The passages below are suggestions for reading, meditation, and Lectio this week. Feel free to post your comments or reflections about these passages. The Lectio Divina prompts are also here for your use.
Day 1: Mark 1:35-39
Day 2: Mark 14:32-36
Day 3: Mark 4:35-41
Day 4: Luke 11:5-10
Day 5: Luke 18:9-14
Day 6: John 7:37-39
Day 7: John 14:25-27
Read: Seek a phrase or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat the phrase to yourself. Savor the text.
Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?
Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God’s invitation to you?
Rest: We seek to rest in God’s transforming power and presence.
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
11/9/07
Prayer-Filled Life: The Contemplative Tradition
by Marvin Pritchard
The contemplative tradition addresses the human longing for the practice of the presence of God.
We all hunger for a prayer-filled life, for a richer, fuller practice of the presence of God. It is the contemplative stream or river of Christian life and faith that can bring us into intimacy with God.
Perhaps the most well known person who practiced the contemplative tradition was Nicholas Herman. He lived from 1611 to 1691 and we know him as Brother Lawrence. He wrote The Practice of the Presence of God. It seems that Brother Lawrence had made a career change in mid life from being in the French army and civil service to working as a cook in a monastery. He is quoted as saying “the time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen . . . I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were at the Blessed Sacrament.”
Another fairly well know contemplative was John of the Cross. He lived fro 1542 to 1591. He was in the Carmelite movement which was part of the Roman Catholic Reformation. His noteworthy contribution is the writing of several of Christianity’s great spiritual classics. He wrote five books the most well known was The Dark Night of the Soul. This book provided a keen insight into human nature and guided readers in the soul’s journey with God.
Another well know contemplative was Thomas Merton. He was a Trappist monk and lived from 1915 to 1968. Merton authored many books and poems. Merton is credited with being the most influential proponent of tradition monasticism in the twentieth century. Merton said, “Contemplative prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him who we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself.”
The last modern day contemplative I want to share with you is Frank Laubach. He lived from 1884 to 1970. He was a successful missionary in the Philippians and very well educated . . . a B.A from Princeton, a graduate degree from the Union Theological Seminary, and M.A. and PhD. in sociology from Columbia University.
Even after a successful career as a missionary, he confessed that he had learned nothing of surrender and joy in Christ. This bothered him a lot. He had a devoted wife and family and all the trappings of success but he was weighed down with doubt and despair.
Laubach determined to do something about his miserable condition and decided to make the rest of his life a continuous inner conversation with God in perfect responsiveness to God’s will so that his own life could become rich with God’s presence. He resolved to spend as many moments as possible listening and in determined sensitivity to God’s presence.
As he began to live in moment by moment attentiveness to God’s presence, he experienced a remarkable change. By the end of the first month he had gained a sense of being carried along by God through the hours of cooperation with God in little things.
Laubach lived the second half of his life as God’s constant companion. His life began to flourish with the joy of God and even more amazing productivity. His life is a picture of the path of real change. He took time to be with God, was honest about the condition of his heart, and trusted that God desired the same intimate relationship that he craved.
Some of the contemplative life’s most basic characteristics and movements are described for us by Richard Foster in his book Steams of Living Water. As I read this book and prepared for this talk, I felt like a kid doing a dot to dot book; I felt that as each of these characteristics were described by Foster a line was drawn to another dot and a beautiful picture emerged.
I had experienced the characteristics but had no name for the experience. Listen as I share the way Foster describes them for us and see if they resonate with your soul.
Love
Over time we sense a deepening love for God that feels more like a gift than an achievement. In the beginning this feeling of love for God seems quiet and unassuming and it is hardly noticeable. The love for God comes little by little and it seems to fluctuate . . . high and low, hot and cold. In time it seems to grow deeper and stronger and steadier.
Peace
At the same time our love for God is growing, a peace slips into our lives . . . a peace that Foster says can not be analyzed or dissected. This peace is not due to any absence of conflict or worry. This feeling of peace is often interrupted in the beginning by distractions. But in time as it grows it seems to wins out over the distractions and noise of our lives.
