Tag Archives: prayer

Silent prayer

Nothing is silent. The breath of God is not absent. The wheeze of trees in full leaf hefting their branches in dance. The sigh of waves that fall before they reach the shore. The call of an ant six whispery feet one side of a blade of grass. The sun raging with … Continue reading

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Pressed

What if the robes were reversed and among the throng of sweaty suitors for my notice you were plucking at my sleeve; would I know your touch from the pickpockets of power, care enough to turn and ask what you … Continue reading

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Secret

Today’s little Lenten story is a secret so I can’t tell it to you, but you can whisper it so that only your body and your breath and God and the cat can hear it.

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The priest

Leave your prayers here with me,   not because I can answer them –   you and I know better –   but to slip on like borrowed shoes   before I cross the threshold

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Did Jesus dream?

Did Jesus dream? Were his dreams oracular, spectular, unconsciously omniscient, encompassing future and past, nebulae and black holes? Were there days when night hung from his shoulders, unlight, leaden remnants of memory or premonition? Did Jesus delight in the absurdity of dreamscape? Was he … Continue reading

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Lost in prayer

Sometimes when I pray the words scurry by like ants I watch their silent progress unregistered on the kitchen scale undulating in their trail unnoticed until they become a swarm indistinguishable one from the next  Sometimes there is one you see that carries five thousand times its weight … Continue reading

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Sleep, prayer, grief, and Jesus

Jesus knew that he would conquer death and sin – he had told them over and again that he would rise – but he was grieved and frightened and anguished at the capacity of his human captors for violence. There is no contradiction here: it was from ourselves that he came to save us. That is why he advises his disciples, “Pray that you may not be tested.”  Continue reading

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How to grow a prayer life

We have been transplanted into a new and enduring reality. We know now that this new situation will last longer than any of us imagined at the beginning. If we are not to be choked up by the troubles or cares of the world, we need to take care of the soil of our souls, and the loam of our lives, if we are to continue as good mediums for God’s Word. Continue reading

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A midweek prayer in the middle of the night

Flying dark with the bats, I send out prayers,
trying to locate God by their echoes. Continue reading

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Pray as though nobody’s listening

Oh, but what about those things that “our Father who is in secret” will see? And what will be their just reward? What is behind that other door, the one within our hearts and souls, which attempts to guard my guilt and my ungraceful, unpaintable, distressed and unfading mantras even from the sight of God, let alone myself? Continue reading

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