Loving Kindness Meditation and Prayer -

Whether we're sending words to a Higher Power or sending words to ourselves, I believe that prayers/affirmations work. 

The Loving Kindness Meditation has been a "prayer" I've said over and over these past several years: 

May I be healthy                    May you be healthy

May I be happy                      May you be happy

May I be safe                         May you be safe

May I live with ease              May you live with ease

When my mom's health declined I began with the entire affirmation as my prayer and goal for her. As she continued to fail, healthy left, then happy left, living with ease left, and yet she was always safe. 

It's beautiful to pray that request to myself first and then out to others. I've changed the wording upon occasion - May I be calm, May I be kind, May I be gentle, May I find joy in the every day. 

I use this affirmation with my clients on a daily basis, teaching them the basic words and the simple beauty of the request. 

A prayer that I love is the Serenity Prayer. Although there are several verses to this prayer, the most-said portion is beautiful, particularly when prayed sincerely: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

The courage to change the things I can, 

And the wisdom to know the difference. 

I particularly like the comma after "God." Powerful - God - break - breathe -  wait - grant me . . . 

I've been reading a book on prayers, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. She writes about the need for personalized and memorized prayers in our lives. My faith background has few of these, prayers are to be simple, come from the heart, and personal (although often they are redundant and a repeat of yesterday's prayer). Yet there have been plenty of times when a hymn or an Our Father come to mind when I am without energy to create my own. 

I see this prayer as a delicate blend of the Loving Kindness Meditation as well as the Serenity Prayer; and a blessing, one for myself as well as you. I think I'll make it my personal prayer for the weekend. 

May God keep watch with you through 

Every dark night and teach you, 

day by day, 

that it is all for love's sake. 

What about you? Memorized prayers? Do you offer blessings to others, yourself? Personal prayers? Rote/redundant prayers? Pleas? Affirmations? Meditations?