004: An Invitation: To Prayer

In this episode of Projector Designs, Meghan reflects on a recent multi-faith call to prayer and the beauty of shared devotion. Sitting outside in communion with nature — birds, insects, wind, and water — she explores what it means to live in relationship with the Divine and to deepen the invitations we extend to others. This is an offering of quiet remembrance, a meditation on creation, surrender, and the wild grace of being alive.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Hello, hello, hello. It is Megan with Projector Designs. Today I just want to share with you as I'm coming and stepping away from an event that I've been blessed with the opportunity to attend for the second time. This is a multi-faith call to prayer. And this call to prayer is an invitation for many different faiths and faith practices to come together and to share a time of acknowledgement and connection for our trust in the divine, in our relationship to the divine. You know, the divine is not a word I used a lot growing up, but it is a word that I have come to hold very sacred and very dear, and to just see and feel and accept the divinity that is. There are some things that are so sacred that it's easy to say they are divine. There's some things that are so sacred it feels like something that you have or I have or one has clear, just clear as as day perspective on, right? But whether it for me it's oftentimes being in nature, you know, just remembering that there are things like at work that have nothing to do with human hands or human brains or human ideas or human visions. I've been in some of the most beautiful homes over you know my career. I spent most of my career so far, still very young, but let's see, this month or maybe last month, September of 2025, I have been in the real estate space for 12 years. So in those 12 years, I've seen many beautiful homes, I've seen many beautiful developments, I've seen some not so beautiful homes, and I've seen some not so beautiful developments. I think that human designs, you know, like just creative processes and architecture and the choices of different things of materials that we use to build is pretty fascinating, you know. I mean there's some there's some lovely choices that people make, there's some beautiful art that is expressed, but but there's also just some things that don't feel so divine, you know. And what I'm really alluding to here is is no matter what human, you know, art or human creation or human endeavor, I mean, there are some awesome things that humans have done and created and built. But but nothing compares to uh nature itself, you know. I was standing in, and I may have shared this in my last podcast episode, but I got to ch I got the chance to visit Colorado this past weekend, and I was standing at this precipice of sorts, looking out over these beautiful mountains and this ridge, and turned to the lady next to me and said, It sure is beautiful, isn't it? And she said, Yes, but nothing like how wild and free it is. And just to rest in this truth that nature itself is wild and free. Humans as a conscious species are given the opportunity to contemplate our own awareness, to contemplate our own consciousness. And that's something that's unique. I'm sitting outside right now. Maybe you can hear the plane roaring up above me. But I'm sitting outside right now, and I'm sitting in a kind of at the lower part of a hill on some stones that were put together by humans and created this little bench for me to sit on, which is nice. But kind of the way that the hill runs, it has rained the past two days here, and everything from the hill, the dirt and the acorns, and just some of the different leaves and things from the flower bed behind me have washed down onto this bench and down onto the pavers down here on the ground. It's brought about a lot of activity. I mean, there's just tons and tons of ants. I mean, since I've been sitting here, I've seen just so many different kinds of little beetles, and I've noticed the birds coming to just like kind of see what's here, you know. A dove is sitting with me right now. I'm overlooking some water earlier. I had you know two really large pure white crane birds kind of fall right down below where I'm sitting and land in the water. I've seen turtles poke their head up, and I've seen butterflies hanging around the flower beds and the flowers. I've seen wasps hanging out and buzzing around the trees. I had a praying mantis. I just finished this call to prayer, and so during the first start of our call to prayer, I had a praying mantis come land for just a moment on the seat next to me. And nature, you know, it's nature, creation. That's the word, it's a word we use to describe what all this is, you know. And so we we cultivate nature, we cultivate creation, we we use it to kind of bring us joy, you know. We also put roads pave out, you know, carve out spaces of nature to put our man-made buildings, you know, and these buildings are made oftentimes of of materials we we get from the earth, and and and it's all it's all beautiful, it's all great, but like the the there's something wild, right, about the wilderness. There's something there's something wild about creation itself that you know it doesn't need us, we need it, you know. So yeah, I'm just kind of like sitting with that, and then you know, this great turning that's happening, and we are in a great turning. I I have a sense of of rest and peace in it. I feel like the great turning is for all of us, every single one of us. I feel like the great turning is an invitation and a moment of truth that we get to respond to or not, depending on where our heart is at. But you know, life. Once we have our connection to the divine, and once we have our relationship with our faith, and once we have kind of an established foundation for ourselves of what it means to be connected, to be in unity, what it means to feel my roots go deep down into the earth, to feel my bones become heavy, and to know that my soul, my heart, my spirit is as expansive as everything. But once we have that, I do think and feel that one of the opportunities we have is to be in that