Category Archives: prayer

Prayer for a Summer Wednesday

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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I pray a prayer of celebration today for a joyful wedding anniversary in our family. Twenty years ago no one could have imagined or anticipated the over-arching health, love and creative children that have grown in this marriage, open and inclusive to the welfare of others. My prayer is one of deep gratitude and hope for continued shaping a life of love together.

I prayer a prayer of lament today for an unwelcome diagnosis for another in the family. No one could have imagined or anticipated this invasion into a healthy life, and even now we don’t know what it means, what it will look like, where the journey will take us. My prayer is first, that God in mercy will continue the healing toward wholeness already begun, and that each of us will know how to participate in that healing, through tears, laughter and love.

I prayer a prayer of urgent petition for peace and justice today for this country, buffeted about in division and question about where truth can be found. No one could have imagined or anticipated this liminal place in which we wake every day to new surprise, and can’t count on things that were true yesterday being the same today. My prayer is that people of great compassion and will speak truth to power, speak the truth in love, and know when to speak and when to keep silence for the healing of all people.

I pray a prayer for  an awareness Holy Presence–in me through the frustrations of technology, through the quotidian mysteries of caring for my dwelling and the people in it, through the extroversion I adopt to go out to meet people, through the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart as I listen to the One standing behind me, saying “This is the way, walk in it.”  I could not have imagined or anticipated that at this point in my life, this would be a day on which I found myself, living in light and darkness simultaneously, trying to navigate a clear path between mundane and epic concerns, living intentionally and consciously, sorting out what things have my name on them and what things to let go.

But this is the day that the Spirit has made…I pray to rejoice, to weep, to do good, love mercy and walk humbly with whomever I encounter…for God’s sake!

 

 

Come. Holy Spirit

04 Sunday Jun 2017

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Come. Holy Spirit! Today we celebrate your presence in our lives, in the Church and in the world.

I pray to meet you in the depth of my heart where I am so prone to fear and anxiety, so quick to forget that I am committed to Hope, to Love, intending to believing and acting on the principle that “all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

I pray to let you heal me–body and spirit–of those wounds and scars that are left over from old memories, early traumas and the hurts and slights that keep popping up in the course of my daily rounds.

I pray to feel your energy surging in my recovering body, in my brain that too often forgets things these days, in my praying spirit that bogs down with the enormity and complexity of this sad world.

I pray to allow your wildness keep opening my heart to finding ways when there seems to be no way, to taking in the most unlikely ones who cross my path, to putting the resources I have to the healing of the fragments of this world where I can make a difference, however small.

I pray for the wounds of so many in so many places, with its accompanying fear that we can’t know where terror will break out next. I pray that You will keep up Your powerful attack on the minds and wills of those who are heartless, greedy and self-serving only, and transform their hearts to ones of compassion and caring. 

I pray for Your Presence in the created world, that as it struggles to survive and thrive, you will teach me how to cooperate with that healing, with Your power to give me words and actions that will preserve and respect the beauty and sustainability of Earth’s resources.

I pray for Your Wisdom for all people of faith as they wrestle to know how to be observant of their commitment to You in times and events that are muddy and messy.

I pray that You, Holy Healer, will touch the bodies and spirits and minds of those who suffer, and where there is despair, replace it with hope and peace.

And for all those areas for which I have words but can’t get them out, and for those things deep inside me for which I have no words, Spirit, turn them into creative and cogent expressions of my heart to the Holy–for what is loving. joyful, peaceful, kind and generous, and faithful in my walking and talking, singing and dancing, working and giving, hoping and living each day with imagination, energy and love.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come!

 

 

 

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Pilgrim’s Hymn

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in listening, peace, pilgrimage, prayer, singing

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The practice of spiritual pilgrimage has captured my soul’s imagination since I was a young adult; the setting out into the unknown in the company of and the longing for the Presence of the Holy One has been the central metaphor of my journey. This hymn by the late Stephen Paulus captures both the tenor and the essence of my hopes for my life. Tomorrow I set out on a new pilgrimage, that of spinal surgery and recovery. I carry this hymn in my heart, and believe it is one carried by all the other pilgrims of my love and life, no matter what their own words might be. Grace and peace go with us!

PILGRIMS’ HYMN

Even before we call on Your name

to ask You, O God,
when we seek for the words to glorify You,
You hear our prayer;
unceasing love, O unceasing love,
surpassing all we know,

Glory to the Father,
and to the Son,
And to the Holy Spirit.

Even with darkness sealing us in,
we breathe Your name,
and through all the days that follow so fast,
we trust in You;
endless Your grace, O endless Your grace,
beyond all mortal dream.

