Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘prayer’

Today’s Sermon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 17, 2024| 12 Comments »


 
 
was a single drop
of melted snow
that clung to the tip
of a tight red bud
at the end
of a naked branch.
It didn’t have to
shout or sing
to make me fall in love
with the way afternoon light
gathered inside it.
Such a simple pulpit,
such humble gospel,
this radiant preacher,
this silence in which
the prayer is made
of listening.
 

Read Full Post »

New Prayer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 14, 2023| 17 Comments »


I cannot hear it, the beep of the IV
or the tick of nurse’s pen on the chart
or the wheels of the gurney as they roll
into the operating room, can’t hear
the voice of the doctor or the anesthesiologist,
can’t hear the soft tide of her breath
as she drifts into blackness nor the dry
mumbling from her lips as she comes to.
So I listen to this room and the silence
that holds it, listen to the only words
that rise up in me.
I love you. I love you. I love you.  
I whisper it into the silence
as if a thousand miles away she could hear them.
And then it is only silence.
It wraps its sound around me
soft as a mother’s embrace,
gentle and strong as wings that fold me in
until silence itself becomes prayer.  

Read Full Post »

Terce

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 11, 2023| 9 Comments »


 
It’s the light this morning
that opens me. How is it
a certain changing angle of gold
 
can make the heart leap up
all nimble and sprightly and eager to praise
as if it’s never before seen such beauty,
 
as if it doesn’t happen every day,
this radiance that reaches
through space to find us
 
wherever we happen to stand
on this unlikely planet.
I don’t know how it is the light
 
works as a luminous key to unguard me
and swing wide my gates,
but on this morning filled with news
 
that makes me shutter, shut down,
close off and clench,
this stroke of light, it’s everything.

Read Full Post »

When It Rains

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 27, 2023| 9 Comments »

 
 
When a cloud follows me
as if we are tethered,
can I find peace with the shade?
It’s easy to wish it away.
Can I wish it away
and at the same time
tilt my head back,
keep my eyes wide
and breathe?
These are the days
I learn to pray—
pray not for what I want,
but to be opened
by what is here.

Read Full Post »

On Prayer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 19, 2023| 12 Comments »


for Mark Primavesi
 
Prayer is what happens when we listen, and wait, beneath words, for the outline of heaven and earth to emerge.
            —Wayne Muller, “Nourished by Prayer”
 
 
Today prayer is the silence
in the snow-deep meadow.
It’s the gurgle of the ice-choked river
that cannot be heard unless
I am completely still. Today,
prayer is not to, it’s not for,
it’s something I am
more than something I do.
Prayer is even the sound
of the logging trucks on the highway
as they brake rounding the corner.
It’s the rapid shush, shush, shush
of my skis in the track as I climb the hill.
It’s the sizzle of onions in the oil.
It’s the hitch in my breath before I cry.
I’m astonished, today, to find
there is nothing that isn’t prayer
when I am aware it’s an invitation
to be completely here, to open;
it’s a call to meet it all
with the love that asks nothing from me
except that I give it and receive it.
Every single thing can be prayer.
Even the siren blaring by.
Even my own familiar voice
as I listen into the silences
for whatever words come next.

Read Full Post »

The Prayers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 25, 2022| 14 Comments »

When I asked the world to open me,
I did not know the price.
When I wrote that two-word prayer in the sand,
I did not know loss was the key,
devastation the hinge,
trust was the dissolution
of the idea of a door.
When I asked the world to open me,
I could never have said yes to what came next.
Perhaps I imagined the waves
knew only how to carry me.
I did not imagine they would also pull me under.
When I asked the world to open me,
I had not imagined drowning
was the way to reach the shore.
The waves of sorrow dragged me down
with their tides of unthinkable loss.
The currents emptied my pockets
and stripped me of my ideas.
I was rolled and eroded
and washed up on the sand
like driftwood—softened.
I sprawled there and wept,
astonished to still be alive.
It is not easy to continue to pray this way.
Open me.
And yet it is the truest prayer I know.
The other truest prayer,
though sometimes it frightens me,
is Thank you.

Read Full Post »

Getting to I Don’t Know

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 20, 2022| 9 Comments »




Sometimes, too certain I know what love is,
I miss love.
It’s like thinking water is waves,
not seeing water is also the depths of ocean,
the muscle of river, the body, the air,
ice, snow, fog, clouds, mist.
Sometimes, longing to hear certain words,
I neglect to hear the words that are spoken.
Or craving a certain touch, I disregard
all other touch, and my skin believes it is starving.
There is beauty beyond beauty, love beyond love,
opening beyond opening, an apple inside apple.
Let my prayer be I don’t know.
Let me find the door inside the door,
the glimmer inside the glimmer,
the human inside this woman.
The god inside of god.

Read Full Post »

One Unusual Delivery Service

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 3, 2022| 6 Comments »

tying my prayer
to a passing cloud—
come wind

Read Full Post »

For the Knitter of Shawls

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 2, 2021| 2 Comments »




On the day
I most needed
to remember
how to pray,
a prayer shawl
arrived in the mail.
I wrapped myself in it
and felt in the trinity stitch
the singing of my name,
felt the colors tether me
to my own heart.
Sometimes when we
feel most alone,
the world conspires
through the goodness
of others to remind us
who we are,
remind us that now
is the right moment
to wrap ourselves
in the kind of beauty
no fear can extinguish,
now is the right moment
to feel how,
though we are alone,
love floats
around our shoulders
soft and so warm.


Read Full Post »

In Orbit

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 26, 2021| 6 Comments »


 
 
Count the one beautiful blue and green planet.
Count it again.
Say “home,” then marvel at the taste of tears.
Notice how no borders matter from here.
Remember how important they feel
when standing on a border. Once
you dreamt of being alone. Of being
far away from parking lots and grocery store lines
and men with guns and violent conviction.
Now you dream of touching someone else,
of breathing in the scent of garden dirt,
of hearing a voice without static, of lying down
in a bed, held by your own sweet gravity.
What you would do to taste a tree-ripened peach.
Give up on counting stars. Draw lines between them,
creating your own constellations:
The open hand. The river gorge. The crooked evergreen.
A semi-automatic rifle, which you re-constellate
into a small bouquet of lilies. Consider forgiveness.
Wonder how long it will take before it feels authentic.
Circling has taught you how things come around.
Remember? There was a time you didn’t think
you knew how to pray.
 

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »