Category: prayer

unexpected prayer

wonderfulexchange3 Comments

I continued working on the church’s web site well past 11pm last night.  By the time I stopped, I knew I should sleep, but my mind was too full of hex codes and trial-and-error tweaks to the CSS.  So, I began to read:  a Ruth Burrows book on prayer that’s been reprinted after many years of being on the ‘hard to find’ list.

Read far too long, and then kept waking through the night (hex codes being an improvement on fretting over Cranmer).  Therefore,I got up later than planned;  foolishly turned on the computer while my hair was still wet; got caught up in emails, and was running very late.

In fact, I had done each and every one of the things that I know I must not do if I am to sustain the rhythms of prayer.  Again.

So, at 9.02 am, I was hunting for my keys and gulping down a mug of tea, and feeling terribly guilty that the church wasn’t unlocked yet and that I’d made a mess of the morning, when the phone rang.

Dilemma.  To answer the phone before praying is fatal.  Even worse than email, it pulls me into the swirling waters of the day when I am not ready.  Should I let the machine get it and slip out the door?  Tempting, but no.

And I’m so glad I answered.

My prayer this morning happened mostly while on the phone, hearing the most lovely man tell me about his life.  There in fifteen minutes were all the gems:  undergraduate days, reading Rousseau, meeting his wife; the sort of work in the war that many must have experienced, but leaves me feeling breathless in awe; his children, his grandchildren, his work; the pain of grief and the great pride of seeing those you love do what they set out to do and (even better) seeing them loved.   All this because he’s marking a milestone, and wants to give a gift to the church that was once part of his journey.  He’d rung for an address.

By the time we finished, I knew formal prayer was doomed, but walked to the post office caught up in a song (‘the Lord is my light, my light and salvation…’).  After the post office, when I should have been hurrying home to work, I found myself standing on the bridge watching the ducks.  People who passed might have thought I was crying, might have though I was upset.  How can one explain the tears that come of grace?  the almost unbearable joy of God coming in the most unexpected ways?

And then, the memory of Sunday’s epistle:

My grace is sufficient for you.
My power made perfect in weakness.

silence or song

wonderfulexchange4 Comments

I read today that when we are happy our field of vision expands.  True enough, metaphorically, but apparently it’s true physiologically as well.

I’d always thought it was the other way round.  I remember distinctly the phase in my life as an undergraduate when I felt I learned to see for the first time.  I’m sure I’ve blogged about this and preached about this and bored you with this before; but it began with a prayer walk on the beach when I learned that even the sand above the tide line was damp in winter.  And it continued tide by tide, ripple by ripple, leaf by leaf  till the joy broke in flowering chestnut trees, and swallows soaring across a vast sky.  I believed that the seeing made me happy; but maybe it was the other way round.

I sat down to blog tonight, and was at a loss.  There are things I dare not say.  Things too fragile for naming, that leave my breath suspended so that I don’t know whether air or tears or laughter will come next.  It is all good. It is all familiar.  Yet it has been such a long time.

This transition is sending me right back to basics.  The customs and norms I find here, the particular life-journeys I am beginning to accompany leave the field wide open so that I find possibles in every direction: how will we engage deeply with scripture (how do we already, what needs to be broken open?) what is the shape of prayer, here, and how do we keep deepening it?  how does our worship express and form our identity?  how do we express different calls?

I know already (and others know too) it will not all be easy.  The very things I am most certain of in my vision of the the church, the liturgy, what it means to be a priest are the things that most obviously expose differences between my understandings and the congregation’s norms; they will provide the first conflicts and the first opportunities for growth (mine and theirs).

So, I’m reading Dom Gregory again.
And Ruth Burrows.
And Job.  (well, we can thank the CofE lectionary for that).
Then there is the story of Samuel and Saul and David that breaks my heart every time.
I suspect it will be Ephesians next.

Tomorrow is liturgy planning for a funeral, a wedding, the end of Young Church’s year; there are notes of a meeting I should have written up a week ago; and hymns to choose; and people to meet.  Thursday, the school show, then a funeral; Friday, a wedding rehearsal and much to do for the Young Church; Saturday a first meeting for a wedding, and then a wedding proper; Sunday, the end of Young-Church’s year, in which they will help lead the congregation in worship, and then a Barbecue on the lawn.

So I may not blog much.

I may (perchance) twitter.

But know that it is good.

covenant

wonderfulexchange7 Comments

No, not that one.

The Methodist one.

I’ve been pouring through piles of liturgy books and re-reading the Methodist covenant service.  The covenant service is a peculiarly Methodist thing.  I realise that it covers much of the same landscape as my version of the Maundy Thursday Vigil  — i.e., what happens in the silence as I pray through the year, the people in the room, the people on my faith journey, and then move into that other space, harder to explain.  But that is rather idiosyncratic.

It is what we are supposed to be doing each time we gather for communion, each time we renew our baptismal vows, each time we get up in the morning.   But you see, that’s the genious of Methodism.  I have a profusion of images and ideas.  They have a nice orderly service to remind you of who you are.

The congregation is asked to pray:

I am no longer my own, but yours.
Your will, not mine, be done in all things,
wherever you may place me,
in all that I do
and in all that I may endure;
when there is work for me
and when there is none;
when I am troubled
and when I am at peace.
Your will be done
when I am valued
and when I am disregarded;
when I find fulfillment
and when it is lacking;
when I have all things,
and when I have nothing.
I willingly offer
all that I have and am
to serve you,
as and where you choose.

Glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
May it be so for ever.
Let this covenant now made on earth
be fulfilled in heaven.  Amen.

The Methodist Worship Book, Covenant Service

Absolutely terrifying, isn’t it?

I suspect the ones who avoid the service and say ‘no’ might be the most honest.
But the ones who keep trying to mean it stand a better chance of it one day becoming true.