New Directions, Light in the Darkness

I am not the leader of one of the historic mainline Protestant denominations. That is likely a very good thing. But I am an ordained Presbyterian minister and a hospital Chaplain in Behavioral Health for over two decades. I listen to people for a living. I listen with an ear to truly, deeply understanding their pain and, with close attention, to the whispers and movements of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and in their living.

I know that the great majority of the people I see are deeply longing to be lifted out of despair and anxiety, they are longing for a reliable voice of hope in the dark, wilderness of these difficult and confusing days. More and more, I listen to people who cannot hear or identify that voice in the mainline Protestant Churches. Often, they would like to but even if they hear a word of hope and grace, of forgiveness and compassionate direction, they fear, based on strong experience, they cannot trust the actions of the leaders and the people to be follow suit.

We church people are quick to defend that among leadership and the people, Christ calls and gathers sinners and the broken. That is most certainly true, I am a huge sinner and quite broken—as are we all. But defenses, especially, those often practiced and employed, prevent our growth toward deeper and more authentic union with Christ. The more we practice them, the more the relieve us of our faithful responsibility of inviting the Holy Spirit to heal and grow our hearts and communities of faith beyond the boundaries of our broken-sinfulness into deeper and more authentic union with Christ. Jesus is the way the truth and the life (John 14). To know Jesus’ truth, to grow closer to God, to live our great mission of participating in bring about God’s Kingdom in this world, we cannot hide from our own sin and brokenness—our own truth.

Mainline Protestants leaders, local pastors and congregations now have an amazing invitation to stand on a national and world stage (pulpit) proclaiming the truth of the heart of the Gospel before the mania, mayhem and message of Donald Trump’s run for President of the United States.   

In my email I have received statements by two of the major Protestant Denominations denouncing Trump’s latest statements about banning our Muslim sisters and brothers from our nation founded on religious freedom. It seems opportune for the leadership of these denominations, and all others, to take a more public and united stand. And, it seems well for the rest of us, clergy and lay, to follow suit from the pulpit, in adult and youth/children’s education, around the water cooler, board room table and on the 19^th hole to do the same.

Based on what I hear from people who are honestly, and in earnest, seeking places of spiritual, communal and social compassion and integrity to call home, such a prayerful, public, faith-filled commitment to concerted action might be a good way to witness being Church in new way for this new mullein. Witnessing our faith in Christ with the integrity of our actions such that the people trapped in the land of deep darkness can see the shining light of Christ (Is. 9).  Jesus is the way, the truth and the light….

PCUSA:
https://www.pcusa.org/news/2015/10/2/clerk-issues-letter-trump-refugees-immigrants/

United Church of Christ: http://www.globalministries.org/ucc_doc_statement_on_vilification_of_muslims

Baptist:  http://www.abc-usa.org/2015/12/08/general-secretary-addresses-recent-attacks/ 

2015 Mass Shootings and a Prayer on the Declaration of Independence

More mass shooting in 2015 than there have been days. Impotent leadership. After so long, even the most ardent prayers only placate. Sadness. Anger. Grief. Fear.  I am coming to believe that as sharers in the sin-sick soul of this nation, we each more Helen Lovejoy than Sojourner Truth.

My prayers today and from now on are for the victims and the community of San Bernardino and far too many others, for the parents of special needs kids and those who are for them everywhere who are sleeping and living less easy in these days.

My prayers are no longer for our leaders, for they, again, have run from the call. My prayers are now for the American people, especially for the women in America, that we must now, as we have done in the past, lead a reluctant nation to recover its right mind and heart, to remind or leaders that the governed do not consent to life as we have come to know it in 2015. We now live in a land where the self-evident truths of the Constitution are not being upheld. If we are not safe from violence we perpetrate   against ourselves, pointing only fingers of blame scapegoated others rather than examining the conscience of our common life, no person or groups of persons in this land is equal. As we are slaughtering one another in the street, at seemingly random times and in disparate and random places, we are cannot live any common life that was worth the lives and sacrifices of our Founders. We are by no means a free nation if we carry arms against one another for our fear. Rather, we are slaves of ignorance and despair.  None among us can be happy if we cannot ever find new meaning and hope, renewed life and greater purpose on the other side of our grieving, for as yet, it has no end.

