hierarchy.  There are also lots of rules, as Japan is also full of rules.  The place where people sit zazen (meditate) is called the zendo.  I could not walk into the zendo without getting into trouble.  I just could not remember all the things I was supposed to do.   

I loved sitting zazen.  It is an excellent form of meditation.  The literature here in the west skips over all the other stuff.  The practices are intended to instill discipline which is fine but they come directly from a monastic tradition where monks devote their lives to Zen.  In addition, the liturgy is in Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, and English.  It was all too much for me and I didn’t especially like the teacher. 

I find Tibetan Buddhism appealing, and the Dalai Lama is a world treasure.  I have trouble with Tibetan Buddhism’s involvement with the spirit world.  The spirit world is all around us, but my belief is that we’re in the physical world to accomplish tasks here, not with spirits.  I have seen the price paid by those who follow that path, whether with benign or malevolent spirits.  The spirits are just that, spirits, non-corporeal. In order to manifest they need energy from us, and losing that energy takes its toll, physically and often mentally.  

Now I belong to the Denver Insight Meditation community.  It is part of the Theravada Buddhist tradition, and is found in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and some other places in Asia.  Theravada is one of the two main traditions in Buddhism, Mahayana being the other. There are differences, the main one is that the Mahayana tradition uses Sanskrit, while Theravada uses Pali, a language contemporary with Sanskrit.   It has a large following here in the U.S. with a good and growing literature.   

The primary teacher in our sangha is Lloyd Burton, a wonderful teacher with a wide knowledge of Theravada Buddhism.  We meet weekly for two hours, spending forty minutes in meditation, a break, then a Dharma talk by Lloyd or another teacher.  The Dharma is the body of Buddhist teachings used as a guide to end suffering.   

Carol and I recently attended a small meditation group close to where we live.  It lasts one hour, thirty minutes of meditation and a thirty minute dharma talk every Monday evening. I think we will be regulars.  Every morning we do a ten minute brain brushing (quick meditation) with our tea.  It is also insight meditation and is a good way to start the day.   

I have found that the more meditating I do the more I want to do.  All the teachers say that a regular meditation practice is the key, just as in prayer.  I fact, my meditation is prayer.  Most of the Buddhist meditations are silent, with the focus on breath.  When other thoughts arise, as the will, one gently returns to focusing on the breath.  With my ADD, emptying my mind is mostly impossible.  I close my eyes and my mind goes into high gear.   

Eastern Orthodox Icon of Jesus

Eastern Orthodox Icon of Jesus

I use a mantra to repeat throughout my session.  This is another ancient practice.  I use the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  This is an ancient Eastern Orthodox prayer, going back to the desert monks in the early days of Christianity.  I match the words to my breathing, and when I drift away, I gently return to the prayer. 

What? A Christian prayer in Buddhist meditation?  Well, yes.  Buddhism is essentially atheistic, and the whole karma/reincarnation thing I just view as a mystery.  Whatever works.  I recommend a strong spiritual practice.  I don’t think it is necessary to follow one specific path.  All the world faiths contain the same basic truths.  One should choose the path that feels right.   

Don’t follow any one person or group who say their path is the only way, give yourself to us.  Anyone who says that is a liar and a fraud, interested mostly in control.  I don’t care if it is one leader with just a few followers or a huge organization with millions of followers, if they say their way is the only way, they lie or are deluded.  The paradox is that many in those faiths do find the way.  It is their individual practice and relationship with the universe that matters, not the framework.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Spiritual Journey

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

“If a man will begin with certainties,  he shall end in doubts.  But if he will be content with doubts, he shall end in certainties,”.   Francis Bacon, Advancement in Learning, 1605.

Prior to the seventeenth century the Church, the Bible, and the rule of the Nobles were the certainties all Europe relied on.  The social structure was rigid, warfare was nearly constant, and the Black Death had killed much of the population.  Then, things began to change.  Religious inquiry began, governments became more centralized, cities and trade began to flourish, and people started asking questions.

Francis Bacon’s quote reflects the shift in thinking that led to what many now take for granted: critical thinking.  The shift will never be complete, for millions continue to rely on what they take as revealed truth.  Critical thinking requires another condition that we also take for granted: liberty.

The freedom to choose, to say yes or no, to do as one wishes, is a rare thing.  I am lucky my family and my country encouraged independent thinking because I am a seeker.  If anyone tried to fit me into a fixed system they faced rebellion.

