The name of God

what a struggle we have
with your name, God.
 
for some,
it's a dry and dusty word,
better suited
for the grave of history.
 
for others,
it is caught on the tip
of our tongues,
     and just can't seem
     to escape our lips.
 
for many,
it is more a word
we use in anger,
or frustration,
or pain.
 
take this crumbling,
cracking word,
renew it,
refresh it,
reshape it
into that Living Word
that reminds us
you are always with us
     as you have been before we could speak. 
Amen.
 
(c) 2004 Thom M. Shuman

Move off the page

You, majestic sovereign…move off the page!

Move off the page to the world,
move off the page to the trouble,
move out of your paged leisure
to the turmoil of your creatures.

Move to the peace negotiations,
and cancer diagnoses,
and burning churches,
and lynched blacks,
and abused children.

Listen to the groans and moans,
and see and hear and know
and remember, and come down!"

(Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann).

Prayer based on 1 Corinthians 13

Love is patient;
for our quick-temperedness:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is kind;
for our indifference towards others:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not envious;
for our petty jealousies:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not boastful;
for our pretentiousness:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not arrogant;
for our opinionated views -
Lord, have mercy:
Christ, have mercy:

Love is not rude;
for our crass behaviour:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love does not insist on getting its own way;
for our false sense of our own importance:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not irritable;
for our resentful behaviour:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love does not rejoice in wrong-doing;
for our rejoicing in all the wrong things:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

May God show us mercy,
forgive us our sins against love
and lead us to life that lasts:

AMEN.

(adapted from a prayer at http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/bfletch/c213.html)

Based on Psalm 84

Bombs overseas and murders in our streets;
families with homes one day are homeless the next.
O, Lord, our souls yearn, even faint to worship you.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
we are forever praising you!

Demonic displacements in our cities
and unrighteous gentrification in our towns!
O Lord, our souls yearn, even faint, to worship you today.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
we are forever praising you!

We search for your peace and cry out for your presence,
looking for a city whose builder and maker is God.
Thank you, for even the sparrow has a home with you; and so do we.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
we are forever praising you!

(from Africana Resources, United Methodist Church USA, )

On Prayer

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

by Poet, Czeslaw Milosz

Prayer and Life

There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.
--Thomas Kelly

Thomas Merton

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude," Abbey of Gethsemani

Pushing against the rock

I've posted this story before, but today I was reminded of it in the context of prayer:

There was a man who was asleep one night in his cabin when suddenly his room filled with light and the Saviour appeared. The Lord told the man He had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of his cabin. The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might. This the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock pushing with all his might. Each night the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain.

Seeing that the man was showing signs of discouragement, Satan decided to enter the picture placing thoughts into the man's mind such as; "You have been pushing against that rock for a long time and it hasn't budged. Why kill yourself over this? You are never going to move it? Etc." Thus, giving the man the impression that the task was impossible and that he was a failure. These thoughts discouraged and disheartened the man even more. "Why kill myself over this?" he thought. "I'll just put in my time, giving just the minimum of effort and that will be good enough."

And that he planned to do until one day he decided to make it a matter of prayer and take his troubled thoughts to the Lord. "Lord" he said, "I have laboured long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which you have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even budged that rock a half a millimetre. What is wrong? Why am I failing?"

To this the Lord responded compassionately, "My friend, when long ago I asked you to serve me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. Your task was to push. And now you come to me, your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But, is that really so? Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled; your hands are callused from constant pressure; your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have. Yet you haven't moved the rock. But your calling was to be obedient and to push and to exercise your faith and trust in my wisdom. This you have done. I, my friend, will now move the rock."

Listening to Life

Within the Christian tradition life is lived as though human beings are continually being addressed or called to in one way or another. The process of nature, the flux of history, all that happens to each individual every twenty-four hours is a ‘mighty sum of things forever speaking’.
J. Neville Ward, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, p. 3

Prayer, Fasting and Mercy

Today is Ash Wednesday the start of Lent. It is traditionally a time of fasting (or giving something up). Rituals are an important part of our Spirituality but we must remember why we do them and not just do them or they lose their power to transform:

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other. Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself. Saint Peter Chrysologus

This year consider adding works of compassion (mercy) during Lent rather than (or in addition to) giving something up. It needn't be something big - just a small gesture of love to someone in need.

