A prayer of Dame Julian of Norwich

In you, Father all-mighty, we have
     our preservation and our bliss.
In you, Christ, we have our restoring and our saving.
You are our mother, brother, and Saviour.
In you, our Lord the Holy Spirit,
     is marvellous and plenteous grace.
You are our clothing; for love you wrap us
     and embrace us.
You are our maker, our lover, our keeper.
Teach us to believe that by your grace
     all shall be well,
     and all shall be well,
     and all manner of thing shall be well.
AMEN.

-- Dame Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)

Sabbath Poem X, 1979

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

--Wendell Berry (1934- ), American poet, novelist, agrarian activist, from This Day: Sabbath Poems New and Collected, 1979-2013, 2013

A Prayer of Awareness

God is the foundation of everything;
This God undertakes, God gives,
Such that nothing that is necessary
     for life is lacking.
Now humankind needs a body that
     at all times honors and praises God.
This body is supported in every way
     through the earth.
Thus the earth glorifies the power of God.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)

Prayer of Invocation for Evening

Lord of the evening hour,
who hast often met with us at the close of day,
be our refuge now from the noise of the world
and the care of our own spirits.

Grant us thy peace.

Let not the darkness of our ignorance and folly,
of our sorrow and sin
hide thee from us.
Draw hear to us that we may be near to thee.
Speak to each of us the word we need,
and let thy word abide in us
till it has wrought in us thy holy will.

Quicken and refresh our hearts,
renew and increase our strength,
that we may grow into the likeness of thy faithful children,
and by our worship at this time
be enabled better to serve thee in our daily life
in the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

--John Hunter, Devotional Services, 1915, cited in Morgan Phelps Noyes, Prayers for Services

Prayer of Petition

Lord,
be thou within us, to strengthen us;
without us, to keep us;
above us, to protect us;
beneath us, to uphold us;
before us, to direct us;
behind us, to keep us from straying;
round about us, to defend us.

--Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, Preces Privatae, 16th Century

Prayer of Intercession

Almighty God,
whose goodness loved us into life,
and whose mercies never fail;

we commend to thee
all who have a place in our hearts and sympathies;
all who are joined to us by the sacred ties
of kindred, friendship, and love;
all little children who are dear to us;
all our neighbors and their households;
all who help us to a faithful life,
and whose spirit turns our duties to love;

keep them both outwardly in their bodies,
and inwardly in their souls,
and pour upon them the continual dew of thy blessing.

--John Hunter, Devotional Services, 1915, cited in Morgan Phelps Noyes, Prayers for Services

Leavetaking

Nearing the start of that mysterious last season
Which brings us closer to the close of the other four,
I'm somewhat afraid and don't know how to prepare
So I will praise you.

I will praise you for the glaze on buttercups
And for the pearly scent of wild fresh water
And the great crossbow shapes of swans flying over
With that strong silken threshing sound of wings
Which you gave them when you made them without voices.

And I will praise you for crickets.
On starry autumn nights
When the earth is cooling
Their rusty dimunitive music
Repeated over and over
Is the very marrow of peace.

And I will praise you for the crows calling from treetops
The speech of my first village,
And for the sparrow's flash of song
Flinging me in an instant
The joy of a child who woke
Each morning to the freedom
Of her mother's unclouded love
And lived in it like a country.

And I will praise you that from vacant lots
From only broken glass and candy wrappers
You raise up blue chicory flowers.
I thank you for that secret praise
Which burns in every creature,
And I ask you to bring us to life
Out of every sort of death

And teach us mercy.

-- Anne Porter (1911-2011) from Living Things: Collected Poems, 2006

Celtic Blessing

God bless the path on which you go
God bless the earth beneath your feet
God bless your destination.
God be a smooth way before you
A guiding star above you
A keen eye behind you
This day, this night, and forever.
God be with you whatever you pass
Jesus be with you whatever you climb
Spirit be with you wherever you stay.
God be with you at each stop and each sea
At each lying down and each rising up
In the trough of the waves, on the crest of the billows.
Each step of the journey.

Benediction based on 1 Thessalonians 5

Go forth into the world in peace;
be of good courage;
hold fast that which is good;
render to no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted;
support the weak;
help the afflicted;
honour everyone;
love and serve the Lord,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit;
and the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always. 

--1 Thessalonians 5:13-22

Prayer- Let nothing disturb you

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes,
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

--St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Sonnet 29 (When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes)

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
     For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
     That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Life

I made a posie, while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time’s gentle admonition;
Who did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day;
Yet sugaring the suspicion.

Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures,
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet

A Prayer

Grant I thee pray such heat into mine heart,
That to this love of thine may be equal;
 God grant me from Sathanas service to astart,
With whom me rueth so long to have be thrall;
Grant me good Lord and creator of all,
The flame to quench of all sinful desire,
And in thy love set all mine heart afire.

That when the journey of this deadly life
My silly ghost hath finished, and thence
Departed must without his fleshly wife;
Alone into his lord’s high presence,
He may thee find: O well of indulgence,
In thy lordship not as a lord: but rather
As a very tender, loving father.

--Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), from "A Prayer of Picus Mirandula Unto God," 1510

Icon of St. Thomas More by Theophilia Darn

His Last Sonnet

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No -yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever -or else swoon to death.

--John Keats (1795-1821), English Romantic poet

My Faith is larger than the Hills

My Faith is larger than the Hills—
So when the Hills decay—
My Faith must take the Purple Wheel
To show the Sun the way—

 'Tis first He steps upon the Vane—
And then—upon the Hill—
And then abroad the World He go
To do His Golden Will—

And if His Yellow feet should miss—
The Bird would not arise—
The Flowers would slumber on their Stems—
No Bells have Paradise—

How dare I, therefore, stint a faith
On which so vast depends—
Lest Firmament should fail for me—
The Rivet in the Bands

-- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), (Poem 766)

Benediction: Christ dwell in your hearts by faith

Christ dwell in your hearts through faith
—that you,
being rooted and grounded in love,
may have strength to comprehend
with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God.

--Ephesians 3:17-19

Sonnet XIX: When I Consider How My Life is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.
His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

--John Milton (1608-1674), English poet and essayist

Endymion (A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever)

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

--John Keats (1795-1821)

The Sonnet-Ballad

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate--and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?

--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), American, Poet Laureate of Illinois