"We are all humans making our way to a higher place, to a higher way. We are all humans who are not satisfied with the ordinary."

Larissa Kaye Batten (llbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.  

You can visit Lara's web site at www.miracleanimalrescue.com (site will open in a new window).

Prayer Wheel

Enlightened,
one,
pray with me;
I spin my wheel of prayer,
hear with me;
Lift me from the dark,
see with me;
the wheel of our souls,
it turns with me;
in this circle of my prayer,
the answer will be known;
we are one,
we are one,
in this wheel of all souls.

- larissa kaye batten

My husband Dan returned from his Himalayan adventures a few months ago with several Tibetan prayer wheels.

Ike, our Yorkshire Terrier dog, wears the smallest prayer wheel next to his heart-shaped identification tag. It jingles when he runs.

The minister from the Unity Church on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, now has his very own Tibetan prayer wheel. He received it from Dan.

I had never heard of or seen a Tibetan prayer wheel before my husband’s journey to the Himalayas and a Tibetan Buddhist monastery.

"What exactly is this?" I asked Dan when he showed me a prayer wheel for the first time.

"It’s a Tibetan prayer wheel," he explained.

"Well, what do you do with it?" I asked skeptically. The wheel looked a little strange to me. How can a wheel have anything to do with prayer?

"Basically, there’s a prayer inside there," Dan said. "I think what you do is spin the wheel around to say your prayer."

I still was doubtful.

"Is it like a fortune cookie?" I said.

"I don’t know honey," Dan laughed. "I just know it has a prayer inside."

Imagine that. A wheel of prayer. A circle of prayer.

I read in a book recently that the symbol of a circle is nothing new in the spiritual world. Circles abound as expressions of love, light, faith, and spirituality.

One of my favorite paradigms of the circle repeats itself throughout the history of the Celts and their glorious artwork. Even the Celtic cross is surrounded by a circle, I was reminded in John O’Donohue’s marvelous and unforgettable book, Anam Cara.

I think, too, of Judaism. The Challah bread is round, my Jewish mother explained to me once, to symbolize the circle of life. Life goes on, in other words. The circle of faith. The Jewish people, persecuted for so many centuries, needed this simple reminder.

"Circle of Health" is a local health food store in Bluffton, South Carolina. Here, too, is a reminder of the eternal qualities of the spirit.

My husband Dan has blessed me over and over with what we call a "safe circle," a love embrace that is so full of God, so full of safety and security. Our safe circles are God reminders.

So the Tibetan Prayer Wheel is not unique in the history of mankind and the spiritual journey.

The circle goes around and around, free in its right to express the blessings of prayer, the heartfelt love of a compassionate heart seeking Truth and one.

As my father-in-law passed away last summer, a few of us held hands around him to say the Lord’s Prayer. What a powerful gift it was for all of us to unite in a circle of goodbye, a circle of welcoming him into the eternal grace of spirits and souls.

These circles of prayer, not restricted to any one faith, religion, idea, or principle, occur throughout time and space. We can bear witness to them when we are open to the eternal light of them.

The moon, the sun, the human face, eyes, dinner plates -- all these are reminders of the circle of prayer, the circle of connection to a higher power, to something so powerful and full of grace that is higher than what we might ordinarily perceive in the moment.

I was reminded not too long ago of the divine nature of the circle of prayer as I sat in a Marriott hotel dining room in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

My oatmeal and raisins, my orange juice, peanut butter, and glass of water sat before me. I was hungry, very ready to eat. My husband was over at the buffet waiting for his bagel to pop out of the toaster.

I chose to begin without him. I said my prayer quickly and began to eat. Then I paused to wait for him. I like to eat my meals with him when we have the opportunity. I love to pray with him before we eat.

He looked over at me from the buffet, raised his hands, and folded them in prayer to signal that he would come back to the table to pray with me.

We were not alone. Next to our table, a lovely African-American woman and her grandchild sat waiting for the child’s mother to return from wherever she was.

The child sat before a waffle far larger than the child’s head. The plate was full of food and beverages, and the food would become cold soon.

My husband Dan returned to my table before his bagel popped so he could pray with me before I continued to eat. He knew I needed to eat; I get lightheaded when I don’t eat on time. So he came and prayed with me, allowing his bagel to wait.

Lo and behold, the mother of the child returned to her table almost simultaneously to hold hands with her mother and child in their prayer.

My husband went back to the buffet to get his bagel, and the woman at the table next to us left the room to take care of something before she actually ate her breakfast.

But both my husband and the woman next to us knew that joining in a circle of prayer with their families was a rite before a meal – a priority before anything else.

I was not surprised that my husband prayed with me before he finished getting his food from the buffet. He is kind like that, encouraging me to eat and take good care of myself when it is time for me to eat.

I was not surprised, either, when the people at the table next to us said their own prayer.

I was surprised once again, however, at how very large the world’s circle of prayer is.

Although so many of us may perceive that we each pray differently or not at all, that we pray in our own religions or faiths, that we pray kneeling or standing, that there are so many differences among us, we are really all the same.

We are all humans making our way to a higher place, to a higher way. We are all humans who are not satisfied with the ordinary. Whether we choose prayer or anything else that we believe will take us to that higher feeling and knowing, we have in common the desire to seek something we do not necessarily experience in the material, the tangible, the very ordinary.

The morning my husband and I prayed next to the table of African-Americans, we were not white people or African-Americans. We were not Buddhists, Christians, or of any named faith at all.

We were not young or old, rich or not, educated or otherwise.

We were humans gathered in a circle of prayer.

We were not two separate families praying our own ways to our own higher powers.

I do not believe it was a coincidence that my husband’s and my prayer was echoed and reflected in the prayer of our fellows in the dining hall of the Marriott Hotel.

I believe it was a gift from the divine – a reminder, a recall, that we are never alone in our circle of prayer.

We are never two families or two races or two different people. We are never different at all; we only perceive we are.

I wish more of us would have the experience that I had that morning. I wish more of us would catch a glimpse of how we all pray together.

Maybe we speak in different languages. Maybe some of us are blind, deaf, mute, physically challenged, geniuses, Christians, Muslims, etc.

But I hope that we will widen our perception when it comes to the circle of prayer.

I believed for so long that when I prayed, I prayed alone. When I prayed with my husband, we prayed alone.

But we pray together in the eternal circle of life.

We pray as one in the eternal Truth of grace.

We are all souls inside, whether we know it or not.

Whether we pray with a Tibetan prayer wheel or do not know anything about prayer, we still remain a part of the same circle.

The circle of prayer.

The circle of one.

Amen.

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