Pry Me Off Dead Center (by Ted Loder)

This prayer was introduced to me by my comrade R—; it's from Ted Loder's book Guerillas of Grace (Augsburg Books, 2005) ISBN 0806690542, 9780806690544

O persistent God

deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.

 

Pressure me that I may grow more human,  

not through the lessening of my struggles,  

but through an expansion of them  

that will undamn me  

and unbury my gifts.

 

Deepen my hurt  

until I learn to share it  

and myself  

openly,  

and my needs honestly.

 

Sharpen my fears  

until I name them  

and release the power I have locked in them  

and they in me.

 

Accentuate my confusion  

until I shed those grandiose expectations  

that divert me from the small, glad gifts  

of the now and the here and the me.

 

Expose my shame where it shivers,

crouched behind the curtains of propriety,

until I can laugh at last  

through my common frailties and failures,  

laugh my way toward becoming whole.

 

Deliver me  

from just going through the motions  

and wasting everything I have   

which is today,      

a chance,          

a choice,              

my creativity,                  

your call.

 

O persistent God,

let how much it all matters

pry me off dead center

so if I am moved inside  

to tears      

or sighs          

or screams              

or smiles                  

or dreams,

they will be real

and I will be in touch with who I am

and who you are

and who my sisters and brothers are.

from Ted Loder's book Guerillas of Grace 

(Augsburg Books, 2005) ISBN 0806690542, 9780806690544

Holy Mystery

God who is Holy Mystery,

We don’t know you

Just as we don’t know ourselves

That is — we have some sense of shape,

some inkling of ideals,

but we cannot grasp

cannot even get our minds

or arms

around the totality of you

or the totality of us.

But we gather here because

we don’t know how not to —

how not to reach for support

to stretch out of hope

to hold one another

in joy and in sorrow

the big things and the little things.

We don’t know how not to

and it’s not for lack of trying.

Can you hear our timid thank you

for that inability?

 

Can you hear our roaring declaration

of the end of our fear?

And will you now,

in this space and in this time,

amid the noise and through the emptiness

show us your holy and mysterious self?

by Z. M. Willette

How to Pay Attention

THE SUMMER DAY

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
— MARY OLIVER

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA
Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver

¶

Oh God, you gave us the fields of this week’s days.

We strolled through them
idle at times, but quite often not
blessed for sure, but usually unable to keep that in mind.

Except for sometimes
those times we paid attention
whether out of a sharp pain we couldn’t ignore, a dull ache we tried to
or because there was joy (sufficient in such tiny amounts!)

Whether out of feverish desire, casual curiosity, holy longing
or because you broke some silence (and not a minute too soon).

Thank you, mysterious God, for those times
and for our paying attention (it’s easy some times, almost out of the question others
and yet you seem bent on it happening more often).

Show us, then, what to do —

with
through
during
because of

— our one wild and precious life.

by Z. M. Willette

Hunger

Matthew 15:31-37

The crowds were amazed when they saw the mute speaking,
the deformed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind able to see, and they glorified the God of Israel.

Jesus summoned his disciples and said,
“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd,
for they have been with me now for three days
and have nothing to eat.

I do not want to send them away hungry,
for fear they may collapse on the way.”

The disciples said to him,
“Where could we ever get enough bread in this deserted place
to satisfy such a crowd?”

Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have?”
“Seven,” they replied, “and a few fish.”

He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground.
Then he took the seven loaves and the fish,
gave thanks, broke the loaves,
and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.

They all ate and were satisfied.
They picked up the fragments left over – seven baskets full.

¶

God whose heart breaks, even with ours
Here we are,
on our way,
in a crowd we hardly recognize.

We didn’t plan very well:
Your words and works have stirred us beyond level-headed-ness.
In response, we follow you in a stumbling way
You know better than we do how close or far we are to collapse.
You know better than we do how much and for how much we hunger.
This is all we can offer you: our hunger.

Our leaders have a little something,
But their charts and graphs tell them it’s not enough.
(Who can blame them? They know hunger makes people unruly.)

¶

Who are you that you can show up in our lives
and ask of us only what we can’t keep hidden from you any longer?
How is it possible that you meet us
in deserted places?
Why do we listen to you when you invite us to sit down on the ground
like the cracked earth is actually some kind of banquet table?

And then, and then! How do you see our emptiness and give thanks?
How do you break open what doesn’t seem to matter?
How is it that you dumbfound us into eating together,
this intimate act of taking into our bodies what will strengthen us
and doing so unsheltered, in the midst of strangers, but without shame?
This we are not accustomed to. This makes us ask questions.

You who takes what’s not enough,
who confounds our expectations
and frustrates our preferences,
and somehow, miraculously, satisfies —
What would you have us do with these perfect fragments
that we’re picking up but so far only tucking away in baskets?

This is all we can offer you: our hunger.

by Z. M. Willette

Making Space Sacred

God who is Creator of us and Brother to us and Advocate for us
We show up here in this place
weary from what drains us
and yet somehow awake,
full of to do lists and worries we know too well
and yet hungry for what we do not know.

We gather in your presence
with hopes and fears that compete for our attention
with desires you have put deep in our hearts
and with desires we’ve allowed to distract us from joy.

Help us, loving and mysterious God,
to see how you show up
in wondrous and irritating ways
to comfort and challenge us
to patiently form us
and endlessly transform us.

Make us strong in love,
deep in faith,
and inexhaustible in hope.

Guide us in our time together
and give us the strength to let ourselves be guided.

Amen.

by Z. M. Willette

Your patience will be rewarded. Your impatience too.

This site will be under construction all summer.

Short pithy prayers you can ruminate on while you shave (or otherwise stumble into your day) — that's the idea.

I'll draw on what I'm reading and watching, listening to and getting reminded about. God's not always very subtle. I have wise friends who might post prayers here too — and invite you to do so in due time as well.

Until then . . .

“The chemist who can extract from his heart's elements
compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness
and compound them into one
can create that atom
which is called love.”

—Kahlil Gibran