Delight
Anther movement that Foster describes for us is that we begin to experience a delight. There is a pleasure, a friendship, joy . . . a deep joy. Foster described this as playfulness. God laughs into our soul and our soul laughs back into God. John of the Cross calls it “the sweet and delightful life of love with God . . . that delightful and wondrous vision.” It is not an uninterrupted delight. We experience an ebb and flow.
Emptiness
This seems like a contradiction but it is not really. We are entering a loving delight but we are pulled into intense longing, yearning, searching . . . a searching and not finding. We find but not completely. Foster calls it a dissatisfied satisfaction. John of the Cross called it “a living thirst . . . the urgent longing of love.”
Foster goes on to suggest that this emptiness is a darkness as well . . . we can feel as if God is hidden from us. Throughout these experiences solitude is our welcome companion . . . we are learning to be alone with God. Foster say that we need to understand that this emptiness, this darkness, this dryness is itself prayer. While delight is a feasting, emptiness is a fasting and both are needed for the growth of the soul.
Fire
When I read this in Foster’s book I was a little surprised . . . fire? But Foster doesn’t mean a literal fire. Foster says that in some ways this is more real than a literal fire. He says that as our love grows and intensifies, it becomes a steady flaming passion. Anything that causes distance or separation from God . . . disobedience or perhaps neglect is painful. “We feel and even welcome the purifying fire of God’s love burning out the dross; all stubbornness, all hate, all grasping need for self-promotion. And as the self-sins are burned away, the seeds of universal love blossoms and flower”.
Transformation
Foster suggests that each of these build on the other. Through it all, God gradually and slowly “captures” the inner faculties of who we are . . . first the heart and the will, then the mind, the imagination, and the passions. The result Foster says is transformation of the entire personality into the likeness of Christ. More and more and more we take on His habits, feelings, hopes, faith, and love.
Practicing the contemplative tradition brings strengths to our Christian walk, but there are a few potential dangers to be aware of. Foster says that these dangers are caused by distortions of the tradition.
Tendency to separate from ordinary life
Much of the literature on the Contemplative Tradition was written by monks. It is easy to say that they separated themselves from ordinary life so it was easy for them and not for me. I have to live in the “real world”. The monks did not have computers that makes one pull out their hair or diapers or crying kids or machines that malfunction.
Foster makes it clear that “in the middle of everyday life is precisely where prayer and intimacy with God needs to be developed”.
Tendency to extremism
A subtle form of danger lies in this same area. It is easy to become so intense with the tradition that it makes us unbalanced. We are so focused that we neglect other areas of our spiritual life. The one Foster mentions are the pressing social issues of our day. “When prayer and piety are used as a dodge from responsible action, we must expose this twisted and deformed spirituality as an imposter”.
Tendency to devalue theology over our faith
Sometimes inadvertently in our zeal to stress heart faith we devalue sound theology. Foster says “that in our attempts to correct intellectualism devoid of life, we must not debunk the necessity of right reason and clear thinking. We love God both from the mind and the heart and these two must ever be inseparable twins for us”.
Tendency to neglect community
Foster suggests that the tradition’s greatest strength has the potential to become a serious weakness. While the contemplative tradition stresses our solitude before God, it can easily lead us into individualism. We were not meant to live out our faith in isolation. We need community . . . we need brothers and sisters who love us, support us and give their discernment in our lives. Community helps us with our struggles and we gain strength from each other and lean not only from our mistakes but from others mistakes and we are able to encourage each other.
It is my prayer tonight that you will fall head over heals in love with God.
Resources:
Falling for God, Gary Moon
Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster
A Spiritual Formation Workbook, James Smith
The contemplative tradition addresses the human longing for the practice of the presence of God.
We all hunger for a prayer-filled life, for a richer, fuller practice of the presence of God. It is the contemplative stream or river of Christian life and faith that can bring us into intimacy with God.
