Hi,
Everybody,
And welcome back to the podcast that brings you stories of magic,
Miracle,
And mystery to remind you that this world indeed is an incredibly fabulous place.
So this is a midweek miracle episode.
I haven't done one of those in a while,
But I interviewed Celeste the other day,
And I absolutely wanted to bring our conversation to you ASAP.
Now,
Who is Celeste,
You may ask?
And well,
That you do.
Celeste is so very much.
She's so very much.
But among many things,
She's an ordained minister,
A wisdom keeper,
A licensed massage therapist,
As well as a certified qi ne sang practitioner.
She's also an author.
And we talk about her book a little bit later.
You know,
I found Celeste through some friends and got some body work from her.
And I talk about that a little bit in this episode.
But really,
Truly,
It's her book titled,
How Do You Pray,
That absolutely gobsmacked me and made me want to get to know her better.
So we've kind of been trying to find a time,
Gosh,
I think since February,
And we finally did it the other day.
So that's the end of this intro.
I don't want to talk too much.
I'd rather we get into the meat of the conversation.
And yeah,
I can't wait for you to meet Celeste.
I woke up very early one morning.
It was dark outside.
The room was illuminated,
And I heard the words.
How do you pray?
Is it an hour a week as a designated place of worship?
Or do you take your prayers out to the streets?
Do you pray like your parents,
Culture,
Or tribe?
Or did you develop another way?
Do pray to God.
Or do you have another name or no name at all?
Is it a monologue or a conversation?
Well,
By this time I'm sitting up in bed,
Right?
And I took the pen.
From my bedside table and started writing.
And it continued.
This,
People say,
Well,
Was it a voice?
Yeah,
It was a voice.
It was a voice with every sensor in my body.
It was a voice that I somehow absorbed that I heard,
That I felt.
And in that vision,
I saw all these amazing,
Beautiful flashes of people.
In prayer and sometimes it was flashes of nature.
It was.
.
.
Everything that I could imagine and even more.
And it was the feet on the earth,
The bare feet,
Dancing,
Walking,
Moving.
It was so,
So powerful.
And I.
.
.
I needed those empty days,
Right?
I needed to cancel everything,
Business as usual,
And be with that.
And be like,
What did that mean?
That question,
That question was to me.
So it was,
How do I sit in that and know the answer to that in myself?
I mean,
I knew all these rituals,
These ways,
These things that I have learned,
These structured form,
Prayers of form,
These meditations,
These sitting with it for a while,
Integrating it,
Sharing it with my husband first,
And then my friends,
My clients,
And I would just ask them.
How do you pray?
And it opened something so big because it was a,
Oh,
You know,
It was a deep dive into something.
And um.
.
.
So I became known as the keeper of the prayers.
People would write to me and I just knew a lot of different people that I asked.
And we opened our home to prayer shares,
Where people would come and lead their way of praying,
Their ritual,
Their religious tradition.
We had sweat lodges,
And dances,
And songs,
And drumming,
And of all traditions.
And it was amazing.
And it wasn't,
I don't know,
It was actually maybe a couple years in where I maybe became brave enough or what to to ask religious leaders,
Teachers,
Spiritual guides.
And I didn't even know,
Well,
How do I,
How do I get to the person?
And some people had websites,
Other people,
So synchronistic as usual,
Right?
One thing would lead to another thing.
And a person who was untouchable suddenly was available.
And then one person's sharing other people and their connections.
And yeah,
It was phenomenal.
What the thread that continued from the first minute on to now.
Was yes,
Saying yes,
Yes.
Whatever I was saying yes to,
Yes to this inquiry,
Yes to being with people in this,
Yes to recording The prayers,
Yes,
To this is going to be a book.
And yes,
To continue it.
Now I open it like an oracle.
You know,
I've read it many times and I can never get enough,
But opening it like is exactly what I need today.
And today I actually thought of the person.
I didn't just open the book.
I thought of someone,
And I opened it.
And I'm in awe.
Perfect.
That's amazing.
I kind of am thinking to myself,
Oh my goodness,
I would love an Oracle deck like that.
Where you could shuffle all the different ways of prayer and pick a card.
And then you're like,
Hey,
That's what I'm doing today.
This is what's happening.
Can I ask you,
You know,
If I'm not putting you on the spot,
But.
What was one of the more unique forms of prayer that you encountered?
Well,
I think at a glance,
I would say the two atheists Share.
I was so like,
Wow.
And I don't remember how that went.
Like,
Did I find the atheists deliberately?
Like,
Wow,
He's an atheist.
I don't know how we connected.
But I thought,
Oh,
That is so cool.
You know,
We all have different,
You know,
Concepts.
And certainly Buddhism is different than,
You know,
Christian or Islam or,
You know,
Everybody has a different flavor,
Even of a god or a deity or what,
But I thought atheists,
Well,
That that is really cool,
You know,
So they were At a glance,
But then as I started to receive.
The sharings,
Because they weren't just prayers,
They were people's hearts and experiences and yeah,
Connection to the divine or connection to that which is alive in them.
So they were all so profound.
And that's it for my conversation with Celeste.
To be honest,
I was enchanted with her prior to her telling me that her dad built her pony a pagoda when she was a kid,
But that little bit of information sealed the deal.
She's the grooviest person I've interviewed in a long time,
And I couldn't wait to introduce her to all of you.
Thanks to everyone who listens.
I'm so grateful to all of you for being so kind and believing in this show.
It means so much.
I can't even tell you.
Thank you for listening.
And here's my one request.
Be like Celeste.
Live close to the soul of the world.
I mean,
Celeste lives in a realm of enchantment,
In a reality where anything is possible,
Where magic is around every corner.
Her world is deeply alive and deeply entrenched.
And the magic and the mystery is accessible if only you believe in it.
So live close to the soul of the world like Celeste,
Open your heart wide to the mystery just like Celeste,
And believe that magic is everywhere like Celeste.
And pretty soon,
Your life will be it's going to be filled with magic as well.
