To Live Once More

We’ll continue to make particular Jesus’ instruction to pray for our Father’s kingdom to come and will to be done in our time and place as it is in heaven.

Adapting Ernest Campbell’s “A City-Dweller’s Prayer,” we’ll focus our attention this week on the third stanza (embolden below).

When you get to this part of the prayer, slow down. Let the words sink into your heart, and let the Spirit lead you to express the specifics on which they light: the masks we and neighbors wear as protection, the longings, and pursuits to be who we are truly created to be (and all the false selves sold and bought in our society), the timidity that keeps us from “issues” and the courage to know our place in salvation's story here and now. Confess and express these for yourself and as a part of our social collective in the presence of the One for whom nothing is hidden. Then finish the prayer.

Come back to these words and insights throughout the week ahead, seeing through what divides to what and who unites, and trusting that He is working in and through you for those around you even now.

Pray with your faith family…

Father, our God of every time and place,

prevail among us too;

within the city that we live

among the people whose streets we share

and whose souls we learn to love,

your promise to renew.

Our people move with downcast eyes,

tight, sullen, and afraid;

Surprise us with your joy divine,

for we would be remade.

O Father whose will we can resist,

but cannot overcome,

Forgive our harsh and strident ways,

the harm that we have done.

Like Babel’s builders long ago

we raise our lofty towers,

And like them, too, our words divide,

and pride lays waste our powers.

Behind the masks that we maintain

to shut our sadness in,

There lurks the hope, however dim,

to live once more as your design.

Let wrong embolden us to fight,

and need excite our care;

If not us, who? If not now, when?

If not here, Father, then where?

Our forebears stayed their minds on you

in village, farm, and plain;

Help us, their crowded, harried kin,

no less your peace to claim.

Give us to know that you do love

each soul that you have made;

That size does not diminish grace,

nor concrete hide your gaze.

Grant us, Father, those who labor here

within this throbbing maze,

A forward-looking, saving hope

to galvanize our days.

Let Jesus, who loved Jerusalem,

and wept its sin to mourn,

Make just our laws and pure our hearts;

so shall we be reborn!

We Can Resist...But Cannot Overcome

Last week we began praying a prayer as a particularized expression of the way Jesus taught us to pray:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

We’ll continue the adaptation of Ernest Campbell’s “A City-Dweller’s Prayer” this week, focusing our attention on the second stanza (embolden below).

When you get to this part of the prayer, slow down. Let the words sink into your heart, and let the Spirit lead you to express the specifics on which they light: your and our ways of resisting, which are harsh, divisive, and prideful. Confess them, for yourself and as a part of our social collective, and then finish the prayer.

Come back to these words and insights throughout the week ahead, confessing, repenting, and receiving the grace of the One through whom you are reborn, whose will cannot be overcome.

Pray with your faith family…

Father, our God of every time and place,

prevail among us too;

within the city that we live

among the people whose streets we share

and whose souls we learn to love,

your promise to renew.

Our people move with downcast eyes,

tight, sullen, and afraid;

Surprise us with your joy divine,

for we would be remade.

O Father whose will we can resist,

but cannot overcome,

Forgive our harsh and strident ways,

the harm that we have done.

Like Babel’s builders long ago

we raise our lofty towers,

And like them, too, our words divide,

and pride lays waste our powers.

Behind the masks that we maintain

to shut our sadness in,

There lurks the hope, however dim,

to live once more as your design.

Let wrong embolden us to fight,

and need excite our care;

If not us, who? If not now, when?

If not here, Father, then where?

Our forebears stayed their minds on you

in village, farm, and plain;

Help us, their crowded, harried kin,

no less your peace to claim.

Give us to know that you do love

each soul that you have made;

That size does not diminish grace,

nor concrete hide your gaze.

Grant us, Father, those who labor here

within this throbbing maze,

A forward-looking, saving hope

to galvanize our days.

Let Jesus, who loved Jerusalem,

and wept its sin to mourn,

Make just our laws and pure our hearts;

so shall we be reborn!

