Our family does not subscribe to or identify with any particular religious sect. From my mid childhood through my teen years, I experienced the beliefs of the church that I attended with my family as suffocating and ostracizing – not something that I chose to continue when I was ‘old enough’ to make decisions for myself.
As a parent, I’ve often wondered if not attending a church was detrimental to my family, and in particular, my children. Although I came to a point in my life that I decided against church attendance, I did enjoy many of the social activities and sense of belonging to a community that church offered. We didn’t expose our children to this environment. We didn’t deny them either though. Our youngest son attended church with a friend’s family, and that was perfectly okay with us. I believe that what we did do is live in alignment with our values and beliefs, which brings me to ‘love and faith.’
On the day that Blake overdosed, we spoke on the phone and we texted back and forth a little bit. He was going to get his sleeve finished and he was asking me what I thought about the final tattoo.
In our phone conversation after this text, he asked me what I thought about him changing the script. I told him that it’s his story, and that his tattoo should reflect that. Since then, I’ve had a lot of time to consider these words and his choice to include them on prayer hands.
In her appearance on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday, author Susan Monk Kidd provided her definition of prayer as “the attention of the heart.” This is a definition that makes the most sense to me. This means that we can be in prayer at any time, in any place. It is not something that needs to happen in a certain position, with certain words, or in a certain format. We can live our life in prayer by living in a way that expresses how we want to see the world. For instance, intentionally being kind can be a prayer because the attention of our heart is focused on being kind.
I don’t know if this is the definition that Blake would assign to the word prayer. Blake had spent the 20 months before his passing in Los Angeles. He attended AA and NA meetings regularly. He never mentioned church attendance to me, so I don’t believe that was part of his life, but I do know there is a religious tone to AA and NA, even though they are secular. I also know that the sober living home where he resided was owned by a couple of Jewish brothers and that they brought their beliefs and practices into the house. Blake was free to choose his path, of course, but the Blake that I knew was more spiritual than religious.
Using Kidd’s definition of prayer, ‘Keep the faith’ on prayer hands, would translate to keeping faith the attention of the heart, except he would have exchanged ‘Keep the’ to ‘Love and.’ This changes the meaning of the tattoo pretty significantly – the translation now that love and faith is the attention of the heart, or his heart. I think this reflected the way that Blake sought to live his life and the point in time in his life.
Over the last eight weeks or so, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about my son from the perspective of other people. So many of his friends have told me about his love for people, that he loved unconditionally. To love and be loved was vital to him – food for his soul, even though he often did not believe he deserved love and could not love himself. He was an empath from an early age. I remember one evening when he was just two years old. We were in the WIC office waiting room. There was a younger baby there who was upset and crying. Blake was very concerned and wanted to take the baby a toy to help the baby feel better. Blake had a natural way with people, being present with them in ways that they needed him to be.
I recently watched Trent Shelton’s “Trust the Process” video on YouTube. In it, he speaks about his experience as a child planting seeds with his grandfather. I highly recommend watching the video (I’ll drop the link below), but for the purpose of this blog entry, I am adopting Shelton’s definition of the word faith, which he defines as, “Believing something is growing even when you can’t see growth taking place. That gardener knows that something is going on beneath the surface even if it doesn’t show up until months later.” I think faith was hard for Blake. Perhaps the intended tattoo would have served as a reminder that he was growing, even if he couldn’t see it.
With prayer, the attention of the heart, centered on love, Blake’s soul food, and faith, the belief that he was changing, or becoming, or growing, into the person that he wanted to be, even when he couldn’t see it, this would have been a beautiful and powerfully symbolic tattoo. Of course, I can only project my understanding of his thoughts based on my own experience with him. I knew him pretty well though.
Blake’s absence leaves me with these words, this insight into his thoughts and his heart in his final hours. They take on new meaning and a bigger significance to me now. Keeping him ‘alive’ and honoring him, I aim to continue letting his life teach and guide me.