I used to think prayer was about belief: either you believed, or you did not, and that was that.

I no longer think this is true.

I think prayer is less about conviction than about posture: how one stands in relation to what one can’t control.

I used to read to understand. But lately, I’ve found myself reading to travel – to go beyond my imagination; to go beyond myself. It’s become something closer to prayer – not for answers, but for mystery.

The Magic of Vajrayana by Ken McLeod

And just as I have done for decades, I go to the edge of the world as I know it and reach out. That, for me, is the essence of prayer: to go to the edge of what I know and reach out to the unknown.

I’d resisted prayer for a long time; likely fallout from leaving the church. What use could prayer have in a rational life? But this sentence in The Magic of Vajrayana shook me. Perhaps prayer isn’t about supplication, but about reaching out beyond the limits of what I can know.

And so, for the better part of the year, I’ve started my mornings with a quiet prayer from the book: Buddhas and bodhisattvas, wherever you are, please help me find a way.

Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod

You may get the gist, but it’s only by witnessing it, again and again, that you believe it. You really believe it’s as simple as: kindness, curiosity, generosity. Yoyū. Just a bit of goddamned yoyū.

Find a way to what? Like Craig Mod, who walked his way out of scarcity and into generosity – what the Japanese call yoyū – I was trying to find the same. A way to live that would create “the excess provided when surrounded by a generous abundance.”

Mod embodied this in his friend and mentor, John, someone who could raise “the station of all he spoke with in the way he spoke… A state made possible by boundless yoyū.”

Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi

Since life is always potential, whether you are a violet or a rose simply is not something that is fixed, nor is it necessary to try to figure it out. What is vital here is that you give expression to the flower of your Self, the flower of here and now, and allow it to blossom as completely and as naturally as it can in every moment of your life. That flower of your Self, that flower of here and now, is your life!

I imagine Uchiyama Roshi saying the way to yoyū would be to live – just live. To pour your whole heart into this present moment, whether it’s joyous, heartbreaking or bland, and be here wholeheartedly.

Moonbound by Robin Sloan

“Don’t despair!”

Which is easy to say, but difficult to do – and that’s why we have stories. Stories of people like you and me, completely ordinary, who get put through the wringer, and still find a way not to despair. Stories to help us imagine optimistic tomorrows, so we can reach for them, making real what can be imagined.

Some days, when I do despair, I pray. And I think: if Moonbound’s Ariel could do it, perhaps I can too.

“It was all too difficult,” said the warrior. “Everything I ever did. But it got done.” She eyed him sharply, but not unkindly. “Ariel. Get it done.”

I no longer think prayer is a matter of belief. I think it is a matter of attention. Some days, that attention takes the form of a prayer, other days, of a walk, and sometimes, of a story.