It is not our leaders who have wondered far from our Creator, is us. And it is only we, in prayer and repentance, action and dedication, who can begin the long slow of return. Amen.   

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.” 
― Sojourner Truth

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Tiny Houses for Homeless Persons

 

 

Read about how Madison, WI and several other communities are creatively providing housing for homeless persons here. And vsit the website of inovative home builders and activests Occupy Madson here

 

Be inspired.

 

Pray.

 

Build homes for those who don't have them.

 

Amen.

.

Prayer for the Leadership of all the Churches

 

I was talking with a friend about the very public troubles his denomination is having—public to the level of the NYT. And, here is what I heard myself hoping for him and his family and all those he loves in his church, and for the leadership of his church: “I hope the people who are really driving all of this behind the scenes are those who love Jesus and your church the most. They are the hope of your children and your grandchildren.” And, they are the hope of witnessing Jesus to the world.

 Then there was some very internal trouble in my denomination where opinions have been hot and heavy. And, I found myself praying that my church, the PCUSA, and for all churches which are going through so much change and turmoil at this time, that those who are really driving things behind the scenes are those who love Jesus and your church the most. They are the hope of our children and our grandchildren.  And, they are the hope of Christ’s witness of grace, blessing and forgiveness to all the hurting, longing, suffering, lonely hearts throughout the world. Amen.

Loving Your Enemy as Yourself

 

 

Lent starts tomorrow. A truly meaningful Lenten spiritual practice is often hard for me to settle into. The whole point is not to torture myself like I did the year at seminary when I gave up beef and, by holy week almost attacked the... check cashier at the local grocery simply because he was having a hamburger for lunch. The whole point,  is to engage in a daily practice that turns my heart and mind toward God even more closely, drawing me more deeply into the relationship. Not one that sends me over the counter, through the bulletproof glass to snatch a half-eaten burger.

This summer our denomination, (the PCUSA) will vote on changing our rules to allow clergy, at their discretion, to preform same sex marriages; this only the most visible of the many seismic shifts that we will be living into as a church and a society for the foreseeable future. Everyday, I go to work as a hospital chaplain. Healthcare is one of the places in our society where the sweeping changes that are effecting us all is being figured out, worked through and live out in real lives and real time, everyday.

All this change is stressful. Produces anxiety. And, anxiety and stress, as we all know from uncomfortable experience, comes out backward and sideways when we least expect it if we spend too much time and more energy than we really have trying to stuff them down, down, down, deep inside, pretending that we aren’t being effected.

This Lent, I want, to paraphrase what I think is a popular misquote of Gandhi, ask God’s help in trying to become some small part of the change… Jesus asked us to live lives that incarnate the unimaginable grace of the Resurrection, doing what seems to impossible, “love our enemies.” To do this, we must sacrifice the hubristic protections of our anger and fear, out cherished notions of what is right and good and just and, even  what is“Jesusy.”

For my Lenten Practice, I'll be reading, Love Your Enemies:How To Break the Anger Habit and Be a Whole Lot Happier, by Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman. Thurman, Columbia University's, Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies observes that Jesus’ work helping people draw closer to God spanned only three short years while Buddha’s teaching career spanned three decades. Over all those years, Buddha had time to figure out how to help the ever-resistant human mind and heart to align themselves and our living more closely with the impossibility of loving the enemy before us and within us.  

 

My prayer this Lent will be to prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit's help in loving my enemies as myself; even those I find coyly hidden deeply with myself.

