PRAYERS AND THOUGHTS

In this section, we add liturgy, prayers, thoughts and meditations that are appropriate to the season or that may be helpful on your spiritual journey.

The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  Romans 8: 26

When you feel as if you don't know how to pray as you ought,

ask yourself if you know how to watch a sunset as you ought,

or listen to your favorite music as you ought,

or watch a sleeping child as you ought.

Don't you just open your eyes and let the sunset pour in?

Don't you just float in the middle like a warm pool?

Don't you just watch the sleeping child?

Bring yourself to this moment,

clear a space in within yourself

and let the Spirit do her work.

Like a weaver or a doctor doing

what you know you do not understand,

wordlessly she works her grace.

You simply keep the space for her.

We do not really pray; it is the Spirit who prays in us.

We just watch the baby.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

What God Has Begun

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.                            Philippians 1:6

The bare trees in the woods look like sticks.  You can imagine that they've shed everything fragile and vulnerable, drained the life out of their branches and stored it deep in their roots below the frost line.  But look:  even now they have formed the buds of next spring's leaves.  They will go through the assaults of winter with those little shelled fists exposed to the wind and ice.  And five months from now they will begin to sprout and grow.  They will.  You can count on it.

I wonder what little shelled fists of buds, what beginnings, God has formed within you?  I wonder how the great story of God's healing of the world will unfold in you, a story whose beginning has already been written in your heart?  The beginnings are already there.  The work of spring is already hidden in your soul.  Can you see it?  Can you find it and take delight in it?

The gift is not just within you; it is among you.  It is in community.  Seek out the seeds of reconciliation God has planted among you.  The power of forgiveness and the energy of trust are already there.  The way you love each other, and choose to pitch your lives together, is the thread with which God will weave the Kingdom of Heaven.  Notice this energy, and practice these things.

Take the time to seek the promise of God in you, and in your community.  It has cosmic consequences.  Wait with it, and delight in it even as you wait.  I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

I do not wish you riches, nor the glow of greatness,

but that wherever you go, some weary heart

shall gladden at your smile

or some shadowed life know sunshine for awhile.

So may your path be a track of light,

like angels footsteps passing through the night.

 Gentle God, patient God, I repent of my hurry.

Habit moves me too fast for this life,

makes me cram my day with too much stuff to live through.

So I skim, I lurch, I careen through life.

I rush off to my salvation; but you are already here.

I repent of my hurry.

Help me go slow enough to listen to  your whispering voice,

slow enough to keep my balance,

slow enough to notice things.

Your voice within me is a gentle breeze.

Let me be a feather on your breeze.

Your voice within me is a meandering stream.

Let me be a leaf floating on your brook,

a stream that is never exhausted.

Let the fountain of my words and deeds, and all my choices,

be calmness and not anxiety, rest and not desire.

Grant me peace, and steadfast faithfulness.

I breathe deeply; I move gently; I live by your Spirit alone.

In the yard, a single leaf descends through the air.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

A Litany for a Meeting

Come away, come away, to a quiet place.

I come from heat and rain, from traffic and work.

Come away, come away, to this quiet place.

I come from office and home, from expectations and demands.

Come, let us find God in this place, at this time.

Come, let us make this a safe and quiet place for all.

Cynthia Good

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

John W. Gardner

There is no human being who does not carry a treasure in his soul, a moment of insight, a memory of life, a dream of excellence, a call to worship.

Abraham Heschel

When heat comes to the mountains

even the flowers go mad.

They get hasty in the yard pushing

colors at each other

and reaching for the sun that drives the seed. 

David Hays

Don't ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Howard Thurman

dwell in possibility...

Emily Dickinson