Prayer for Navigating Uncharted Waters

Lord, your light is the light we need

as we travel through life’s mystery and challenges.
Yours is that still small voice that leads us
to the place where we need to go.
Your presence is the company we need
as we navigate the path before us.
May your love be our North Star, guiding us
when we have no map to follow.
We place our trust in you, O Lord,
and we place our trust in one another
as together we seek to go
where you want us to be.
Amen.

– Sister Margaret Palliser, OP

Love's Body

Lean in! I was a child, and spoke like one;
        My thought? very like a child’s.
                I gripped my reason with both
my little fists. It smelled suspiciously of milk.
        Now, as a man, I’ve learned to let it go.
                Just now, we squint to see the Image through
this latent, bleak obscurity. One day, we’ll see the Image—
        as Himself—gleaming from each face.
                Just now, I puzzle through a range
of incoherencies; but on that day,
        the scattered fragments will cohere.
                In all of this, both now and ever,
faith and hope and love abide, these
        sacred three, but the greatest of these (you surely
                must have guessed) is love.


-- Scott Cairns (1954- ) English professor at Mizzou and Orthodox Christian, reconceiving 1 Corinthians 13:11-13 by St. Paul the Apostle

Prayer (Opening Ourselves to God in Silence)

Teach us, O God, that silent language which says all things.
Teach our souls to remain silent in Your presence;
     that we may adore You in the depths of our being,
     and await all things from You, 
     while asking of You nothing
     but the accomplishment of Your will.
Teach us to remain quiet under Your action
     and produce in our souls that deep and simple prayer
     which says nothing and experiences everything,
     which specifies nothing and includes everything.

Do pray in us,
     that our prayer may ever tend to Your glory,
     and our desires and intentions may not be fixed on ourselves,
     but wholly directed to You. 

-- Pere Jean Grou, cited in Evelyn Underhill's Prayer Book


Picture: Labyrinth outside St. James Cathedral, Chicago, October 2016.

The saints

Give us light, O Lord, that contemplating the love and patience of Jesus and His saints, we may be changed into love and patience.
Take from us, by the contemplation of their example, all selfishness.
Take from us all softness.
Take from us all delicacy and fastidiousness.
Take from us all cowardice and timidity.
Take from us all self-love.

Give us a share in their spirit of endurance.
Give us a love of labour.
Give us a love of the cross.
Give us a love of hardships.
Give us a spirit of courage.
Give us a spirit of surrendered trust.
That we may be willing to spend ourselves and to be spent for the sake of Your children, in union with Your self-giving love.

--Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), English Anglo-Catholic mystic, retreat-leader, and writer, whom we remember today in the calendar of saints, from Evelyn Underhill's Prayer Book.

Prayer (for discernment)

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

-- Thomas Merton, OCSO (Father Louis) (1915-1968), from Thoughts in Solitude, 1956-- born this day in 1915.

Recorded version of prayer, read by The Rev. James Martin, SJ, on NPR's On Being with Krista Tippett

On prayer- From "A Litany": XXIII

Hear us, O Hear us Lord, to thee
A sinner is more music, when he prays,
Than spheres, or angels' praises be
in panegyric alleluias,
Hear us, for till thou hear us, Lord
We know not what to say.
Thine ear to our sighs, tears, thoughts, gives voice and word.
Hear thyself now, for thou in us dost pray.

--John Donne (1572-1631)

Photo: Dame Julian of Norwich

Be a Gardener- Dame Julian of Norwich

Be a Gardener.
Dig a ditch. Toil and sweat.
And turn the earth upside down.
And seek the deepness.
And water plants in time.
Continue this labor.
And make sweet floods to run,
and noble and abundant fruits to spring.
Take this food and drink,
and carry it to God as your true worship.

--Julian of Norwich, whose feast day is today, ca. 1430