Category: quote

Trust in the slow work of God


 
Last week I was in Yorkshire for the annual Resound Worship Songwriter Retreat held at Wydale Hall. One afternoon I joined an excursion to Bempton Cliffs, hoping to see a real puffin up close. It didn’t happen for me (others had more luck). I saw lots of birds though, and stunning scenery. Along the cliff path I also stumble on this blooming thistle with a bumble bee bumbling about, sampling the nectar.

May you find time this summer to bumble about and sample things that are sweet and nourishing for your heart and mind and soul.
 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said,

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.”

 
from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro, p. 335
 

From the blog
When hot and bothered
All my days and forever
Bright and beautiful
 

Prayer and the way we are

 

“Prayer is not only a matter of saying the right sort of words to the right kind of God. Our being is involved, the way we are.”

by Eugene Peterson,
from Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer, p. 24
 

A prayer

inspired by Psalm 1

King of all the earth,
Creator of the universe,
Holy Triune God,
from everlasting to everlasting,
      you are Lord.

Your law brings life, O Lord,
      and we meditate on it day and night;

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

You are a rich stream of living waters,
      and we would immerse ourselves in you;

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

You bring forth fruit in due season
      and establish the work of our hands;

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

Who is like our God,
      the One whose ways are full of life?

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

This is our God, the Holy One.
Come before him with thanksgiving
      and offer him the sacrifice of praise.

 
from Oratio Contemplativa, posted on re:worship

From the blog
In the school of prayer with Eugene Peterson
Lament
Continually curious
 

Love planting

 
A sixth-century Jewish rabbi wrote, “God, from the very beginning of creation, was occupied before all else with planting, as it is written, ‘And first of all, the Eternal God planted a Garden in Eden.’ Therefore occupy yourselves first and foremost with planting.”

Lord, give us humility to remember that we are made from dirt so that we might till the dirt and love it as we love ourselves. Amen.

 
from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro, p. 249

From the blog
3 Prayers for refugees
Grace notes
A new nature
 

Celebrate supply

 

“Our life is not only travail and labor, it is also refreshment and joy in the goodness of God. We labor, but God nourishes and sustains us. And this is reason for celebrating. … Through daily meals [God] is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.”

 
Diedrich Bonhoeffer,
from Life Together (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), p. 68
 

From the blog
Theme: Ever sustaining  [prayer sheet]
Food for thought
In all seasons – grow
 

Asking and answers


 

 

‘Prayer is asking, and prayer is sitting. Prayer is the breath. Prayer is not an answer, always, because not all questions can be answered.’

from Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community
by Pádraig Ó Tuama, p. xi
 

A prayer

    I know
that when the stress has grown too strong,
    you will be there.

    I know
that when the waiting seems so long,
    you hear my prayer.

    I know
that through the crash of falling worlds
    you’re holding me.

    I know
that life and death are yours
    eternally.

 
by Mother Janet Stuart (1857-1914),
from The Book of a Thousand Prayers by Angela Ashwin, #241
 

From the blog
Jesus, pray for us
Bend down low
The Gift #2 : For the asking
 

In the school of prayer with Eugene Peterson

 

Here are some extracts on the topic of prayer by Eugene Peterson from his book, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer.

 
 

I

What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God. The psalms show us how to answer. (p. 6)

II

The practice of Christians in praying the Psalms is straightforward: simply pray through the Psalms, psalm by psalm, regularly. … That’s it: open our Bibles to the book of Psalms and prayer them – sequentially, regularly, faithfully across a lifetime. This is how most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have matured in prayer. Nothing fancy. Just do it. The praying itself is deliberate and leisurely, letting (as St. Benedict directed) the motions of the heart come into harmony with the movements of the lips. (p. 7)

III

All the psalms are prayers in community: people assembled, attentive before God, participating in a common posture, movement and speech, offering themselves and each other to their Lord. Prayer is not a private exercise, but a family convocation. … the believing community at worship, at regular times and in assigned places, is the base of prayer. All the psalms were prayed in such communities. … The primary use of prayer in not for expressing ourselves, but in becoming ourselves, and we cannot do that alone. (p. 18-19)

IV

Human beings are in trouble most of the time. Those who don’t know they are in trouble are in the worst trouble. Prayer is the language of the people who are in trouble and know it, and who believe or hope that God can get them out. (p. 36)

V

We do better to simply enter the sequence of psalms as they are given to us in the Psalms, go from one to the next, one day to the next, one week to the next, taking what comes, learning to enter into what comes, whatever, practicing a sense of the presence of God, deepening that awareness into colloquy* with God. (p. 108)

 
*  colloquy: dialogue, conversation, heart-to-heart

So I answered

Psalm 40:1-8, The Message (translated by Eugene Peterson)

I waited and waited and waited for God.
    At last he looked; finally he listened.
He lifted me out of the ditch,
    pulled me from deep mud.
He stood me up on a solid rock
    to make sure I wouldn’t slip.
He taught me how to sing the latest God-song,
    a praise-song to our God.
More and more people are seeing this:
    they enter the mystery,
    abandoning themselves to God.

Blessed are you who give yourselves over to God,
    turn your backs on the world’s “sure thing,”
    ignore what the world worships;
The world’s a huge stockpile
    of God-wonders and God-thoughts.
Nothing and no one
    compares to you!
I start talking about you, telling what I know,
    and quickly run out of words.
Neither numbers nor words
    account for you.

Doing something for you, bringing something to you—
    that’s not what you’re after.
Being religious, acting pious—
    that’s not what you’re asking for.
You’ve opened my ears
    so I can listen.