Perhaps the most well known person who practiced the contemplative tradition was Nicholas Herman. He lived from 1611 to 1691 and we know him as Brother Lawrence. He wrote The Practice of the Presence of God. It seems that Brother Lawrence had made a career change in mid life from being in the French army and civil service to working as a cook in a monastery. He is quoted as saying “the time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen . . . I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were at the Blessed Sacrament.”
Another fairly well know contemplative was John of the Cross. He lived fro 1542 to 1591. He was in the Carmelite movement which was part of the Roman Catholic Reformation. His noteworthy contribution is the writing of several of Christianity’s great spiritual classics. He wrote five books the most well known was The Dark Night of the Soul. This book provided a keen insight into human nature and guided readers in the soul’s journey with God.
Another well know contemplative was Thomas Merton. He was a Trappist monk and lived from 1915 to 1968. Merton authored many books and poems. Merton is credited with being the most influential proponent of tradition monasticism in the twentieth century. Merton said, “Contemplative prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him who we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself.”
The last modern day contemplative I want to share with you is Frank Laubach. He lived from 1884 to 1970. He was a successful missionary in the Philippians and very well educated . . . a B.A from Princeton, a graduate degree from the Union Theological Seminary, and M.A. and PhD. in sociology from Columbia University.
Even after a successful career as a missionary, he confessed that he had learned nothing of surrender and joy in Christ. This bothered him a lot. He had a devoted wife and family and all the trappings of success but he was weighed down with doubt and despair.
Laubach determined to do something about his miserable condition and decided to make the rest of his life a continuous inner conversation with God in perfect responsiveness to God’s will so that his own life could become rich with God’s presence. He resolved to spend as many moments as possible listening and in determined sensitivity to God’s presence.
As he began to live in moment by moment attentiveness to God’s presence, he experienced a remarkable change. By the end of the first month he had gained a sense of being carried along by God through the hours of cooperation with God in little things.
Laubach lived the second half of his life as God’s constant companion. His life began to flourish with the joy of God and even more amazing productivity. His life is a picture of the path of real change. He took time to be with God, was honest about the condition of his heart, and trusted that God desired the same intimate relationship that he craved.
Some of the contemplative life’s most basic characteristics and movements are described for us by Richard Foster in his book Steams of Living Water. As I read this book and prepared for this talk, I felt like a kid doing a dot to dot book; I felt that as each of these characteristics were described by Foster a line was drawn to another dot and a beautiful picture emerged.
I had experienced the characteristics but had no name for the experience. Listen as I share the way Foster describes them for us and see if they resonate with your soul.
Love
Over time we sense a deepening love for God that feels more like a gift than an achievement. In the beginning this feeling of love for God seems quiet and unassuming and it is hardly noticeable. The love for God comes little by little and it seems to fluctuate . . . high and low, hot and cold. In time it seems to grow deeper and stronger and steadier.
Peace
At the same time our love for God is growing, a peace slips into our lives . . . a peace that Foster says can not be analyzed or dissected. This peace is not due to any absence of conflict or worry. This feeling of peace is often interrupted in the beginning by distractions. But in time as it grows it seems to wins out over the distractions and noise of our lives.
Delight
Anther movement that Foster describes for us is that we begin to experience a delight. There is a pleasure, a friendship, joy . . . a deep joy. Foster described this as playfulness. God laughs into our soul and our soul laughs back into God. John of the Cross calls it “the sweet and delightful life of love with God . . . that delightful and wondrous vision.” It is not an uninterrupted delight. We experience an ebb and flow.
Emptiness
This seems like a contradiction but it is not really. We are entering a loving delight but we are pulled into intense longing, yearning, searching . . . a searching and not finding. We find but not completely. Foster calls it a dissatisfied satisfaction. John of the Cross called it “a living thirst . . . the urgent longing of love.”
Foster goes on to suggest that this emptiness is a darkness as well . . . we can feel as if God is hidden from us. Throughout these experiences solitude is our welcome companion . . . we are learning to be alone with God. Foster say that we need to understand that this emptiness, this darkness, this dryness is itself prayer. While delight is a feasting, emptiness is a fasting and both are needed for the growth of the soul.
