We bring our stories

The Destroyed City (Rotterdam) – rebuilt and flourishing   (Photo: Irene Bom)
Sculpture by Ossip Zadkine, inspired by the devastation of the 1940 bombing of Rotterdam

 
 
 

The first post in our December series, “Story”, features a prayer by Cheryl Lawrie that invites God to speak into the particulars of our lives with his story of transforming grace.

 

Prayer

God, we bring our stories
and we wait to be held by yours.

We bring our faithfulness:
shape it with grace

We bring our success:
shape it with generosity

We bring our weaknesses:
shape them with compassion

We bring our possibilities:
shape them with hope.

We confess, God, that the way is hard
and we are tired.
Speak into our tiredness with your story of grace

We confess that the way is unclear
and we do not know the path
Speak into our wandering with your story of vision

We confess that we are tired of waiting
and we just want to make it happen
Speak into our impatience with your story of wisdom

Let your story be our story
and we pray this in Jesus’ name
Amen.
 

— written by Cheryl Lawrie, and posted on her [hold this space] blog.
 

 
Digging deeper
More details about Zadkine’s statue, The Destroyed City
 

A Peace Garden


 

The Lord’s directions for growing a Peace Garden

And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace. (James 3:18)

– Sow some seeds (hardy ones like mercy and forgiveness)
– Feed them with love.
– Sprinkle them with truth.
– Weed them every day.
– Give them room to grow.
– Wait.
– Share the goodness with everyone you know.

 
by Anne Osdieck, and posted on The Center for Liturgy Sunday website.
 

mud mud mud


Baked mud: tiled floor in “Auditoire de Calvin”, Geneva  (Photo: Irene Bom)

 

Faith and Love in the First World War by Anne Richards and the Church of England’s Mission Theology Advisory Group is a compilation of reflections and prayers, “looking at little things which affected the lives of all who were involved [in the First World War], friend and enemy alike.”
 
Themes included: mud, rats, lice, poppies, cigarettes, daughters, ghosts, guns, wire, gas, shrapnel
 
 
Excerpts and a prayer from the entry on MUD:

 

When we repeat the lines from Laurence Binyon’s famous poem … ‘at the going down of the sun and in the morning/we will remember them’ … we should remember the pain, cold, wet and mud and what those conditions do to the human spirit. Mud forms part of the spiritual landscape of the First World War, representing destruction, dirt, pain and soul-sapping work. When carefully tilled fields and entire landscapes turn to featureless mud it is like the undoing of creation and a foretelling of death.

It was possible to drown in the mud of no-man’s land. If wounded soldiers fell into the mud, they might well asphyxiate before they could be reached. Mud was therefore also the enemy, lying in wait to claim you. Yet mud was also what kept you safe in the trenches …

So if we ‘will remember them’ we should remember what it is like to live on the edge of life and death in the mud, the soil of God’s good creation, sheltering you, but also ready at a moment’s notice to become your tomb, to turn you, wet and dirty, back into the mud itself.
 

Prayer

God of the earth, God of dirt and mud,
at the going down of the sun and in the morning,
we will remember all those who endured
the cold, clinging wet and fluid soils.

We will remember the tilled fields once white for harvest,
the stands of trees, smashed to pieces,
the landscapes of human toil and habitation,
reduced to ruin, the spoil heaps of waste.

We will remember the mud-sounds of war,
the buzzing of bees that are bullets, zinging into soil,
the wet explosions, fountain splatters of earth,
the strange sucking and gurgle of submerged deaths.

God of the earth, God of the lost and buried,
help us to value your good soil, to tend it, plant it,
restore what is broken and ruined to its beauty,
and when we wash the dirt from our hands, remember them.

 
Source: www.churchofengland.org
 

 
From the blog
In the school of prayer with St Francis of Assisi
Desert wisdom
The wells of salvation
 

Too beautiful for war

 

 

Two prayers by Simon Bailey – written from a teenage perspective – expressing distress at the ongoing threat of nuclear war and violence and recognising the comfort that comes when we bring our fears to God who is “warm enough to take all [our] shivers away”.

