BECOMING US

Become Prayer

I’ve not put anything up for quite a while. I’ve been away. Well not really away. I’ve been doing a course. To do with Purpose Discovery. Very much on the trail of what We Are All Lichen is about. It called for complete commitment and I’ve been giving it that. Had time or energy for little else. Illuminating and challenging in all sorts of ways, it finished last week.

I feel recharged, like a car after a proper full service. Everything’s working in sync. I can accelerate smoothly and brake with a whisper touch. I feel gloriously alive.

What have I learnt? Something special about ‘Becoming Prayer.’ A beautiful notion I struggle to explain but it perfectly articulates my actual experience of singing on the Land. That, with a certain amount of careful attunement, the sound that emerges from breathe, cords, mouth etc no longer belongs to me, as in the giant ego of Steve Lewis. I have Become Prayer. And I know this is deeply connected to my Soul Purpose which has become a Prayer itself - (to) Become Prayer By Having Soul’s Song Flow Through Me. Here’s a little taster of it……

Become Us

The course was online but built toward a SoulQuest Ceremony - dawn to dusk spent fasting, on your own, on the Land. During mine I was drawn to follow Beck, a tributary of the River Conder, to the place where it met the River. In a heightened state I watched at the confluence as Beck added it’s power to River’s flow. I could trace it for a few yards in the splashing spray and white foam of the River. A little further on and Beck had become River.

In that moment ‘Become Us’ arrived for me. As a song to be worked on; as a prayer to work on me. As further confirmation that it is time to share what I’m doing in that ‘Lowerworld‘ with this ‘Middleworld’. Also as ideas for projects that will help my Ego dissolve further into the ecology of community, of Us - and away from ‘I am a Rock. I am an Island’ (cf Simon & Garfunkel).

You may recall the equation I’ve talked about before here “that place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet”. I have known for some time, without completely trusting the knowledge, that my deep gladness has something to do with music, voice and song. Become Prayer gives me deep clarity around that. Now I hear the whisper that the world’s deep hunger is wrapped up in Becoming Us. And I’m already experimenting with enacting it. This very Substack has been a tentative part of that. But now I am completely confident that I’m doing what I need to do. I may not know quite where I’m headed with all this but I can see the few next steps ahead and that will do for now.

My Many Companions

And so it shall be. 2026 will be a year of deepening my practise in Becoming Prayer and understanding more about Becoming Us.

Over the next few weeks I intend to post here more regularly, sharing details about events I’ll be offering next year. For starters here’s a link to My Many Companions - recordings I made in the Gnarly woods this summer. MMC is a sequel to How Terribly Strange updating the story of the deep questing, mythopoetic encounters and shamanic journeyings that have become my ongoing collaboration with Mystery.

My Many Companions | Deep Cabaret