space so securely it is inevitable that that aura, that outward expansion, so to speak, of our soul gets to shine in a way that many, many others get to feel that, get to sense that, get to accept that for themselves, get to have the experience of oh that I have that too. I think for so many years I intellectualized my faith, and I still love I still love like intellectualizing it. I still enjoy the logic of it, the logos of it, the words, the reasoning, the connections, the story, all of those things are still interesting to me. They're still important to some degree, but uh they're becoming less important. And I think they're becoming less important just because I think when we let go of story, we get to just exist when we let go of story, and it takes a lot to let go of story. You can just, I mean, you maybe you can, maybe, maybe a a miracle is possible. I mean, there's miracles every day, so you know, uh letting go of story and stepping into something entirely outside of the norm, you know. I'm going to be, I'm going to exist, I'm going to breathe, I'm going to let my heart beat. I'm going to be like the butterfly and just, you know, kind of like go from like here to here, and I'm going to, you know, drink the nectar of the blooms. And I'm going to be like the honeybee, you know, and like bring a little pollination from place to place, you know, or to be like these beautiful doves that keep passing through, where, you know, sometimes I'm just sitting in the tree observing, and sometimes I'm flapping my wings and and moving and going somewhere, and and sometimes I'm, you know, just gliding. Sometimes I'm pecking down into the ground looking for worms. You know, it's it's just the the sheer presence of acceptance and beingness. And I believe that is what surrender is, and I believe it, that's what it means to, in a sense, in a sense, this is what I mean, this is what I believe it means to lay down your life and follow Christ. It's it's to let go of your identity, it's to let go of your ego, your egoic structures, you know, and to say, not my will but thy will be done. You know on earth as it is in heaven. And to embody and accept the the daily bread that's given, and to fall back in love with life. Life itself. There's there are causes, you know, like there are there are missions. There are things to to do in the world, to to share and to and to give those opportunities to others to say yes or no, but to extend an invitation or extend a request. And something that's been deep on my heart the past couple weeks has been to deepen my invitations. What what am I inviting people into? And how deep can that invitation go in my heart, you know, and in my soul? How true am I in extending the invite? And what is the invite to? And so I mean, I I would like to invite, you know, a couple extend a couple invitations every time I take some kind of public stance or or share a public message of any kind, you know, whether it's this podcast or whether it's a post on social or whether it's in one of my yoga classes or something else entirely. It's like having the opportunity to speak to someone and yet not to kind of leave them hanging, you know, but to welcome them into something that maybe I'm practicing at the moment or in that season, or something that I feel is some door, you know, it's like a door. Hey, here's this door. You can walk through it if you'd like, you don't have to. Here's this window, maybe look through it if you'd like, you don't have to. No one ever has to, right? These are things we choose to do, but by extending the invitation, maybe someone says yes, and then maybe once they walk through that door or look through that window, they life is never the same for them again. So learning to deepen my invitations. I'm not trying to create more invitations, but definitely practicing myself, deepening my invitations. Um, my invitation for you today is prayer. What does it mean to be in prayer? Would you explore what it would be like to pray? Maybe you already pray a lot, and you already have like a really like deep connection to that, then my invitation to you around that would simply be what would it be like if you prayed a different way? Not different words, but a different way, like a different format. Maybe you're used to praying, I don't know, with your eyes closed and head bowed. What if you prayed with your eyes open and your head lifted? Just something like that. And then if if you don't have a prayer practice at all, then then maybe you just try it out. Just see what would it be like to pray, to speak to the highest part of the prayer circle today. Oh my god, that's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful big bumblebee. Just came right in front of me, buzzed around, and then went and found a flower. One of the practices or the moments we had in our call to prayer today was led by Adrian Marie Brown. If you don't know Adrian Marie Brown, you should I invite you to go take a look at some of her work, her words. She simply did a call and response type of prayer. She said, God is greater. And then the opportunity there was to respond and to repeat that back. So Adrian would say, God is greater, and then I would say, God is greater. And Adrienne would say, God is greater. And then I and the others in the Zoom call would say, God is greater. And we just said, God is greater, God is greater, God is greater. For like a long time. You know, it felt like a long time. But it was beautiful. Five minutes, eight minutes, I don't know, ten minutes. Could have been an hour for all of them. So that was beautiful. When I looked down at my phone and I said that is beautiful, it was 2222 on the voice recording or on the podcast recording. 22 minutes, 22 seconds. So anything else I want to share with you? That's my invitation, prayer. And I hope you have a beautiful day. Thanks for listening in. I love you. I adore you, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever's happening. I hope you see the beauty in and around you. I hope you give yourself the chance to relax, to be happy, to feel peace and gratitude, and joy, and a sense of connection to divinity today. Many blessings, and I'll talk to you soon.