The LORD says, "Shout as loud as you can! Tell my people Israel about their sins! They worship me every day, claiming that they are eager to know my ways and obey my laws. They say they want me to give them just laws and that they take pleasure in worshiping me." The people ask, "Why should we fast if the LORD never notices? Why should we go without food if he pays no attention?" The LORD says to them, "The truth is that at the same time you fast, you pursue your own interests and oppress your workers. Your fasting makes you violent, and you quarrel and fight. Do you think this kind of fasting will make me listen to your prayers? When you fast, you make yourselves suffer; you bow your heads low like a blade of grass and spread out sackcloth and ashes to lie on. Is that what you call fasting? Do you think I will be pleased with that? "The kind of fasting I want is this: Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free. Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own relatives. "Then my favor will shine on you like the morning sun, and your wounds will be quickly healed. I will always be with you to save you; my presence will protect you on every side. When you pray, I will answer you. When you call to me, I will respond. "If you put an end to oppression, to every gesture of contempt, and to every evil word; if you give food to the hungry and satisfy those who are in need, then the darkness around you will turn to the brightness of noon. And I will always guide you and satisfy you with good things. I will keep you strong and well. You will be like a garden that has plenty of water, like a spring of water that never goes dry. Your people will rebuild what has long been in ruins, building again on the old foundations. You will be known as the people who rebuilt the walls, who restored the ruined houses."
(Isa 58:1-12 TEV)

The Spirituality of Service

Each activity of daily life in which we stretch ourselves on behalf of others is a prayer of action - the times when we scrimp and save in order to get the children something special; the times when we share our car with others on rainy mornings, leaving early to get them to work on time; the times when we keep up correspondence with friends or answer one last telephone call when we are dead tired at night. These times and many more like them are lived prayer.

-RICHARD J. FOSTER in Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home

a Silence and a Shouting

a Silence and a Shouting

An extract from the book by Eddie Askew
available through The Leprosy Mission
or contact TLM Trading Limited and request a catalogue
(all proceeds support The Leprosy Mission)

Books on prayer are published so often these days that to read them all would leave very little time left to pray; but I have been using one recently called It's me, O Lord by Michael Hollings and Etta Gullick. There is a description of prayer which is more of a poem and a meditation than anything else. Here it is:

"The important thing about prayer is that it is almost indefinable. You see, it is: hard and sharp, soft and loving, deep and inexpressible, shallow and repetitious, a groaning and a sighing.

"A silence and a shouting, a burst of praise digging deep down into loneliness, into me. Loving. Abandonment to despair, a soaring to heights which can be only ecstasy, dull plodding in the greyness of mediocre being - laziness, boredom, resentment.

"Questing and questioning, calm reflection, meditation, cogitation, A surprise at sudden joy, a shaft of light, a laser beam. Irritation at not understanding, impatience, pain of mind and body hardly uttered or deeply anguished.

"Being together, the stirring of love shallow, then deeper, then deepest. A breathless involvement, a meeting, a longing, a loving, an inpouring.''

Prayer is . . . resentment . . . irritation . . . impatience. Does that surprise you? It took me a long time to learn to bring my resentments to the Lord, as well as my joys and requests. Yet l think we should. Our whole lives should be, are, open to God and He knows what is there deep down. It is only by bringing our anger and irritations out into the open that He can deal with them, even direct them, for good. That is good psychology, and it is good Christian living too. And in the cleansing process comes the realization and experience of love - shallow, then deeper, and a real meeting and involvement with the Lord.

Lord, teach me to pray.

It sounds exciting, put like that.
It sounds real. An exploration.
A chance to do more than catalogue
and list the things I want,
to an eternal Father Christmas.

The chance of meeting you,
of drawing closer to the love that mode me,
and keeps me, and knows me.
And, Lord, it's only just begun.
There is so much more of you,
of love, the limitless expanse of knowing you.
I could be frightened, Lord, in this wide country.
It could be lonely, but you are here, with me.

The chance of learning about myself,
of facing up to what I am.
Admitting my resentments,
bringing my anger to you, my disappointments. my frustration.
And finding that when l do,
when I stop struggling and shouting
and let go
you are still there.
Still loving.

Sometimes, Lord, often -
I don't know know what to say to you.
But I still come, in quiet
for the comfort of two friends
sitting in silence.
And it's then. Lord, that I learn most from you.
When my mind slows down,
and my heart stops racing.
When I let go and wait in the quiet,
realizing that all the things I was going to ask for
you know already.
Then, Lord, without words,
in the stillness
you are there . . .
And l love you.

Lord, teach me to pray.