One was that I can walk and knit at the same time, and the other is that gardening is a way that I can pray. In March, I walked the footpaths of Frijoles Canyon in northern New Mexico, an ancient Anasazi home place abuzz with tourists clutching guidebooks. I strolled every path in the willows and cottonwoods along the creek, and up to the tiny caves in the canyon walls and a sock emerged from beneath my moving fingers. Praying is something that has been on my mind for a long time. The absurdity of praying for a way to pray was just one of the threads in a crisis of faith that began, I think, when I was about four.
Prayers are wishes, imaginings, and also actions.
I am finding that worry, another form of imagining, is a source of prayer, or perhaps better stated, prayer is an alternative to worrying. Worrying is something I am very good at, although I wish I wasn't. Praying is rather new. The path from one to the other has to do with choosing what you do with your mind. When I complained to my psychic friend Glenda Marie that I was depressed, she laid her palm lovingly on her own chest and said that I must learn to distinguish between the suffering that is my own and all of the suffering that is there in the world.