Fire
When I read this in Foster’s book I was a little surprised . . . fire? But Foster doesn’t mean a literal fire. Foster says that in some ways this is more real than a literal fire. He says that as our love grows and intensifies, it becomes a steady flaming passion. Anything that causes distance or separation from God . . . disobedience or perhaps neglect is painful. “We feel and even welcome the purifying fire of God’s love burning out the dross; all stubbornness, all hate, all grasping need for self-promotion. And as the self-sins are burned away, the seeds of universal love blossoms and flower”.
Transformation
Foster suggests that each of these build on the other. Through it all, God gradually and slowly “captures” the inner faculties of who we are . . . first the heart and the will, then the mind, the imagination, and the passions. The result Foster says is transformation of the entire personality into the likeness of Christ. More and more and more we take on His habits, feelings, hopes, faith, and love.
Practicing the contemplative tradition brings strengths to our Christian walk, but there are a few potential dangers to be aware of. Foster says that these dangers are caused by distortions of the tradition.
Tendency to separate from ordinary life
Much of the literature on the Contemplative Tradition was written by monks. It is easy to say that they separated themselves from ordinary life so it was easy for them and not for me. I have to live in the “real world”. The monks did not have computers that makes one pull out their hair or diapers or crying kids or machines that malfunction.
Foster makes it clear that “in the middle of everyday life is precisely where prayer and intimacy with God needs to be developed”.
Tendency to extremism
A subtle form of danger lies in this same area. It is easy to become so intense with the tradition that it makes us unbalanced. We are so focused that we neglect other areas of our spiritual life. The one Foster mentions are the pressing social issues of our day. “When prayer and piety are used as a dodge from responsible action, we must expose this twisted and deformed spirituality as an imposter”.
Tendency to devalue theology over our faith
Sometimes inadvertently in our zeal to stress heart faith we devalue sound theology. Foster says “that in our attempts to correct intellectualism devoid of life, we must not debunk the necessity of right reason and clear thinking. We love God both from the mind and the heart and these two must ever be inseparable twins for us”.
Tendency to neglect community
Foster suggests that the tradition’s greatest strength has the potential to become a serious weakness. While the contemplative tradition stresses our solitude before God, it can easily lead us into individualism. We were not meant to live out our faith in isolation. We need community . . . we need brothers and sisters who love us, support us and give their discernment in our lives. Community helps us with our struggles and we gain strength from each other and lean not only from our mistakes but from others mistakes and we are able to encourage each other.
It is my prayer tonight that you will fall head over heals in love with God.
Resources:
Falling for God, Gary Moon
Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster
A Spiritual Formation Workbook, James Smith
10/20/07
Prayer Labyrinth
Here is one of the most prayerful and quieting online experiences I've ever encountered. This "virtual" prayer labyrinth, hosted by Youth for Christ, can be a restoring way to spend your lunch hour or to quiet your heart on a Sunday afternoon.
10/11/07
Praying Online
The Internet can be a place to pray. The links below offer three different tools for opening up space in your life to connect with and listen to God.
- Jesuits in the U.K. have created a Web site providing downloadable MP3 "podcasts" of daily prayer and scripture meditation (similar to Lectio) as well as a "Review of the Day" (similar to the Examen), all accompanied by beautiful music: http://www.pray-as-you-go.org/
- A group in England has compiled scripture and historical, traditional readings to encourage worldwide Christians to pray the Daily Office ~ prayers for morning, noon, evening, and bedtime: http://www.northumbriacommunity.org/PraytheOffice/index.html
- For anyone who wants to be more deliberate in praying for people and specific requests, MyPrayerTeam.com has created an electronic "reminder" system for partnering friends and family who want to lift up each others' requests regularly: http://www.myprayerteam.com/
10/10/07
Prayer Cairns
~ by Sara E. SingletonOnce you decide to intentionally enter into spiritual formation, you eventually come to a place when you find yourself in one huge FOG. Nothing seems to have clear edges or definition, and at times you may wonder if you’ve lost your way. In my own experience, I found that practicing spiritual disciplines heightened my awareness of God’s presence. Pretty soon I began to long for a break for God! I’d entertain what it would be like to watch TV again on my own and get life back to “normal.” Living with the awareness of God around me all the time was wearing me out!
