On Prayer

My post today is prompted by a lovely post  by Fr. Austin Fleming at A Concord Pastor Speaks  where he has this to say about prayer ....

"Prayer is the place where we sort out our desires and where we ourselves are sorted out by the desires we choose to follow …

Prayer enlarges our desire until it receives God’s desire for us. In prayer, we grow big enough to house God’s desire in us which is the Holy Spirit.

Prayer is a place to simply sit with and before God and in God's company to "sort out our desires" and find ourselves sorted out "by the desires we choose to follow." It is much more just such a place than it is a place for turning in to the Almighty our earnestly composed wish lists."

For myself, I find it very difficult to describe what goes on when I pray..

I am talking about  the type of  prayer that I don't say at Mass, the prayer that comes  at different times during an ordinary day or evening and often for me personally late at night or early in the morning when I can't sleep.

Prayer for me comes in many different forms and sometimes it is not in words at  all, which is one of the reasons why I can't really describe it !!

This description below resembles something of what it is like when I struggle with prayer.

"The source of our deepest self is a mysterious unknown ever eluding our grasp. We can never possess it except as that mystery which keeps at a distance. The heart’s quest is toward this unknown. There is no respite in the task of getting beyond the point we have already reached because the Spirit stands further on. 

She stands at the end of every road we may wish to travel by. The entire movement of our being seems to focus in this single point of identity, which will be realised in the encounter. 

We never ‘catch up with’ who we fundamentally are. "

From Meinrad Craighead

Anyway, here are the fruits of some of my prayers for today.........................................................

Taize chant

Lyrics In Spanish

Nada te turbe,
nada te espante,
todo se pasa;
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia
todo lo alcanza;
Quien a Dios tiene,
nada le falta;
Solo Dios basta.

Lyrics In English

Let nothing disturb you,
nothing surprise you,
all things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins everything;
whoever holds onto God
lacks nothing;
God alone is enough.

Image source

Hope 

Emily Dickenson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

And sweetest in the Gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb of Me.

Image source

Evening Prayer 

The Sharing - by Edwina Gateley

We told our stories - That's all.

We sat and listened to each other

and heard the journeys of each soul.

We sat in silence

entering each one's pain and

sharing each one's joy.

We heard love's longing

and the lonely reachings-out

for love and affirmation.

We heard of dreams

shattered

and visions fled.

Of hopes and laughter

turned stale and dark.

We felt the pain of isolation and

the bitterness of death.

But in each brave and lonely story

God's gentle life broke through

and we heard music in the darkness

and smelt flowers in the void.

We felt the budding of creation

in the searching of each soul

and discerned the beauty of God's hand

in each muddy, twisted path.

And God's voice sang in each story.

God's life sprang from each death.

Our sharing became one story

of a simple lonely search

for life and hope and oneness

in a world which sobs for love.

And we knew that in our sharing

God's voice with mighty breath

was saying love each other and

take each other's hand.

For you are one though many

and in each of you I live.

So listen to my story

and share my pain and death.

Oh, listen to my story

and rise and live with me.

                                   

Prayer by John Bell/The Iona Community

 

Take this moment, sign and space;
Take my friends around;
 
Here among us make the place
Where your love is found.

Take the time to call my name,
Take the time to mend
Who I am and what I’ve been,
All I’ve failed to tend.

Take the tiredness of my days,
Take my past regret,
Letting your forgiveness touch
All I can’t forget.

Take the little child in me
Scared of growing old;
Help her here to find her worth
Made in Christ’s own mould.

Take my talents, take my skills,
Take what’s yet to be;

Let my life be yours, and yet
Let it still be me