 

#1

They say we can destroy the world
twenty times over with nuclear bombs –
it’s probably more by now.
I see those pictures of the mushroom cloud
and I shiver –
the world is too beautiful for that,
people are too beautiful.
Father, it’s so wrong – and so frightening.

Jesus told us to love our enemies –
I don’t think you can love your enemies with a bomb.
It’s such a mess but somehow, somewhere
we have to turn round and really say:
‘We want to live in peace together.’

So send your Spirit to remind our leaders
how beautiful things are,
how beautiful their ‘enemies’ are,
to remind them to keep telling themselves:
‘We want to live in peace together.’

 
by Simon Bailey
from The Book of a Thousand Prayers by Angela Ashwin, #1001
 

#2

There were wars and riots on the news tonight,
Father, and now I’m very frightened –
bombs and killings and rows don’t seem too bad
in the daylight, but it’s dark now …
I don’t let other people know I’m frightened
of the dark but I am.
I’m scared of lots of things –
evil spirits and heights, being beaten up,
of pain and dying,
and even looking silly in front of my friends.
Now I’m scared of going to sleep in case I dream.

Be near me,
Be a warm presence round me
and a light inside me.

You know what it’s like to be very scared,
so you can help me now.
I’m nearly shivering with fright,
so help me to know you are in charge,
you know what darkness is,
you are brighter than the darkness
and warm enough to take all my shivers away.

 
by Simon Bailey from Still with God, p. 36
referenced in How to Pray: Alone, with Others, at Any Time, in Any Place by Steven Cottrell
 

Church of Scotland at prayer

Together we pray
Each week, from late September until late November, new prayers written by people from across the Church of Scotland and our partners will be shared on the Church of Scotland website.

This week’s prayer for radical change, written by Doug Gay
 

From the blog
Consolation joy
Wild hope #1
Theme: Do not lose heart [prayer sheet]
 

imagine … no war …

 

(Photo: Irene Bom)
 

A prayer

We dare to imagine a world
      where hunger has no chance to show its face.

We dare to dream of a world
      where war and terror are afraid to leave their mark.

We long to believe in a world of hope unchained
      and lives unfettered.

We dare to share in the creation of a world
      where your people break free.

Dare we open our minds to difference?
Dare we open our lives to change?

Your kingdom come, O God.
Your will be done.
Amen.

 
from the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, U.K.
Posted on re:worship
 

 
From the blog
Guest post: War and peace
Worthy of trust
Theme: Spurred on by prayer [prayer sheet]

A healing blessing


The Shepherd (1930) by Arturo Martini  (Photo: Irene Bom)
 
 
 

An unusually short blessing from Jan Richardson. She calls it “a [healing] blessing small enough to carry in the hand or in the heart”.

 

And All Be Made Well

A Healing Blessing

That each ill
be released from you
and each sorrow
be shed from you
and each pain
be made comfort for you
and each wound
be made whole in you

that joy will
arise in you
and strength will
take hold of you
and hope will
take wing for you
and all be made well.

 
by Jan Richardson, from paintedprayerbook.com
 

 
TIP
Check out Jan Richardson’s online Advent retreat, Illuminated 2019, now open for registration.
 

 
From the blog
Balm to heal the world
Worthy of trust
Fearfully and wonderfully made
 

Healed from the inside out


Rome  (Photo: Irene Bom)
 
 

I recently bought a book of poetry by Bonnie Thurston called, Practicing Silence, and have been dipping into it as a kind of spiritual practice. You have to slow down and savour the words. You can’t rush it.

Here’s the poem that inspired this month’s theme, “Healing”.

Inside out

On the face of it
all appears well,
but mostly wounds
are deep beyond reckoning.
As in surgery
the surface heals,
but in subcutaneous depths
resides an awful, jagged maw
into which one
must eventually walk,
sit down, wait for what
only waiting accomplishes:
victory over restlessness
conquering the urge to control;
acceptance of utter helplessness
inviting help’s arrival.
We are all healed
in passive voice
and from the inside out.

 
~ by Bonnie Thurston, from Practicing Silence: New and Selected Verses, p. 74
 

 
From the blog
The Spirit does wonders
Testing ground
In the school of prayer with Anselm