Wireless Connections

There’s a lot of the scientific as well as the mystical in what met my eyes as I opened the internet recently.  I read: “Prayer. The world’s greatest wireless connection.”  We marvel at how Bangladesh, Australia or Washington can be addressed with the click of the computer mouse, and how we can receive a response within nanoseconds from the person addressed in any of those locations. Wireless connections!

Likewise, when I wearily approach our bulletin boards here at the monastery and read hundreds, literally, hundreds of cries out of the darkness of other lives yearning for prayer support, I tell myself I am not alone, either in pain or in support! The pain is writ big on our bulletin board requests! But so is the prayer support that comes from hundreds of monastics here at Saint Benedict’s and at Saint Scholastica who respond in prayer to the requests. Yes, prayer is the world’s greatest wireless connection! And that is just within our monastery walls.

Moving outside the monastery and back again to the internet, almost daily I receive announcements of a world day of prayer -- sometimes at a given clock hour -- invitations to  communal prayer for world peace, for victims of human trafficking, for our military, for Pope Francis, for wise and compassionate decisions to be made by heads of countries throughout the world. And the prayer support is evident in the many who belong to yoga groups, to centering prayer communities, meditators, ashram gatherers, retreatants coming apart to rest and pray -- you name -- there are innumerable conscious parts-seeking-the-whole who are assembling to manifest what God and science are trying to tell us: we are all deeply connected; each of us can make a difference, can effect an outcome, when we put our minds to it!  The more minds and hearts, the better, of course, although individuals, too, have far-reaching influence upon the whole of humanity. “Prayer is the world’s  greatest wireless connection.”

The internet tells us where the needs are and where the resources; by our prayer we can enlarge the energy level where the Spirit seeks to make all things new! Don’t we all love the flash mobs, where musicians from all entry points come together, share their gifts, literally stop pedestrians in their tracks to listen, smile, lift children high on shoulders in order to participate, to rejoice together, to experience the connections? We, all of us, can come from wherever we are, remind others or simply become consciously aware of who we are together, where we can go together, how we might get there! Think about it! Pray! Be a conscious part of the existing human/divine connection!  Any moment, we can start ...

Renée Domeier, OSB