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The Passover story is, of course, a story about freedom. It’s the story of how the Israelites went from being slaves in Egypt to being free people with a land and a religion of their own. But I wonder when exactly in the story it is that the Hebrew people finally become free.

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Are you saved? It’s a question most of us have heard, whether the person asking has appeared at our door carrying pamphlets or is a friend who wants to talk about religion on the playground. Read more →

When my wife and I adopted our daughter Mattéa as an infant, we knew that we wanted to build something into our lives together in the way of prayer or ritual. Nothing too formal or fancy, but something that regularly reminded us that we belonged to something larger than our own little selves. We settled on singing a table grace at dinner:

Thank you for this food, this food,
This glorious, glorious food
And the animals, and the vegetables,
And the minerals that made it possible.

This works for us. It covers the basics. We need to say thank you for what we are given—the animals, the vegetables and the minerals which are constantly in interaction with us, and on which our lives depend. Just who or what we are giving thanks to doesn’t matter so much. That bit can remain open. Perhaps it’s the Source of Life, or the Evolutionary Process, or the Interdependent Web. Maybe how each of us pictures it, or doesn’t picture it, changes over time. Frankly, we don’t talk about it much—we just sing, and then eat. Sometimes we toss in a thank you for the cooks, although technically the cook is covered under the “animals” clause.

One day, when she was perhaps seven or eight, we got to the end of the song and Mattéa threw her hands up in the air and hollered “Boom!” Kelsey and I were, needless to say, perplexed. “Boom?” we asked, “Why boom?” “It’s the fireworks,” declared Mattéa, in a matter-of-fact tone.

It’s the fireworks. That’s what was missing from our brief moment of family prayer. The fireworks. The wonder and excitement and glory. Of course the marvelous fact of animals and vegetables and minerals, of life in general, deserves a nightly fireworks display—a grand celebration of the utter fabulousness of it all.

Prayer can be giving thanks in moments of quiet contemplation. But prayer can also be ecstatic, energetic, exuberant. Some of our human family’s most ancient forms of prayer involve drumming and dancing, bodies moving together, voices chanting, feet pounding or hips shaking in a glory of sound and movement. That “fireworks” version of prayer is every bit as real and valid as a monk praying silently in his solitary cell.

What does prayer look like for you? Do you have a way of addressing something that is larger than yourself, tuning into whatever is biggest and most holy? Some people pray as introverts: writing in a journal, sitting in meditation, reading poetry, walking in nature, finding God in the silence, or listening for the “still, small voice.” Some people pray as extraverts: singing, chanting, dancing, drumming, sharing joys and sorrows and lifting up the community in prayer. Some people pray to find their center, to listen for the voice inside. Some people pray by to be in communion with God, or Jesus, or the goddess, to be in the beloved presence of the Divine.

And, of course, lots of people don’t pray at all. Nor do they have to. But what if you wanted to pray, but didn’t know how to go about it? With all these ways of praying—quiet and loud, introvert and extravert, table grace and fireworks—how might a person get started?

Here’s what I think. Start with what you love. Maybe it’s gazing at stars or snuggling your cat or running for miles. Begin with a thing you love, and then add to it the intention to open your heart. So as you lie there with your cat on your chest or the stars shining down from the unimaginable distances, just focus on opening your heart to where you are and what you are doing.

And maybe once you are there, doing what you love with an open heart, you will want to invite someone else in—not literally, although that would be fine, too. But while you’re there, open heart and all, you could imagine the presence of those you love, or those you know who could use some extra support and compassion, and you could imagine them wrapped in that open-hearted beauty of the stars or the purring.

Maybe in that open-hearted space you’d like to reflect on a few things that you’re grateful for. Maybe you could hold yourself in that open-hearted space while you thought about things you were sorry for, and want to mend or do better next time. Maybe, while there in that soft heart-space you would want to ask for help, or forgiveness, or courage.

Don’t worry about who or what you might be asking to help or forgive you. Really, I don’t think that’s the part that matters. But if you want an image rooted more in science than religious tradition, think of this. Scientists recently proved the existence of the Higgs boson, what some people call “the God particle.” I’m not sure why exactly they call it the God particle, but my understanding is like this. Space isn’t empty. Even what looks like a complete vacuum is full of the Higgs field, which is only in evidence because things, well, are. Scientists know it’s there because without it, nothing would have mass, and there would be no atoms, let alone all the animals, vegetables and minerals of our world. Emptiness isn’t empty. There is always something which holds and catches the tiniest bits of the universe, allowing things to bind together, to connect.

Pray, if you will, to the Higgs field that holds all of everything, in which we are all linked. Surely it deserves to set off a small “Boom!” of fireworks in your heart every now and then.

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I figured that in exploring the topic of joy it would be good to ask an expert for some input.  So I decided to interview my dog, Piper, who is pretty much the most ridiculously joyful being I have ever encountered. We say of Piper that her emotions run the gamut from cheerful to ecstatic (with exceptions for baths and/or our other dog getting treats which “rightfully” belong to her).

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What is justice? That seems like a reasonable question for a month when justice is our theme. We know that Unitarian Universalists think that justice is important. Read more →