Everywhere, I Go To Pray
As I travel through Europe, I pray for justice
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The Whispering Knights
I stood in view of The Whispering Knights, having tossed a fifty-pence coin with the image of Queen Elizabeth into the crags of the ancient rocks.
I was in the English countryside paying a visit to ‘mini Stonehenge’ — known as the Rollright Stones — a collection of three specific sites of stones dating back thousands of years.
The three monuments — the King’s Men, the Whispering Knights, and the King Stone — were all built in different times in prehistory and are considered sacred ground.
Folklore suggests a vengeful witch turned these men into stones, although the ‘why’ is inconsistent.
The Whispering Knights, a burial chamber known as a ‘portal dolmen’, consists of four upright stones and a fallen capstone and dates back to 3,800 BC.
The name comes from a legend about the king and his army being outwitted by a witch and turned to stone. Depending who you ask, the Knights were either conspiring against the king and thus met their petrified state, or the Knights were praying.
As I stood in front of the monument, I felt an overwhelming urge to pray to them.
If they were treacherous gangsters, then they will understand the nature of the evil that has befallen my country and know how to neutralize it.
And if they were decent men of prayer, then their goodness and loyalty could be frozen in time, and I hoped my offering might awaken their spirits.
What did I have to lose?
I am praying my way throughout the continent…
Tower Power
At the Tower of London, I stood in the chapel and marveled that such a sacred and beautiful space could be built above a dungeon.
And yet, I prayed.
Could the medieval spirits of those who perished help us unfuck the world?
What do we have to lose?
Notre-Dame de Paris
I have not been to Notre Dame in more than a decade, and its post-fire rebirth felt powerful, as if the new life that has been breathed into the 860-year-old cathedral also breathed new life into me.
As I made my way through the exquisite church, I found myself praying silently, lighting offerings at the feet of ‘virgin and child’… I had to pause to kneel, because I needed to refine my prayers.
Instead of wishing for craters to be all that remain of those who destroyed the dignity of my country, I prayed for a light to spread through the world that embodies goodness and love, while also neutralizing evil.
That light must shine through all of us and vanquish the descending darkness.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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