On the other hand, there have been times when I’ve felt that I was spiritually soaring, and such heights of spiritual ecstasy gave me reason to look down upon other believers who were less mature. This self-assessment was what a young pastor felt as he wrote to his mentor, John Newton, in the late 18th century. This pastor listened to Newton’s preaching and attempted to put everything he was hearing into practice. The pastor soon reported to Newton that although he had once been a kernel, he was now a full stalk with ripe ears of corn. Newton responded to the proud pastor that the more mature Christians become, the less aware they are of their true state. This is because God gives the growth and the mature believer has no eyes except for the Lord.[1]
The goal of spiritual formation is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (cf. Luke 10:25-27). Love is of God. How is God’s love going to come into me to heal me and fill me so that I can pour back this love to God and to others? Romans 5:5 says, “And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
God’s love is poured into us through our communication and communion with God. This is the essence of prayer. The root of all growth in grace is through prayer. Prayer is, simply put, a shared life with God.
How does one have a shared life with God? It is through the same means of communication and communion that we exchange in any intimate relationship. God speaks to us in Scripture, and through reading Scripture, memorizing it, and chewing it in lectio divina, we receive the mind and will of God. On our part, we are to invited to turn our thoughts into prayers, learning to talk to God about everything! We commune with God through centering prayer, listening prayer and contemplative prayer. But there remains a problem. We think about and study prayer more than we actually pray.
Emilie Griffin expresses this dilemma in her book, Clinging. She writes, “There is a moment between intending to pray and actually praying that is as dark and silent as any moment in our lives. It is the split second between thinking about prayer and really praying. For some of us, this split second may last for decades. It seems, then, that the greatest obstacle to prayer is the simple matter of beginning, the simple exertion of the will, the starting, the acting, the doing. How easy it is, and yet- between us and the possibility of prayer there seems to be a great gulf fixed: an abyss of our own making that separates us from God.”[2]
The reason we have difficulty sharing life with God is that our prayer life is another area of our lives that has been affected by the Fall. Prayer is the most intimate experience possible with God, since it is Mind to mind/Heart to heart/Emotion to emotion, Will to will. Prayer is intimacy with God at its fullest.
What are we to do? There is a great space between us and God. It is what I call the Great Synapse. Imagine from cellular biology an image of a neuron at the interception with muscle tissue. Neurons have tiny branches called dendrites that reach out to the muscle. Communication between this highly specialized cell that carries out the will of the person is communicated through neurotransmitters, bits of chemicals that leak out of the dendrites and move toward the muscle, causing its contraction. Now image is similar to the relationship we have with God through prayer. The mind of God and the energy of God pulsate through the universe. God is expressing His glory and love into all the world. The receptors are our minds, our heart and our will. Prayer is the great connector in this synapse. Think of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and the space, the gap between the fingers. Prayer is what bridges this gap and connects us with the heart of God!
Recently I went climbing with my husband up to the summit of Mt. Princeton, about 14,200 feet. Nearly four fifths of the hike is over large boulders, with no real trail in sight. Every hiker depends upon those who have gone before them, building cairns as they ascended. Cairns are rocks that are built into the shape of a haystack. They can range from 12” to 4’. To find one’s way up Mt. Princeton, one must walk toward the next cairn.
I would like to point out three cairns that left by those who have gone ahead of us.
Cairn #1 is the Lord’s Prayer in Mt. 6:9-14, taught to us by Jesus. At times there are no prayers in us. We need a way to ease into prayer, some aide to prayer when we need all the help that we can get. This is what the Lord’s Prayer can do. To begin the prayer, imagine yourself standing before the door of a great mansion. “Our Father, ….” You have just entered into God’s house, where life is lived on God’s terms. Who’s Father is He? Our Father! You have begun to pray for the world, particularly for the household of faith. “…who art in heaven,” you continue. Where is heaven? Is it far off, or is all around us? Does God live in heaven? If He does, then this means that all of heaven’s resources are available. In each phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, you are going down a long hallway in within the mansion, and each hallway has many doors on each side. Each phrase of the prayer can lead you to open one of these doors and discover more prayers you want to offer as you are led through the prayer that Jesus taught to His disciples.
