An individual and a husband who does parenting, prayer, printing, philosophy, photography, publishing as he seeks to answer the question: "What is the path to the fulfillment of our potential as human beings?"

Here are some highlights from "my story" that may be interesting to you:
I grew up an Episcopalian. Early on in Sunday School, while coloring a picture of God up in the sky, the teacher told me, "Of course God is not a person up in the clouds, God is with us and around us always." From that moment on, everywhere I looked I saw God and never felt separate from that concept. My parents supported this idea of mine when I asked questions like, "Why do people hate Jews?" And they answered, that was due to ignorance because Jews were people just like us that worshiped the same God in a different way; that there was nothing to fear or hate in them. Or, as Pogo said in the comic strips of my youth, "I have met the enemy and them is us."

I also spent a lot of time in nature as I grew up and have always appreciated all the expressions of beauty that nature discloses everyday. As a teenager I didn't participate in organized religion, preferring the camaraderie of my friends and the pursuit of the opposite sex as religious activities.

Married young with a family I started wondering how to pass on the reverence for the oneness of life that I felt. My son had been going to church with one of his friends regularly. We were invited to go to Easter service and did go with the family. I was shocked to hear the minister declare from the pulpit that alcoholics weren't sick, they were damned and instead of treatment programs they needed to be locked up and the key thrown away. This sent me looking for something else for my children and led us to the Unitarian Church where they celebrated Life and creativity and embraced the messages of all religions and also social change in the form of equality and civil rights for all.

The intellectualism of the Unitarians inspired me to return to college where I studied Philosophy. This made me curious about Eastern Thought. So I studied Yoga and Patanjali and got caught up in Tibetan Buddhism. I began meditating daily and experimenting with different vegetarian diets. As a by product of college class work, I became interested in creative writing as opposed to just writing regular reports or essays. Also, in changing families, I married a poet and songwriter, which gave me a new perspective for looking at Life and sparked creative juices in me.

We spent time with Chogyam Trungpa, Tarthang Tulku, Hilda, Joya and Ram Dass; listened to "Old Chinese" channeled through a psychic and brushed up against Native Americans in Flagstaff, Arizona, but really settled into family life as our primary religion.

Next, I was attracted to the Native American way. Hyemeyhosts Storm, Harley Swiftdeer, Evelyn Eaton, Jonathan Swift Turtle, Sun Bear and the Medicine Wheel Gathering and other members of the American Metis Association were promoting the idea that we are all one people and that we who are born in this country are all Native Americans regardless of color or ethnic origin. They sought to share their knowledge of what it means to be of this land and how to respect it and "walk in balance" upon it. They/we find no value in purposeful separation.

Next was Lifespring, an organization that awakens your "self-actualizing" desires and capabilities. This pulled me out of the day to day, week to week, routine I had fallen into, and sparked that curiosity, optimism and drive that was falling further and further away from my consciousness. Lifespring is just a booster station and not a home. It opened me to my need for a Codependency program so I 12-stepped for a bit and got a handle on who I am in the world and my self-responsibility for how I "be" here.

Always looking for a spiritual home for the family led us to Unity for a while, but didn't really settle there, but it did open my eyes to the truth that we are all "Spirit divine." Then a friend invited my wife to attend the Santa Rosa Church of Religious Science to hear Rev. Mary Murray Shelton speak; she was impressed, as hundreds of others were before her, and invited me to attend the next week. This felt like home to me. After being there 3 months I responded to a request for Youth Church volunteers and found my previous experience was perfect groundwork to teach this philosophy I was just introduced to. It took over a year before I started the formal classes, but once I did I went straight through to become a Licensed Practitioner in 1993.

Now I continue to study and grow within the context of being a Practitioner. I teach classes, see clients one on one and by phone, write personal treatments (which are depersonalized and published on SharePrayer), facilitate groups and retreats and maintain SharePrayer. My wife, Diane, is a graphic designer and angel incarnate and is also the Web Wizard that designs and constructs SharePrayer.

Enjoy each moment of Life for it is a blessing. Namaste ...

SharePrayer's purpose is two fold: to give the reader a moment of peace in the day to check in with the source of life within and to inform, inspire and support the reader to find and express their special gift in the world. The root idea here is that we are all perfect, whole and complete as spiritual beings. As human beings we find ourselves separated from experiencing that perfection by many factors. As we take time each day to remember our source and the intelligence that creates us and the universe we live in, we are inexorably moved toward experiencing our perfection. Yes, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, Plato, Patanjali, Padma Sambhava and many other sages realized and experienced this perfection as human beings and each of them taught that you, too, have the potential to realize what they realized. As each of us moves closer to fulfilling our potential, our consciousness is raised; as more individuals express more of their potential, the planetary consciousiness is raised; in the end we will have perfection. It is all like a huge puzzle that is solving itself and each of us is a vital piece in this puzzle.

Namaste...

Here are some Links I find inspirational and related to what I am doing with SharePrayer.

SNV Oakland

God At Play

Rev. Mary Murray Shelton

Hunger Site

Save Rainforest

Earth Echo

Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa

Layne's Poetry

Frety.NET - a web directory with homepage thumbnails

Conscious Company

Namaste Science of Mind and Spirit Center

Project Prosperity

United Communities of Spirit

Copyright 2007 by Peter Stickney
All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced except for personal prayerwork.
Personal prayerwork includes printing the prayer and sending it to family and friends who can't access it here.