Take Time to Pray

. . . Prayer is a way of connecting with our source. It is about being centered, grounded, mindful of the holy, the presence of the sacred and the precious. . . . Prayer can help us to connect with the poor with open eyes and hearts. It is prayer that can allow us to educate with patience, love and understanding. It is prayer that can enable us to move to a simpler lifestyle. And it is prayer that will allow us to do this with conviction and joy.

And whether or not we pray is as obvious as whether or not we have put our clothes on. For example, the compulsive, frantic, angry, cynical, unintegrated rambling from project to project—even from peace project to peace project—may speak of good intentions, but also of an uneasy and untended inner life. It is possible . . . to do much harm because we have not taken the time to pray. . . .”

-Jack Jezreel
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Prayer

To see you climbing the stairs
the ordinary can join the divine
thoughts ascending with the spirit
I pray while driving in the rain
not to alter suddenly the conditions of the landscape
and to give us time
to accommodate the change.

The Oak Tree

I did not go away
Yet I was far away from you
Away from your house
Away from the light
That comes from your window
Away like rain in a drought
I want to return
Knock on your door
Visit your garden
Sit on the bench under the oak tree
I will bring a book with empty pages
I will wait for you.

Counting

To walk through a storm
to hear two birds singing
a sense of peace afterwards
like a boat sitting in a clear stream in solitude
there was once a place
on the earth, in her soul,
a place where each step inward,
an expression of sweetness,
a communion with the divine

An abandoned ladder leaning on the side of a house
a bee loitering over picnic baskets
discoveries in a journal as early as five years ago
and one can penetrate “deeper and deeper
into the same ideas and the same experiences”
and find them new.

My grandmother sits rocking on a porch chair
watching people pass by:
a man slow in walking not from hunger
a woman hurrying not from worry.
Her seventieth birthday jolts her calm existence
spiritual hunger returns to her waking
Sunday church becomes regular than her heart

From the porch she fingers her prayer beads,
sitting quitely in silent incantation,
her cat looks on, stays, hardly any movement.

The Return

The magnitude of oneself,
the hallucinating voices
can overwhelm an altar

Like grinding of gravel into sand
locust deluded by summer
start eating trees
birds lost their songs,
now mere shadows in the horizon

Then you came with your guitar
music and prayers bounce on the walls
repetitional phrases of longing,
a chant of a pilgrim returning
for the first time.

Solitude

“Solitude, however, is a form of awareness. It’s a way of being present and perceptive within all of life. It’s having a dimension of reflectiveness in our daily lives that brings with it a sense of gratitude, appreciation, peacefulness , enjoyment, and prayer. It’s the sense, within ordinary life, that life is precious, sacred, and enough.”- Ronald Rolheiser, Prayer, Our Deepest Longing

Prayer

“Prayer that leads to the beauty of the image within is difficult for it requires honesty and humility. It requires freedom from expectations, projections, false hopes and self-centeredness It means to be able to say, I am who I am with my strengths and weaknesses, gifts and failings.” -Ilia Delio, O.S.F., Franciscan Prayer

Holy surrender

 

“…I want to give myself to You without solicitude, without fear or desire, not seeking words or silence, work or rest, light or darkness, company or solitude. For I know I will possess all things if I am empty of all things, and only You can at once empty me of all things and fill me with Yourself, the Life of all that lives and the Being in Whom everything exists.

And this will be my solitude, to be separated from myself so far as to be able to love You alone, and love You so much that I no longer realize I am loving anything…”
-Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Two 1941-1952

note:this is part of the prayer of Thomas Merton to the Holy Spirit before his solemn, perpetual vows as a priest and Cistercian monk.

note: I’m alone in the mountains. Mrs. Abstract drove to St. George,UT, with our friend, Gloria, who will run 10K in the Senior Games on Monday.

 

Shall I hurry?

Eat the crackers and pick up the crumbs
Never mind the absence of oysters
The atmosphere is warming up fast
Where will you go, she ask
I want to say I mean to ask you.
What is left is the last prediction
The sea will rise and swallow the mountain
We will climb higher and higher
And we may not reach heaven.

 

World Day of Prayer

“World Day of Prayer is held each year on the first Friday in March. The day was the idea of Church Women United who work for justice and peace. Each year, women’s group from a different country writes a prayer service and theme for the day.

For World Day of Prayer 2017 which is being celebrated today, the women group from the Philippines prepared the prayer with the theme, ‘Am I being unfair to you?’ ”

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note: the photos are taken from the website of World Day of Prayer.
Click here: Prayer