Prayer As a Tool

Approaching Life Differently

Now you might think that prayer is a bit ‘out there’ and yet it seemed the perfect place for me at the time. I was orphaned at birth with no knowledge of my biologicals to date, though I was adopted by a wonderful couple who encouraged and inspired my curiosity about life. I’m sure I was a real challenge for them as I grew up, being both curious and mischievous as a youth.

Despite having a lot of friends and playmates, I spent a lot of time alone in the woods nearby, totally satiated by Nature. I enjoyed life immensely, yet still had an ache in my heart for true companionship with others in a deepened sense of joy in life and nature. Kids don’t seem to have the desire or opportunity for such activities today. My tenure teaching high school for nearly a decade in a variety of environments edified that assertion.

I still feel that way and take great steps to acknowledge it in conversation and now in a leadership role for a global peace movement founded to address aggression in many forms, allowed by existing laws. Can we actually create a free society, able to adjust and ascend from harmful activities toward one another that keep us afraid, angry, ignorant and immobile?

I love it that many have joined in such efforts, raising their voice and creating opportunities to elevate the playing field in the last half-century or so. The ‘fringe’ thinkers are not so fringe anymore. The Boomers are awakening, too, as their lives are progressing with the realization that there really is more to life than work and retirement in some ‘relaxed’ state of being. The pandemic precipitated many an ‘awakening’ through self-examination during their sequestration.

An Early Start

Along with my quest in the outer world was a developing reality inside throughout my life, too. Shortly after my sister (also adopted) arrived a few months after my 4th birthday, my parents told me about being adopted. It sent…