Prayers of the Community

A Prayer By a Marion Allaart
March 2, 2008

Let's take the opportunity of our time together to still ourselves as one heart to the presence of the Great Shepherd / Shepherdess.

Gracious Spirit:

In any given moment when "the world is too much with us", we can take a deep breath and travel home to that inner room where 'You' are ever-present!

You never abandon us – though too frequently we abandon you.  It is built in to your design of creation that we prodigal sons and daughters can return home to Your Grace in any moment we choose, no matter if we've been away for ten minutes or ten years.

The door to You swings open at the slightest knock.  The portal, that takes us from the hysteria of a world based in fear to your serenity, is really any moment of pure and sacred silence.  It only takes one moment, perhaps one good and deep breath in which we exhale the madness of the world and inhale your love.

In the silence we become willing to slow down, to soften our heart no matter how much we need your help to do so.  We become willing to forgive anyone and everyone, willing to pray for a miracle asking for a ray of light to break through whatever darkness surrounds us at this moment.

We would be wise to follow the spiritual directive of a pseudo-Buddhist motto that reads

"Don’t just do something – sit there!"  It's amusing and very useful motto for the typical western mind.  Moments of sacred silence break the vicious cycle of agitation radiating outwards into the world and back again.  The cultivation of such moments gives a mystical wand which we can use to create with You the world we dare to imagine!

When our intentions and actions are aligned with our own spiritual essence, the world is definitely a safer place to be.

You restore our soul.

We bring to you our broken bodies and our broken hearts and gradually allow you to know the innermost compartments of our soul.  Help us not to pose for You but rather to be real.  Help us to present to you our pain exactly as we feel it.  We can count on You for so much more than we do.  You have the unlimited capacity to hold all the specific and intense emotions we feel about any loss, victory or breakdown – our grief, our fear, our rage, our humiliation, our righteous pride, our shame and our feelings of powerlessness.

It is these very feelings that we would rather withhold from You that should form the crux of our conversation with You.   Offering ourselves to you just as we are, being honest about our pain and our shortcomings allows your Spirit to enter us in our deepest recesses and transform us.  You can only free us from that which we are willing to surrender!

We can lose the things of this world but the knowledge of our connection to you is something no one can take away.

Dear God, each of us hold out to you now those for whom we pray in the following silence…

Lord, may we never tire of praying for peace.  Help us with our discouragement.  Give us the courage to confront again and again our global unrest, our pressing environmental realities, the cut and sting of poverty, hunger and homelessness that exist at our back door.

Seekers are aware in the mortal world that things come and go. And that's why we seek to keep our emotional centre of gravity elsewhere –  in You.  We choose to remain, as the psalmist sings, in the House of God – the energy of divine consciousness - both, when the circumstances are unfavourable and when they are 'happenin'!  When they are not we remember that we live in You, work in You, lean on You, and will rise back up in You.

Anything can strengthen our sacred connection to You and with life "as it is" if we allow it to and most often it's the very situations that bring us to our knees that bring us home to You.  Then clarity seems to lift the veil and we see that only love is real.

We are permanent holders of a spiritual career as ministers of light, love and forgiveness.

For it's "who we are being" rather than just what we do that represents our greatest work in the world. 

Guide us watchful Shepherd, for so long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance - an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love – then any external lack is sure to be temporary.

The greatest form of abundance is to remember "Who We Are" – that we are an integral part of the Universe.  No matter what happens the resurrected state already exists.  So have us claim Your good – for it is on its way!

Fear comes but fear passes.  Only the truth of who we are remains to shine on everything.  And that is our job now and always and thus we will illumine the world.

We thank you for the timeless beauty of the Psalm – its simplicity and its genius!  We return to it over and over and it never fails to inspire and renew us.

We are thankful for Don's brilliant presence with us today and his invitation to live into the adventure and risk of life in the spirit.  Thank you for Susan and her faithful ministry and constant care of us.

We ask your blessings upon those of us who have faced surgeries, been or are still in hospital, and those who are dealing with pain and loss of physical movement.  Lay your divine healing hand on these beloved people of our community.

We hold up our members who grieve the loss of a parent, a friend, a family member.  Linger near them and may they feel you near.

Our prayers are requested also for the family and friends of a member from way back.  Those of you who are longtime members will remember her.  Let them be wrapped in the arms of the Universe.

Be with Bruce and Ann while they are away and bring them home safely - restored and refreshed.

Go with us as we leave this place.  While in the midst of the bustle of our coming week we can reach for the truth and for the principles by which we reinterpret our experiences in a more positive light.  A tough mind is the greatest complement to a tender heart.  Embracing Your truth is a spiritual act:  it alchemizes our emotions providing the bridge from fear to love.

And so, as we set forth we know we will have with us – 'the psalm' – and 'the prayer our Saviour taught us'.  Please join me now in that prayer…

          "Loving God, in Whom is Heaven……"

            Hallowed be Thy Name.

            Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

            On Earth as it is in Heaven.

            Give us this day our daily bread

            And forgive us our trespasses

            As we forgive those who trespass against us.

            Lead us not into temptation,

            But deliver us from evil.

            For thine is the Kingdom

            The Power

            And the Glory

            Forever and ever,

            Amen.

Thoughts inspired by the 23rd Psalm, Marianne Williamson and Alan McLean