Imperfection and struggle at meditation, prayer; in life. Anxiety. Grief. Even anger. Always returning, in all  gentleness  to the practice, the discipline. Trusting  the breath, the Spirit, the Imago Dei within, my Buddha nature   more than  my  own frail efforts, more than the instructions or the service of worship that feel awkward or off.  There is Maitri or Metta, Hesed and Rachem . Sneaking  in through the slivers of silence,  slowly, gracefully the consolations of  Christ, resting in the green valley fed by the depths of the stillest waters,  dark valley in the distance.    

The Underside of Christmas: Everyday

"When the Star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the WORK of Christmas begins. To find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to teach the nations, to bring Christ to all, to make music in the heart." Howard Thurman.

"Christ Healing The Sick," Washington Allston, 1812 - 19813, Harvard Art Museums

The underside of Chirstmas is now before us, everyday: to pray the grace of Christ's music play joyfully in our hearts as we come to deeper intimacy with Him going about his work in the world. Amen.

The Underside of Christmas

Before the manger we kneel as the minutes of Christmas pass. Since John the Baptist first called us, all those weeks ago, to the turning of our hearts and minds away from all that would separate us from the love and forgiveness born this night, how have we allowed the Holy Spirit work within us so that Jesus is born not only into the world, but also into our hearts and minds and living ....? Let our Christmas prayer be that our hearts and minds are opened to these most precious gifts of Christmas. Amen.

Image: Hand sewn ornament by Mrs. Carl Stanley depicting the church of my childhood, the Kenilworth Union Church, Kenilworth, IL.

The Underside of Advent: Longest Night

From the Underside of Advent, the Longest Night, sharing prayer, hymn, meditation and Eucharist with Episcopal friends and neighbors, bringing strips cloth, upon which we've written our deepest longings for the frail, vulnerable God who we will welcome soon, laying them upon the empty, waiting manger.  We prepare for Him a place amid the only gifts we possess this night, or any other, our own sufferings and trials. They must suffice.

The bread, His body, is broken. The wine, His blood, is poured. His frailty and suffering, His vulnerability and trials are before us; they are for ours, if only we bring them. He is with us this long night, real, risen among us, in the bread and wine, in the Word, in our offering poor gifts, in the gathering of faithful, hopeful hearts gone now home each their own way into the cold and deep darkness our way perhaps a little better prepared to welcome the One who is to come.  

Powerful Women Empowering

I am currently attending the Nigerian Women Empowerment Award Dinner and Leadership Workshop Conference at the Mid-America Club on the 80th floor of the Aon Building in Chicago--the view is amazing and today was a prefect day for it.

Many things about the day impressed me, but perhaps most was the preamble to the oath of office the new leadership one of the host organizations, the National Councils of Women's Societies of Nigeria in the Diaspora. It went something like this, "We in Nigeria are a very religious people. So now, whatever religion you are, whatever God you pray to; if you take this oath, know that God will hold you responsible. We are not playing at this, the lives of our children depend on what you do..."

Let us come this week to prayer. Let us come from the diaspora of our living--the scatteredness of our stress-full, hectic, demanding lives before that which Unites us and Endures. Let us ask that we are given all good strength and focus of compassion for our living such that all that we do might be presented as an offering worthy to lay before the feel of whatever God we pray to. And, that always in our hearts and in our minds is some glimpse of the vision of the impact of who we are and what we are doing on the world we are building for the children of us all. Amen. 

Image: Her Excellency Dame Patience Jonathan Goodluck,First Lady, Federal Republic of Nigeria patron of sponsoring societies: the The Association of Nigerian Women Leaders In Diaspora and the National Council of Nigerian  Women's Societies. 

I don’t know about you, but when Sunday’s violence just up the road in Oak Creek, Wisconsin was occurring I was sitting safely in my pew next to a good friend who is worried about her father’s progressing Alzheimer’s and in front of a lovely older couple who are worried about some of the declines in health that you might imagine. As the events in the Sikh Gurdwaw (meaning the Gateway to the Guru), or temple, were reaching their horrific climax, our congregation was singing:

“O for a world where everyone/Respects each other's ways,/Where love is lived and all is done/With justice and with praise… O for a world preparing for/God's glorious reign of peace,/Where time and tears will be no more,/And all but love will cease.

