Blue Eyed Ennis: Still Looking For Help With New Year Resolutions ?

Still Looking For Help With New Year Resolutions ?

My earlier post on New Years Resolutions is here but
if you are looking for the right words for New Year prayers then I can highly recommend these: the first is from Fr Austin at A Concord Pastor Comments whose genius for creating wonderful prayers for every conceivable occasion is unbounded.

I know that most of my own resolutions are too easily blown out of the water but I do have one suggestion for the New Year :

to subscribe to Fr Austin's Monday Morning Prayers ( easily recognisable by his logo of coffee cup below) and Fr. Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

Thanks Austin.

No one knows better than you, Lord,
how poorly I’ve done
in keeping resolutions I’ve made in the past
at New Year’s and on Ash Wednesdays
and all those other times
when I resolved to do this or that,
or to stop doing such and such
and then just a few days later…

You know how that usually goes, Lord,
so this morning I offer,
I want to place, the new year
all in your hands...

I offer you this new year, Lord,
trusting that you plan on adding
another year to my life…

I offer you my heart for this year ahead
and pray that you soften my heart where it's stony,
smooth its rough edges
and heal its brokenness --
for my sake and for those who will count on my heart
and its love in the new year...

I offer you my mind in this new year, Lord,
and pray that you help me sort through
my doubts, my questions and my confusion,
that you hone my mind with your truth,
that you expand my thinking where it narrows
and open me to learn what I need to know...

I offer you my body in this year ahead, Lord:
help me respect and care for the flesh and bone
that give form to my soul:
get me out of bed, off the couch and up from the chair
and move, shake, walk and strengthen
me and my mortal frame
for the work you give me to do…

I offer you my time in 2012, Lord:
teach me not to waste this precious gift:
fill my days with energy
and the will to live by your word
and work for your glory;
fill my nights with deep and restful sleep
and prepare me for what you would make of my life
in the next twelve months...

I offer you my imagination in the new year, Lord:
make my thoughts pure, my dreams sweet,
my intentions just, my ideas honest, my plans firm,
my goals sure and my hopes rooted in your promises…

In the new year, Lord,
I offer you those you’ve entrusted to my care:
any who look to me and lean on me
for support and care and hope:
make me faithful to those who depend on me
but not so strong, Lord,
that I fail to depend and lean on others
who offer me support and strength…

I offer you my bounty in the year ahead, Lord:
help me know the difference
between what I desire and what I truly need;
teach me to share what I have,
especially when I have more than I need;
teach me to see others’ needs before my own
and to care for them before I care for myself…

I offer you, Lord, the challenges of the year ahead:
give me the wisdom and strength I'll need
to confront and work through them...

And I offer you the burdens and sorrows
the new year will bring:
give me strength to carry them
and consolation to help me bear with them...

I offer you the joys of the new year, Lord:
let me not miss one of them,
let me delight in each of them
and let me share them with others...

I offer you the year ahead, Lord,
with its months as 12 new chapters
in the book of my life:
help me see the story of your love
in the days of each month;
show me the clues to resolve the mysteries
that confuse and baffle me;
let me see how these new chapters
follow from what has been
and lead to what is yet to come;
be the Author of these 12 chapters, Lord,
and let your words and your story
shape the person you created me to be…

I offer you the new year, Lord,
and pray that I will come to its end
in your peace
and in the embrace of your arms…

Amen.

The second is from Fr. Richard Rohr originally written for 2009 but I think it's just as good for 2012...

Midnight Prayer for New Year

by Richard Rohr

God of the seasons, Lover of the ages,

Master of every moment:

You who are beyond time yet within all time.

We return to you what you have given to us —

the moments, the minutes, the hours, the days,
the weeks, the months, and the year of 2011.

Time has been gracious to us again,

and we thank you for freely giving us these human bodies,

these events, and these relationships.

We have lived another year and we have died another year,

and now you are granting us the beginnings of another.

We now hand over to you the blessed year, 2012,

with all that it gives us and all that it takes from us,

knowing that both are necessary, just like our breath.

We trust you in both the givings and the takings,

the inhalings and the exhalings.

May every breath of 2012 be a breath of the Holy Spirit,

joyfully received and joyfully returned,

beginning with this one right now.

Amen.

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Still Looking For Help With New Year Resolutions ?

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