God of Every Time and Place

When asked by his apprentices how to pray, Jesus gave them a rather straightforward model to get them started. “The Lord’s Prayer,” as we call it, begins with the declarative invocation, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” All at once, Jesus proclaims the majestic truth of intimacy and breadth of God‘s rule and humbly summons that authority over the details of daily life.

This month, as a part of our new year’s traditions, we are going to pray a prayer together that is learned from Jesus’ prayer. A prayer for our Father’s kingdom to come and his will to be done in our time and place in His-story.

In each of the following weeks, we’ll draw out a particular part of this prayer to give us focus. This week, though, let’s refamiliarize ourselves with the prayer, letting the Spirit lead us to invite the “God of every time and place” to be the Father whose care and wisdom take active shape in us, through us, and for our neighbors.

Let us pray together an adaption of Ernest Campbell’s “A City-Dweller’s Prayer.”

Father, our God of every time and place,

prevail among us too;

within the city that we live

among the people whose streets we share

and whose souls we learn to love,

your promise to renew.

Our people move with downcast eyes,

tight, sullen, and afraid;

Surprise us with your joy divine,

for we would be remade.

O Father whose will we can resist,

but cannot overcome,

Forgive our harsh and strident ways,

the harm that we have done.

Like Babel’s builders long ago

we raise our lofty towers,

And like them, too, our words divide,

and pride lays waste our powers.

Behind the masks that we maintain

to shut our sadness in,

There lurks the hope, however dim,

to live once more as your design.

Let wrong embolden us to fight,

and need excite our care;

If not us, who? If not now, when?

If not here, Father, then where?

Our forebears stayed their minds on you

in village, farm, and plain;

Help us, their crowded, harried kin,

no less your peace to claim.

Give us to know that you do love

each soul that you have made;

That size does not diminish grace,

nor concrete hide your gaze.

Grant us, Father, those who labor here

within this throbbing maze,

A forward-looking, saving hope

to galvanize our days.

Let Jesus, who loved Jerusalem,

and wept its sin to mourn,

Make just our laws and pure our hearts;

so shall we be reborn!

On The Twelfth Day of Christmas...

Today, on this last day of the Christmas Season, as we once more consider the multiplying abundance of what we’ve received, may we be the continued multiplying of the season’s Spirit and live perfectly into our created image:

The Divine Image | William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, Turk, or Jew;

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

On The Eleventh Day of Christmas...

Refugee | Malcolm Guite

We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,

Or cosy in a crib beside the font,

But he is with a million displaced people

On the long road of weariness and want.

For even as we sing our final carol

His family is up and on the road,

Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,

Glancing behind and shouldering the load.

Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower,

Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,

The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,

And death squads spread their curse across the world.

But every Herod dies, and comes alone

To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.

On The Tenth Day of Christmas...

On The Edge | Malcolm Guite

Christmas sets the centre on the edge;

The edge of town, out-buildings of an inn,

The fringe of empire, far from privilege

And power, on the edge and outer spin

Of turning worlds, a margin of small stars

That edge a galaxy itself light years

From some unguessed-at cosmic origin.

Christmas sets the centre at the edge.

And from this day our world is re-aligned;

A tiny seed unfolding in the womb

Becomes the source from which we all unfold

And flower into being. We are healed,

The End begins, the tomb becomes a womb,

For now in him all things are re-aligned.

On The Ninth Day of Christmas...

Mary | Malcolm Guite

You bore for me the One who came to bless

And bear for all, to make the broken whole.

You heard his call, and in your open ‘yes’

You spoke aloud for every living soul.

Oh gracious Lady, child of your child,

Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,

Call me again, for I am lost and wild

Waves surround me now. On this dark sea

Shine as a star and call me to the shore.

Open a door that all my sins would close

And hold me in your garden. Let me share

The prayer that fold the petals of the Rose.

Enfold me too in love’s last mystery,

And bring me to the One you bore for me.

On The Eighth Day of Christmas...

O Emmanuel | Malcolm Guite

You’ve come, You’ve come, to be our God-with-us,

O long-sought with-ness for a world without,

O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.