Cairn #2 is The PAPA prayer is a way of praying first taught by Larry Crabb.[3] It involves:
P- Present yourself as you really are, not as you wish you were. This means being honest with what is on your mind, your feelings and needs and distractions. If we are not presenting ourselves honestly to God – who are we fooling?
A - Attend to how you are thinking about God. Is He your genie, your servant, your watchmaker, your distant father, your disciplinarian? Or, is He the Lord who is risen and victorious, portrayed most fully in Revelation 1:12-18? Get the true image of Christ which John saw on the Isle of Patmos before you go further. It will change the way you pray.
P – Purge yourself of anything that blocks your relationship with God. This may require repenting of an inadequate view of God and His ability to provide and fully love you. Confess your sins so that you may be made trustworthy and whole.
A – Approach God as the “First Thing” in your life. Imagine that God answered every one of your prayers and continued to ask if there was anything more that you would like. “You: My list is complete. I have everything written down.
God: Then I will give you everything on your list. But on one condition: you will never
hear My voice again. I will withdraw all sense of My presence from you. You will never
know Me.”[4] Immediately we realize that it is God who we really want. Only He can
satisfy the hungers of our heart, for we were made for Him. When we begin to
understand that everything else is secondary, then we learn to pray for first things first,
which is for God Himself.
Cairn #3 comes from The Cloud of Unknowing , a spiritual classic written by an anonymous 24 year old man in the 14th century. This monk says that all prayer can actually be summed up in two different one-syllable words. All that is wrong within us and within in the world is because of sin. When we cry out, “Sin! Sin! Sin!” we are petitioning for immediate and complete grace to come to our rescue. The image that comes to mind is a peasant who discovers in the middle of the night that his house is on fire. He has not time for explanations or long requests. He calls out with all his might, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” and every one of his neighbors will come running. In the same way, we call out our need with this one word – sin. The other word that is the summation of all that is good, the ultimate desire of our heart and our greatest need is the cry for “God! God! God!” Surely God will be pleased to make Himself know to the soul who cries to Him to reveal Himself in all His glory. These two words can be spoken as breath prayers while one walks or works throughout the day. These two words can gather our thoughts into one great petition and one great trust.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
By beginning with these three cairns, the spiritual pilgrim can continue on the difficult yet worthy trail of pursuing the God who waits to be found!
[1] See J. Todd Murray’s Beyond Amazing Grace: Timeless Pastoral Wisdom from Letters, Sermons and Hymns of John Newton, 2007.
[2] Emilie Griffin, Clinging: The Experience of Prayer (New York: McCracken Press, 1994), p. 3.
[3] Larry Crabb, The PAPA Prayer: The Prayer You’ve Never Prayed (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006).
[4] Crabb, p. 153.
10/7/07
Mike Yaconelli's Terrible Prayers
I have always been terrible at praying.
I forget.
My mind wanders.
I fall asleep.
I don't pray enough.
I don't understand what prayer is
Or what prayer does.
If prayer were school...I would flunk praying.
But prayer isn't school.
It is mystery.
Maybe the mystery is...Jesus loves terrible prayers.
Maybe...When I can't think of anything to say, he says what I can't say.
When I talk too much, he chersihes my too many words.
When I fall asleep, he holds me in his lap and caresses my weary soul.
When I am overwhelmed with guilt at my inconsistent, inadequate praying,
He whispers, "Your name is always on my lips."
I am filled with gratitude, my soul overflows with thankfulness, and I...
I...find myself saying over and over again, "thank you,"
Praying the mystery.
I forget.
My mind wanders.
I fall asleep.
I don't pray enough.
I don't understand what prayer is
Or what prayer does.
If prayer were school...I would flunk praying.
But prayer isn't school.
It is mystery.
Maybe the mystery is...Jesus loves terrible prayers.
Maybe...When I can't think of anything to say, he says what I can't say.