I was raised a drop him off at Sunday School Methodist.  It just didn’t take.  Basic Christianity got planted, but the dry services never resonated with me.  The only part of the services I liked was the Doxology.  Those felt Jesus’ and Josephs in Sunday School with the cute little sheep and donkeys on a felt board just seemed silly.

I was confirmed as a Methodist in high school, but just because the cool girls were Methodists.  I didn’t know what to believe, but I kept looking.  I looked into Mormonism, but there is where I ran up against a closed system.  I just could not conform to a rigid system, even if one of the prettiest girls in school was a Mormon.

I needed solid, rational, verifiable truth from the scientific method or a powerful experience of truth. I was finding neither.  Blind faith or the statements of some spiritual minister or guru did not work for me.

I read, talked, searched.  I looked into Zen, but couldn’t meditate.  I got pretty serious about existentialism because I was also depressed after my mother’s death. Camus is depressing.  I looked into right-wing politics and ran into another closed system.  So, I became an annoying agnostic.  I challenged everything.

Then came the late 1960’s and drugs.  Marijuana taught me how to feel.  LSD stripped my ego away so I could see and feel the vast, wondrous, interconnected universe.  The problem with the drugs is that you come down.  I got a glimpse and some of the feeling of the One, but not enough.  Drugs opened the door, but were not the answer.

Jesus

Jesus

Then, in the early 1980’s,I was having a dark night of the soul from a divorce and fell into the clutches of a Pentecostal deacon.  I prayed the prayer, asking Jesus into my life and it happened.  I felt like I was wrapped in love.  It was a tangible, physical and emotional feeling.  I was a Christian instantly in a basement apartment in LaSalle, Colorado.  Two weeks later I was a speaking in tongues Pentecostal.  What a time.  I had experience after physical experience of joy, love, and deep peace.  I felt delivered from many of my old hang ups and was a new person in Jesus Christ.

I put my rational skepticism on hold.  I had found spiritual experience.  After a year I started having problems with the fundamentalism.  Pentecostals are a bit better, but they are still fundamentalists, and took the evangelical ideology and the Bible literally.  The currently popular fascination with the end times and the book of Revelation just did not ring true, and I studied it carefully.  The dire prophesies in Revelation are about Rome, not today.  The Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 79 AD and the Jewish diaspora began in earnest.  No wonder John of Patmos wrote an apocalyptic book about the oppressors.

The profound spiritual experiences began to fade, although I still pray in tongues.  I also moved to Colorado Springs, fell in love (More physical and emotional experiences, and just as meaningful.)  I ended up at a Charismatic Episcopal church that combined the wonderful ancient liturgy with the gifts of the Spirit.  The Episcopal Charismatics are part of the evangelical wing of the church and I ran into the same problem.  I ended up an Episcopalian in a mainstream liberal parish.

Buddha

Buddha

About this time I also found I can meditate, probably a gift of the Spirit.  I looked into Zen Buddhism.  Sitting Zazen, meditating, was wonderful.  All the rules coming from a rigid Japanese culture did not work.  I could not walk into the Zendo, the meditation room, without doing something wrong and getting caught.   Now I use Insight Meditation, part of the  Theravadan tradition of Buddhism, but here it does not carry all the cultural baggage the Zen folks continue.  My mantra, however, is the Jesus Prayer, an ancient orthodox prayer.  “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,  have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Try about 3000 repetitions daily.  Read The Way of a Pilgrim, written by a Russian Orthodox mendicant.

I also explored Christian Contemplative prayer.  It is an ancient tradition, starting with the Desert Fathers in Egypt in about the third century.  Today, Thomas Keating,  a Trappist from the monastery in Snowmass CO, and Thomas Merton are the best known from their writings.  There is a large network of contemplatives, mostly Roman Catholic, but from many other denominations as well.

Today, I guess you can call me a Buddhapalian.  I don’t often attend services, but I meditate daily, pray, and do longer meditations almost weekly.  This fits my pattern.  I have big spiritual events, sometimes lasting years, and quiet times lasting years.  I am happy with that.

I have two bits of advice.  Don’t trust anyone who says they know the answers except Jesus and the Buddha.  When you pray, don’t ask for specifics, ask for what is best for the situation.  As for what it all means, it’s a mystery.  I remain a skeptic.