Our pastor had just finished preaching a sermon titled, “When our Theology Goes on Tilt,” responding to the horrific events of the previous week in Colorado. She was trying to help us all begin to right ourselves, make some meaning amid news stories that filled our struggling hearts and minds with the awful and the evil (the official definition of evil being, simply, the absence of good). She told us what she admitted she needed to hear; it was what we all needed to hear. It is what, I confess to you, I need to hear once again in these days…

She reminded us how unhelpful it can be when other people offer consolation to us by defining God’s will in the face of horrible tragedy, and of how our greatest and most certain consolation is always that God is with us during these times, so closely, that it often quite hard for us to see him. She affirmed that God was most tenderly with all who died and with all who are suffering and grieving. That God is most tenderly with us and our loved ones right now as we are trying to right ourselves once again in the wake of more senseless violence, death and loss; and that God is with each of us in all our times of grief and pain, uncertainty and fear. She affirmed that, despite our inclinations towards believing all the evidence to the contrariety, God is with each of us as we struggle to pick up the pieces of our shattered world views, our broken hearts and souls.

In an interview with Sojourners Magazine, responding to the events in Wisconsin, Ralph Singh, an international Sikh leader, offered these words: “A Sikh, wherever they go in the world, is committed to building community a community of peace, an inclusive community to stand as an affirmation of what we now call pluralism," and asks that we join the Sikh community in sharing our stories, personal and those of our faith traditions so that we all might work toward the goal of Sikh communities which is working toward building a more compassionate and inclusive society.

To my ear, our stories sound quite alike.

Let us pray this week to see more clearly God with us, whatever the circumstance might be and for the deep consolation and profound comfort that our hearts need. Let us ask for the grace to become partners with God, and with one another, in creating a more compassionate and inclusive community. Let us pray for a world where everyone respects each other’s ways, a world where all that we do seeks justice and love, and in sings praise to God. May all that we are and all that do sing of our prayer for a world of peace and unceasing love. Amen.

image credit:  India Post: the Voice of Indians World Wide, February. 2011. A meeting of the Indianapolis Interfaith Hunger Initiative. 

Pray the Power of Love

Psalm 116:5-7

Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;

our God is merciful.

The LORD protects the simple;

when I was brought low, he saved me.

Return, O my soul, to your rest,

for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.

"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."

~Gandhi~

There is no power greater than Love. Let us come this week bringing, simply, our lowly hearts longing for the rest of prayer. In these, let us bring them to the power of Love. Let us come in our longing for its bonds of grace and mercy, the bounty of which is the only power which can truly save. Let us come praying that the powers of fear and castigation will, at long last, lose their fierce-some grip, and that the gentle grace and mercies of Love’s heart will return our hearts to their rest. Let us come in prayer hoping that our hearts might know such bounty of the eternal power that we might act in Love’s effect a thousand-and-one times more with every bit of power entrusted to our care. Amen.

Prayer on International Peace Day

Bhea Vacio, age 11, the Philippines,

via the International Child Art Foundation, dedicated to nurturing children’s creativity and promoting peace through art.

Psalm 85: 8-9
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

for he will speak peace to his people,

to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.

Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,

that his glory may dwell in our land.

"HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.


HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.


HELPED are those who love others unsplit off from their faults; to them will be given clarity of vision…


HELPED are those who love the Earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy in her lively response to love, they will converse with the trees.


HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child.


HELPED are those who risk themselves for others' sakes; to them will be given increasing opportunities for ever greater risks. Theirs will be a vision of the word in which no one's gift is despised or lost.


HELPED are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or of war.


HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for peace; on them depends the future of the world.


HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgiveness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth….


HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous.


HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them….


HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.


HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion.


HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another--plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid….


HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differences."


— Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar

Let us celebrate peace in our prayer; let us come with hearts seeking peace. Let us turn our hearts to the Lord praying peace in our souls and in our lives, in our families and in our church family, in our workplaces and communities and in our in our world. Let us bring hearts listening for the help that they need, the Word they long to hear, the salvation that is at hand. Let us bring hearts praying for that peace which surpasses our most lofty thoughts, our most cherished goals, and our most fundamental understandings. Let us celbrate peace in our living. Amen.

From the Disappointments of Living, Pray Infinite Hope

Philip Perold Photography

(Psalm 42: 5-6)

“Why are you cast down, O, my soul, why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall praise him, my help and my God.”

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let us come in study and in prayer this week. Let us bring our hearts, filled as they are with all the disappointments of our living; the sadness’s and the losses, the broken promises and the faded dreams. Let our poor hearts bring them all, leaving nothing back. Let them come thus for in so doing is their only real hope. Let them come humbly before the Infinite with all the limits of our beings. Let them pray there in confidence for wholeness and peace, healing and courage. Let them pray there in faith for these graces to be made real in our living so that all other hearts brought to their knees by the finitude of our existence may know the Infinite Hope in which they live; the gracious God who in their living they offer praise. Amen.

Songs of Confidence and Praise

(Psalm 57:7-8)

"I have complete confidence, O God;

I will sing and praise you!

Wake up, my soul!

Wake up my harp and lyre!

I will wake up the sun.”

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime;

therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone;

therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the stand point of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

Let us bring our hearts in  prayer this week. Let us bring them, for simply by our coming we pray for hope. Let us come and pray, asking faith where uncertainty holds sway, seeking love where anger has found its niche, and longing for forgiveness, love’s definitive act. Let us pray to find lifetimes which are true and beautiful and good; for the virtues of love’s accomplishment of these, and the humility to offer in our living love’s forgiveness to all who join us along our way. There is no more beautiful song in confidence than these, no greater acts of praise, no other tunes to play which can awaken other hearts to the living in such virtue as can stand the test of time and space. Amen.

Pray in Intimacy and Love

Psalm 103:1

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name.

“Considering that the blessed life we so long for consists in an intimate and true love of God Our Creator and Lord, which binds and obliges us all to a sincere love.”

Ignatius Loyola

Let us bring our blessed hearts in prayer this week. Let them pray from our deepest longings for their most intimate and truest Love. Let them pray there, then, from the sincerity and obligations which bind them at their Source, in deepest amity, with all other hearts blessed in their longings for the intimacy of their truest Love. Amen.

Pray to Know the Heart of God in Yours

"In the Mist," Elizabeth Chapman

Psalm 139

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

3 You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

5 You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

“God sustains every soul and dwells in it substantially, even though it be that of the greatest sinner in the world, and this union is natural.”

St. John of the Cross.

Let us come in prayer. Let us come asking that our hearts be opened to their most intrinsic truth, that their truest nature is in most merciful and tenderly intimacy with the Indweller whose knowledge of them exists far beyond any they might claim for themselves. Let us pray to know these hearts of ours, as woeful and wanting, as distant and deceiving as they are. Pray to search them with tender mercy, and know them in such intimacy of compassion as they are already known; pray for the grace of coming to know them in that blessed Union which sustains and in which they dwell. Finally, let us pray to come to know all other hearts as we are praying to know our own. Amen.

Prayer

PRAYER

The focus of prayer is not the self. Prayer comes to pass in a complete turning of the heart toward God, toward His goodness and power.


Prayer is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let His will prevail in our affairs.


We go hopelessly astray if we think of prayer as a selfish endeavor to persuade or inveigle, or browbeat God to do us a favor, or win us a victory, or even help us in some dire distress.


He is not some kind of divine bellhop, to be summoned, as by the pressing of a button, to the service of our passing whims.

God does not come to us, but we to Him – and prayer is the high road to His presence.


Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.


Prayer cannot mend a broken bridge, rebuild a ruined city, or bring water to parched fields.
Prayer can mend a broken heart, lift up a discouraged soul, and strengthen a weakened will.


Prayer digs the channels from the reservoir of God’s boundless resources to the tiny pools of our lives.

Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask, but when we are challenged to be what we can be.


If I recite my wants, it is not to remind You of them, but only that I may be conscious of my dependence upon You.


Prayer is answered when it enables us to act as God desires.

If you would have God hear you when you pray, you must hear Him when He speaks.


Prayer requires more of the heart than of the tongue.


It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks.


True worship is not a petition to God: it is a sermon to ourselves.


By benevolence man rises to a height where he meets God. Therefore do a good deed before you begin your prayers.


Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.


Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on you.

 

Thought from: Abraham J. Heschel, John Holmes, Søren Kierkegaard, F. Ibserhan, E. Strangy Jones, Morris Adler, Bahya Ibw Pakuda, Ernest F. Scott, Thomas Brooks, Adam Clarke, Helen, Keller, Emil G. Hirsch, Hai Gaon, George Meridth

Marc Chagall, "Jew at Prayer"

"Prayer" was given to me by a coworker. Her father was a Rabbi. After his death, she found “Prayer” among the many papers her father had saved from his many years in ministry.

“Prayer” is an anthology of sorts. A collection of quotes on the nature of prayer from great men and women of faith and thought across many years. It is a sort of contemporary piece of Wisdom Literature echoing some of the literary traditions which can be found in the Hebrew Bible.

My friend was gracious enough to share it with me and I am delighted to share it here.

For your own personal spiritual growth, you might find some value in reading each line of “Prayer” slowly, over time and sitting silently with each line's particular wisdom for a while, allowing it to connect most deeply with your own spiritual longings.

If you know where this came from, you are invited to leave a comment. Heck, you are invited to leave a comment anyway. How do you connect with this modern piece of Wisdom Literature?

Pray to Open to The Dwelling Place of God

(Psalm 84: 1-2)

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!

My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD;

my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”

“Open unto me -- light for my darkness.

Open unto me -- courage for my fear.

Open unto me -- hope for my despair.

Open unto me -- peace for my turmoil.

“Open unto me -- joy for my sorrow.

Open unto me -- strength for my weakness.

Open unto me -- wisdom for my confusion.

Open unto me -- forgiveness for my sins.

Open unto me -- tenderness for my toughness.

Open unto me -- love for my hates.

Open unto me -- Thy Self for my self.

“Lord, Lord, open unto me!”

“Concerning Disciplines of the Spirit: Concerning the Presence of God,”

For The Inward Journey,

(Link above to amazon.com)

Howard Thurman.

(Link above to more on Howard Thurman at PBS.org)

Bring your yearning soul, your fainting heart; bring them to the only dwelling place they can ever truly call Home. As they cry for light and courage, hope and peace, may they open and find there their truth. As they long for joy and strength, wisdom and forgiveness, tenderness and love, may they open wide to the home Dweller, finding in the courts of such grace their own true life with the living God. And may they live then opening to light and courage, hope and peace, joy and strength, wisdom and forgiveness, tenderness and love for all who seek safe dwelling in courts of their own. Amen.

Image: Anasazi Granaries on the Little Nakoweap River delta. The Little Nakoweap is one of the largest tributaries of the Grand Canyon’s Colorado River. The granaries, built between 900 and 1150 CE, are 500 feet up the cliff face. (Link to PBS.org for more information about the Anasazi.) 

Prayer for the Grace of Faith Which Surpasses All Understanding

(Job 38:4-5)

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!”

(Psalm 102: 25-28)

“Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away; but you are the same and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.”


“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy fathoms of water still preserving my faith.” Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.


Let us bring our hearts in prayer this week.  Let us bring with them our knotting stomachs, our sweating brows, our trembling hands. Let us bring the longings, and the questionings, and the secret uncertainties that lie buried so very deep within. Let us pray to finally give them rest before the vastness of the horizon and the magnitude of the stars. Let us pray them gentle surrender to the mysterious and unfathomable depths of the seas and the eternity of incalculable mountain heights. Let us pray for the grace of faith which surpasses all our understandings. Amen.