Both now and forever,
And unto ages and ages,
Amen

 

(Michael Dennis Browne)

 

 

Holy Week: The Lorica

24 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in blessing, Holy Week, music, peace, prayer, presence

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The last practice from Joyce Rupp that I am observing this holy season is repeating the “lorica,” a Celtic prayer attributed to St. Patrick, invoked for protection and mindfulness. Last week on St. Patrick’s Day my inbox was filled with images and versions of that prayer, in calligraphy, icon and song. I knew that I was going to pray it myself this week, so I enjoyed the diversity of forms that were shared.  From the extended prayer, I especially like these parts:

I arise today with the strength of God to comfort me, the might of God to uphold me, the wisdom of God to guide me…

Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ with me, Christ within me, Christ around me, Christ about me, Christ on my left, Christ on my right…Christ in the heart of everyone that thinks of me, Christ in each mouth that speaks of me, Christ in each eye that sees me, Christ in each one that hears me.

The cadence and the tempo of the prayer ground me in my present moment, who I am right now, and from whence my help comes. But the image of a lorica is an armored breastplate–from medieval times, metal, sturdy impenetrable. Whether it is too remote by centuries or location or I am not a military type, I don’t find that image helpful. Nor, as I looked through books of painting and sculptures of Christ at the end of his life, did I find one that represented the sense on presence and protection that the lorica gives me. Then I  remembered that for several decades I have always carried with me a postcard of Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm.” The painting was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum many years ago, but before it was stolen, I was able to see it hanging there. The painting is huge, impressive, compelling. From the first glance I was captivated by it–the contrast of light and dark, the characters of fear and confusion, and in half-light down toward the right of the painting is Jesus asleep in the boat. The image of the sleeping, yet powerful Christ, stays with me, especially when my own “rough seas” seem to be gigantic and overwhelming. No matter what, I can trust the One who is at rest because he knows that all will be well, and at the right moment, he will rise and say, “Peace, be still,” to the madness, the wreckage, the terror that swirls around me, that swirls in our systems of work and connection, that swirls in the chaotic world.

So in these last days of Lent and Holy Week, I wake each morning saying the words of the Lorica, keeping in the eye of my heart the Christ whose knowledge and power and grace will bring all things to wholeness in the fullness of time.

May Christ guard me today from poison and fire, from drowning and wounding, so my mission may bear fruit in abundance.

 

I prefer my image of Jesus from Rembrandt to the art in this youtube from the Celtic Women, but the song with the words helps me in my planting myself at peace with Jesus in the boat. May each of you have holy days of trust and peace despite the raging of the storm and the roiling of the waters!

Lent 1: Blessing the Children

13 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in blessing, children, Lent, prayer, Uncategorized

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In Lent this year, I am practicing some themes fromGreeneValentine15 Celtic spirituality, suggested by Joyce Rupp, one per week. Her first theme is to notice and celebrate the Presence of the Holy in the ordinary–the small details of our lives–our routines, our surroundings and the people who are front and center. She makes the suggestion that every morning and evening we bless our children.

I have prayed for each of my children and grandchildren since before they were born. But in picking up this Lenten practice which is more regular and more intense, I notice first that my prayers for them now are often either “defensive,” asking for protection or correction, or are just generic, “bless the beasts and the children” kinds of prayers. To bless them in a focused way twice a day is calling me to focus on each of them in his or her particularity, and to see them more deeply and lovingly.

John O’Donahue in his book, To Bless the Space between Us, describes blessing this way:

A blessing is not a sentiment or a question; it is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart.

So I embark this practice with an open heart. What do I already know about each of them, two of them since their conception?  What do I still need to observe and to learn? In what can I take delight and rejoice? What concerns can I lift to the Holy One for healing, for satisfying, for directing, for deepening? And how can I be a blessing to each of them, without hovering, prying, judging or interfering?

It was a joy-filled exercise to inscribe in my journal the name of each one, and to limn out the qualities and aspects of that personality, as I pray for blessing for her or for him for that morning and evening. In the collection of the eight of them (in-laws included!), there is such diversity in temperament, style and  affections: introverts and extroverts, actors and contemplatives, students and athletes, cheerleaders and followers.  In addition, they all keep growing up, changing, even the adults among them, so that my list keeps inviting additions and subtractions day by day. I bless school assignments, sports events, play dates, rehearsals, and after-school lessons. I bless marriages, job searches, office politics, bank accounts. And I bless the working and loving, the hopes and the dreams, as well as bumps in the road that seem to block those dreams.  And I pray for each unique spirit of that growing one, made in the image of the Holy, that it be preserved and nourished, and, yes, protected, as it follows the path of the Spirit that is meant for it.

Joyce Rupp suggests this prayer of blessing:

May God and the angels guide, guard, and protect you this night.

And so I go to sleep praying this blessing for each one by name…Sean, Erica Lee, Dalton, Malakai, Erica Brooke, Ezra, Theo, Sadie. I am filled with hope as I bless each one, even  as I enter into the arms of the angels who watch and bless me as I sleep, believing that the One who is blessing me will also bless them. A loving way to begin Lent!