When I talk too much, he chersihes my too many words.
When I fall asleep, he holds me in his lap and caresses my weary soul.
When I am overwhelmed with guilt at my inconsistent, inadequate praying,
He whispers, "Your name is always on my lips."
I am filled with gratitude, my soul overflows with thankfulness, and I...
I...find myself saying over and over again, "thank you,"
Praying the mystery.
Prayer in Poetry
After Reading Dom John Chapman, Benedictine Abbot
by Jack Ridl
"Pray as you can; not as you can't."
My prayers will sit on the backs
of bedraggled donkeys, in the sidecars
of Harleys, in the pockets of night
watchmen, on the laps of widows.
They will be the stones I walk by,
the smudges I leave on anything I touch,
the last place the last snow melts. They
will be brown, weekdays, potato pancakes.
They will stick to the undersides of porches,
docks, dog paws, and carpets. When I'm sick,
my cough will carry them. When you leave
in the morning, they will sink into the bed,
the sofa, every towel. I will carry them
in the modesty of my feet. Everything
will be praying. My dog will be petitioning
for mercy when he stops to sniff a post.
Every window in our house will be
an offering for supplications. The birds
at the feeder will be twitching
for my forgiveness. I will say my prayers
are bread dough, doorknobs, golf tees,
any small and nameless change of heart.
When I forget my prayers, they will
bundle up and go out on their own
across the street, down into the basement,
into a small town with no mayor where
there is a single swing in the park. When
I forget, they'll know I was watching TV,
the sky, or listening to Basie, remembering
the way my mother and father jitterbugged
to the big band station, he pulling her close,
then spinning her out across the green kitchen floor.
by Jack Ridl
"Pray as you can; not as you can't."
My prayers will sit on the backs
of bedraggled donkeys, in the sidecars
of Harleys, in the pockets of night
watchmen, on the laps of widows.
They will be the stones I walk by,
the smudges I leave on anything I touch,
the last place the last snow melts. They
will be brown, weekdays, potato pancakes.
They will stick to the undersides of porches,
docks, dog paws, and carpets. When I'm sick,
my cough will carry them. When you leave
in the morning, they will sink into the bed,
the sofa, every towel. I will carry them
in the modesty of my feet. Everything
will be praying. My dog will be petitioning
for mercy when he stops to sniff a post.
Every window in our house will be
an offering for supplications. The birds
at the feeder will be twitching
for my forgiveness. I will say my prayers
are bread dough, doorknobs, golf tees,
any small and nameless change of heart.
When I forget my prayers, they will
bundle up and go out on their own
across the street, down into the basement,
into a small town with no mayor where
there is a single swing in the park. When
I forget, they'll know I was watching TV,
the sky, or listening to Basie, remembering
the way my mother and father jitterbugged
to the big band station, he pulling her close,
then spinning her out across the green kitchen floor.
Oct 4 -11 Lectio Passages: Prayer
The passages below are suggestions for reading, mediation, and Lectio this week. Feel free to post your comments or reflections about these passages. The Lectio Divina prompts are also here for your use.
Oct 4 -- Isaiah 50:4-5
Oct 5 -- Ephesians 1:15-19a
Oct 6 -- Luke 5:15-16
Oct 7 -- Matthew 6:5-8
Oct 8 -- Psalm 63:1-8
Oct 9 -- James 5:13-16
Oct 10 -- John 15:7-8
Read: Seek a phrase, word, or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat that phrase to yourself or write it down. Savor the text.
Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?
Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God's invitation to you?
Rest: Relax in God's transforming power and presence.
Oct 4 -- Isaiah 50:4-5
Oct 5 -- Ephesians 1:15-19a
Oct 6 -- Luke 5:15-16
Oct 7 -- Matthew 6:5-8
Oct 8 -- Psalm 63:1-8
Oct 9 -- James 5:13-16
Oct 10 -- John 15:7-8
Read: Seek a phrase, word, or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat that phrase to yourself or write it down. Savor the text.
Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?
Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God's invitation to you?
Rest: Relax in God's transforming power and presence.
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