More Prayers

WE ARE RESURRECTION PEOPLE.

We, who also know and believe Jesus-risen, are to offer that same experience to others…..

*resurrection happens whenever love transforms life;

when someone offers forgiveness despite a burning desire for vengeance.

*resurrection happens when a nation begins to value and protect the rights of all, not just a few.

*resurrection happens when the poor, hungry, homeless and disenfranchised

are attended as brothers and sisters.

*resurrection happens when immigrants and refugees are not left to drown or incarcerated but

are welcomed as the children of God.

*resurrection happens when enemies sit down together to talk

instead of planning the other's demise.

*resurrection happens when our differences are honoured, listened to,

instead of holding our ground at all costs.

Lord of life, Resurrection is beckoning to happen all around us;

help us to venture out of our locked doors and BE this life wherever we find ourselves,

Alleluia!

NON SOLUM ...

(A prayer)

Why should I open my mouth?

To speak what?

Prayers that you knew before

they even became language?

Fears and desires that filled your heart before they tested mine?

Delights and gratitudes – pale flickerings to the sunburst of your glory?

And yet ...

I would give out a cry

that reaches to the last place in the universe,

is heard in the loneliest, most barren wilderness of rock and dust and fiery gas

of nothingness beyond all nothingness.

A cry that seeks the faintest echo,

the first glimpse of a loved one’s face

in the farthest distance,

the largest crowd.

The darkest night.

It is the cry of God calling to Godself,

God in the deepest, loneliest place, to God who is in all time and all place.

I cry out for you, and to you for all life, to all life.

I cry because I am alive,

and would live.

Why should I open my mind?

My mind has many doors.

And outside each of them, not only,

or maybe not at all,

a Christ with a lamp.

Instead a baying crowd,

some with their thorny crowns and lantern replicas, some with shining robes and honest faces.

‘Read my message’, ‘Take my card’, ‘Follow me’.

A hundred deceits, a thousand lost trails,

a myriad of possibilities.

Will I barricade the doors, draw up to the fire with a few familiar friends, and reminisce?

God, are you in what I know ... or what I don’t know? Are you the fire or the outside?

Is yours the hand of friend or stranger?

I know the guru’s answer, I’ve walked this way before. But today, I’ll stand aside from that

winding and many-branched path.

I’ll rest a while on this bench of thankfulness

and praise you, Creator, for your gift of mind and your minding.

Why should I open my heart?

My heart is neither open nor closed.

It is the belonging of all that I care for; the receptacle of me,

the cradling of the child in me,

the shelter of my hopes and dreams.

Am I to let these go?

Empty out my shoebox hoard into some abyss? Let generosity leave me poor,

compassion leave me empty,

empathy leave me in pain,

care exhaust me,

love expose me,

let you occupy me?

Is that my purpose – to be some other me? And will that heart be open?

Ah! I see it will,

torn by a Roman spear emptied of all its treasures so that they can be

mine.

John Polhill, Barefeet Buttercups Iona Publishing