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| Prayer.. (Photo credit: aronki) |
We Yearn
We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer.
We are attracted to it and repelled by it.
We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do, but it seems like a chasm stands between us and actually praying.
We experience the agony of prayer-lessness.
Richard Foster
Merton's Voice: What is the use
of prayer if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God
that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
Thoughts in Solitude. Thomas Merton.
- Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit by Pamela Houston
The woman walks up the mountain
and then down. She wades into the sea
and out. Walks to the well,
pulls up a bucket of water
and goes back into the house.
She hangs wet clothes.
Takes clothes back to fold them.
Every evening she crochets
from six until dark.
Birds, flowers, stars. Her rabbit lives
in an empty donkey pen. The sea is out
there as far as the stars.
Always quiet.
No one there. She may not believe
in anything. Not know
what she is doing. Every morning
she waters the geranium plant.
And the leaves smell like lemon.
-- Linda Gregg H/T to Pentimento for the poem above
and then down. She wades into the sea
and out. Walks to the well,
pulls up a bucket of water
and goes back into the house.
She hangs wet clothes.
Takes clothes back to fold them.
Every evening she crochets
from six until dark.
Birds, flowers, stars. Her rabbit lives
in an empty donkey pen. The sea is out
there as far as the stars.
Always quiet.
No one there. She may not believe
in anything. Not know
what she is doing. Every morning
she waters the geranium plant.
And the leaves smell like lemon.
-- Linda Gregg H/T to Pentimento for the poem above
A Lenten Prayer by Walter Brueggemann
Loss is indeed our gain
The pushing and the shoving of the world is endless
We are pushed and shoved.
And we do our fair of pushing and shoving
in our great anxiety.
And in the middle of that
you have set down your beloved suffering son
who was like a sheep led to slaughter
who opened not his mouth.
We seem not able,
so we ask you to create spaces in our life
where we may ponder his suffering
and your summons for us to suffer with him,
suspecting that suffering is the only way to come to newness
So we pray for your church in these Lenten days,
when we are driven to denial- not to notice the suffering,
not to engage it,
not to acknowledge it.
So be that way of truth among us
that we should not deceive ourselves.
That we shall see that loss is indeed our gain.
We give you thanks for that mystery from which we live.
Amen.
Richard Rohr writes in the Huffington Post : Lent is About Transformation from here
Finally, a really neat video of Rev. Terrence J. Moran, retreat leader, spiritual director, and author on Spiritual Direction; what it is and what it isn't..... and he also reads the beautiful prayer from the Iranian mystic, Hafiz
Finally, a really neat video of Rev. Terrence J. Moran, retreat leader, spiritual director, and author on Spiritual Direction; what it is and what it isn't..... and he also reads the beautiful prayer from the Iranian mystic, Hafiz
We Should Talk about This Problem
There is a beautiful creature
Living in a hole you have dug.
So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Beside your soft earthen mounds,
And I often sing.
But still,
You do not come out.
I have fallen in love with someone
Who hides inside you.
We should talk about this problem---
Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.
There is a beautiful creature
Living in a hole you have dug.
So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Beside your soft earthen mounds,
And I often sing.
But still,
You do not come out.
I have fallen in love with someone
Who hides inside you.
We should talk about this problem---
Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.
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