You’ve Come to us Wisdom, you’ve come unspoken Name,

O quickened little wick so tightly curled,

You’re folded with us into time and place,

You’ve unfolded for us the mystery of grace

And made a womb of all this wounded world.

O heart of heaven beating in the earth,

O tiny hope within our hopelessness,

You’ve come, born to bear us to our birth,

To touch a dying world with new-made hands

And made these rags of tie our swaddling bands.

On The Seventh Day of Christmas...

O Rex Gentium | Malcolm Guite

O King of our desire whom we despise,

King of the nations never on the throne,

Unfounded foundation, cast-off cornerstone,

Rejected joiner, making many one:

You have no form or beauty for our eyes,

A King who comes to give away his crown,

A King within our rags of flesh and bone.

We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise,

For we ourselves are found in you alone.

You’ve Come to us now and found in us your throne,

O King within the child within the clay,

O hidden King who shapes us in the play

Of all creation. Shape us for the day

Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

On The Sixth Day of Christmas...

O Oriens | Malcolm Guite

First light and then first lines along the east

To touch and brush a sheen on light on water,

As though behind the sky itself they traced

The shift and shimmer of another river

Flowing unbidden from its hidden source;

The Day-Spring, the eternal Prima Vera.

Are bathing in it now, away upstream…

So every trace of light begins a grace

In me, a beckoning. The smallest gleam

Is somehow a beginning and a calling:

‘Sleeper awake, the darkness was a dream

For you will see the Dayspring at your waking,

Beyond your long last line the dawn is breaking.’

On The Fifth Day of Christmas...

O Clavis | Malcolm Guite

Even in the darkness where I sit

And huddle in the midst of misery

I can remember freedom, but forget

That every lock must answer to a key,

That each dark clasp, sharp and intimate,

Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard.

Particular, exact and intricate,

The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward.

I cried out for the key I threw away

That turned and over turned with certain touch

And with the lovely lifting of a latch

Opened my darkness to the light of day.

You’ve come again, come quickly, have set me free,

Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.

On The Fourth Day of Christmas...

O Radix | Malcolm Guite

All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,

Rose from a root invisible to all.

We knew the virtues once of every weed,

But, severed form the roots of ritual,

We surf the surface of a wide-screen world

And find no virtue in the virtual.

We shrivel on the edges of the wood

Whose heart we once inhabited in love,

Now we have need of you, forgotten Root,

The stock and stem of every living thing

Whom once we worshipped in the sacred grove,

For now is winter, now is withering

Unless we let you root us deep within,

Under the ground of being, you’ve grafted us in.

On The Third Day of Christmas...

“If Advent is the season of waiting, Christmas is the season of wonder,” so may this poem and the ones to follow aid us in our wondering at heaven’s answer to our heart's deepest pleas.

O Adonai | Malcolm Guite

Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue;

Unseeable, you gave yourself away;

The Adonai, the Tetragrammaton*

Grew by a wayside in the light of day.

O you who dared to be a tribal God,

To own a language, people, and place,

Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,

If so you might be met with face to face:

You’ve Come to us here, who would not find you there,

Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,

Who heard no more than thunder in the air,

Who marked the mere events and not the myth;

You’ve Touched the bare branches of our unbelief

And blazed again like fire in every leaf.

*the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH and articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah.

Orthodox Advent Prayers | Three

One final time this Advent season, let us join with our sisters and brothers in the Orthodox Church and beyond, and pray together for the Spirit to stir amongst us the Name that is our deepest longing...

O Lord, stir up the hearts of our neighbors, friends, and family
you have established your house and your kingdom forever
through your Son Jesus Christ.
Reveal your saving purpose and your holy love to us,
and move our hearts to faith and obedience;
through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.

December 18th | O Adoni

Today we join in the second of our seven O Antiphons. Prayers that have been sung by our faith family for centuries. Sung so that the quickening pace of Christmas is not just all the things on our calendars but the longing in our hearts.

In case you are interested, the tune which I sing them is from (appropriately!) O Come O Come Emmanuel. Let us rejoice in praying together: we prayerfully sing together the second of our seven O Antiphons.

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fir of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.