So I answered, “I’m coming.
    I read in your letter what you wrote about me,
And I’m coming to the party
    you’re throwing for me.”
That’s when God’s Word entered my life,
    became part of my very being.
 

From the blog
In the school of prayer with Anselm
In the school of prayer with Michael Mayne
In the school of prayer with Ignatius of Loyola
 

Open gates

 
David Adam writes,
 
“Every now and again ‘our eyes are opened’ and we see beyond the narrowness of our day-to-day vision. This was expressed by Jacob when he awoke out of sleep, a sleep he felt he had been in all his life up to that point: ‘Jacob awoke out of sleep and said, “How aweful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”‘ (Genesis 28:16-17). Jacob had not been looking for his experience, it had suddenly opened before him. I believe that such experiences are offered to all of us at one time or another in our lives. But we in our turn have to be open enough to receive them. … If we face the unfamiliar it may open all sorts of gates for us.”
 
from The Open Gate: Celtic Prayers for Growing Spiritually
by David Adam, p.2
 

Prayer

O Lord,
    Open our eyes to your Presence
    Open our minds to your grace
    Open our lips to your praises
    Open our hearts to your love
    Open our lives to your healing
    And be found among us.

 
by David Adam,
from The Book of a Thousand Prayers by Angela Ashwin, #15
 

From the blog
Turn to the light
Holy moment beneath the stars
Slow learners and bright ideas
 

Bloom where you’re planted

“There are times to bloom where we are planted, and times for us to be transplanted so we can bloom even better elsewhere. Just follow the Lord where he leads.”

(Danielle Bernock, from an article on www.christianity.com)
 

Benediction

inspired by Colossians 2:6-7

Just like you receive Christ Jesus the Lord,
so go on living in him — in simple faith.
Grow out of him as a plant grows out of the soil it is planted in —
becoming more and more sure of your faith.
If you do this,
your lives will overflow with joy and thankfulness.
And the mercy of God,
the love of Jesus Christ,
and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit
will surround you and uphold you
wherever you go.
Go in God’s peace.

posted on re:worship

From the blog
Quiet near a little stream
Slow learners and bright ideas
Theme: Part of creation  [prayer sheet]
 

Carry something beautiful


 

In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.

 

Blaise Pascal

 

Benediction

Go forth from this place refreshed and empowered
to do the ministry to which God calls you:
Travel lightly, for you carry within you all that you need.
Notice God’s presence in simple, everyday experiences.
Whenever opportunity arises, labor for the good of all.
And the blessing and joy of God,
our Creator, Healer, and Life-Giver
go with you today and always.
Amen.

 
~ by Rev. Heather A. Moody, posted on re:worship
 

From the blog
In the school of prayer with Anselm
Bright and beautiful
walk, run, soar
 

In the school of prayer with Tish Harrison Warren

 

The night time service of Compline from the Book of Common Prayer carried Tish Harrison Warren in a time of doubt and loss.

Here are some excerpts on prayer taken from her book, Prayer in the Night – including the prayer that gives shape and content to the book.

 

I

For most of my life, I didn’t know there were different kinds of prayer. Prayer meant one thing only: talking to God with words I came up with. Prayer was wordy, unscripted, self-expressive, spontaneous, and original. And I still pray this way, every day. “Free form” prayer is a good and indispensable way to pray.
      But I’ve come to believe that in order to sustain faith over a lifetime, we need to learn different ways of praying. Prayer is a vast territory, with room for silence and shouting, for creativity and repetition, for original and received prayers, for imagination and reason.  (p. 16)

II

I turned to Compline when I didn’t have anything else to say, when I was so bone-tired and soul-spent that I could only receive prayer as a gift. … I also leaned on other ancient ways of praying that rely less on cognitive and verbal ability.
      In particular I found refuge in prayers of silence.
      Theophan the Recluse, a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox priest, describes the work of silent prayer: “You must descend from your head to your heart…. Whilst you are still in your head, thoughts will easily be subdued but will always be whirling about, like snow in winter or clouds of mosquitoes in the summer.”1  These clouds of mosquitoes – my anger and neurosis, my fears and doubts, my unanswerable questions and exhaustion – buzz around me. Sitting wordlessly before God allows space for the real work to begin in my heart.
      It’s not that “Help” or “Lord, I’m weary” aren’t good enough prayers. God hears and loves even prayers like these. We don’t need to experiment with the prayers of the church or ancient prayer practices to impress God. But when we are weary, it can help to throw ourselves onto what has come before us, the steady practices of prayer that the church has handed down for safe keeping, for this very moment when we come to the end of ourselves.  (p. 110)

III

Scripted prayers – the prayers of Compline, the Psalms, or any other received prayers – are not static.  As we pray them, we read our own lives back into the words we pray.  Our own biographies shape our understanding of these prayers as much as these prayers shape us and our own stories.  (p. 125)

IV

We pray to endure the mystery of suffering, and the mystery of suffering teaches us to pray. And the end of all of it is the love of God.  (p. 130)

V

God’s love and devotion to us, not ours to him, is the source of prayer. He is the first mover in prayer, the one who has been calling to us before we could ever call to him. And he will not stop calling, no matter how dark the night becomes. Light, not darkness, is the constant.  (p. 166)

 
1 quoted in Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land, 2006, p. 27
 

A prayer

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

~ from BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
 

More
Tish Harrison Warren interview (podcast)
An Order for Compline (liturgy)
Compline service (video)