All Ye Who Are Weary, Come Home!

Sarah Brooke (daughter at A&M... reminder: Katie is the oldest and don't forget Michael!!) is coming home this Friday... Spring Break... WOOHOO!!!!

A post, then, in honor of homecomings and reunions -- with an excerpt from the grad video I made for her (almost a year ago??!!!)...

Ready to have you home, Brookie... and have all the family together!!!

Love you,

"Fadder"

the "brookie dookie" show, conclusion @ Yahoo! Video

I Heard It Through the Grapevine

So much converges to make Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s poem, “Above All, Trust in the Slow Work of God,” relevant and meaningful to where I am (and where we are) in this season of transformation. (Not only is there our focus on becoming Emotionally Healthy and spiritually mature, but there's Spring and Lenten Scriptures/images [including Jesus' Passover focus in John’s Gospel on vines and branches and our Vinedresser God]…

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet, it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
-- that is to say, grace --
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.

Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer as a "Cross Walk"

Engaging my “Protestant Rosary” (see previous post)… and praying the Lord’s Prayer as I get to the central cross in my lanyard of beads and knots has invited me to see the Prayer itself as a walk through the crucifix…






“Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Hallowed (honored and blessed and regarded as Holy) be your Name (and character)…

[here, my finger traces the head of Christ – recalling Heaven and Christ’s coming from the Father]




“Thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done on Earth (or “in Earth”… something we all are)

[here, my finger makes its way to Christ’s feet – as His feet touched ground and brought the Father’s will to earth, even so, I am asking that God’s will touch ground in and through me]



as in Heaven”…

[my finger makes its way back up to the head and Heaven]












“Give us this day, our daily bread/manna” (or “the bread we need for today”)…

[here, my finger makes its way up to the one hand of Christ… as I ask for Him to “give,” I imagine his hand open to me and gifting]






“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us” (or “Forgive us
our [past] sins as we walk as those living
and forgiving under
the Reign of
Your Grace”)…

[here, my finger traces the heart of Christ – the source of His love and mercy and Grace and forgiveness]

“And lead us not into [future] temptation, but deliver us from Evil and the Evil One…”

[here, my finger traces his other hand… as I ask him to “lead” me/us, I imagine taking His hand outstretched hand so that he can guide me/us into my/our future]





“For thine is the Kingdom, Power and Glory forever. Amen.”

[over time, I have found my finger retracing its “walk” through the cross: for thine is the Kingdom (head), the Power (on “earth”), and the Glory (from hand to hand)]

In these ways, the Lord’s prayer is a cross of sorts… or a “cross walk” in which we are about a certain “sign of the cross” as we pray it…

Don’t know if you saw it or not (above), as well: that the Prayer is also a walk through space and time: bridging Heaven (God/Father) to Earth (us humans)… and spanning present, past and future.

Whether any of this “works” for you or not is not nearly my concern as my hope that you are about some regular engagement of this perfect prayer from our Lord… and finding the ways it lives in you… and you live in it..

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Protestant Rosary

I wear a cross around my neck. Its fosters God-consciousness and Christ-sensitivity through my day. Over time, I’ve embedded a few knots and few beads in the lanyard—the cord upon which the cross hangs. In formal and not so formal times, the knots and beads guide me in prayer—a makeshift rosary.

Knots on the cord call me to pray my version of the “Hail Mary”—composed a few years ago when I really did take the rosary and its mysteries on in my prayer life. (Protestant as I am, though, I was not quite comfortable with the "Hail Mary" and some of the theology upon which it hangs. “Why pray to Mary when you can go straight to the Son and the Father and the Spirit?” ran my thinking.) And so, I came up with my own prayer for “counting the beads”—a “Prayer to the Blessed Trinity”:

Blessed and Mysterious Trinity—
Father, Son and Holy Spirit—
Source of all Goodness, Life and Truth,

Worthy art Thou and Thou alone
to receive all honor, glory and power.

Create in me a clean heart
and renew a right Spirit within me,
now and at the hour of my death. Amen.

Beads in the lanyard call me to pray a prayer of healing which I formulated a few years ago at a Heal­ing and Wholeness Conference:

Lord Jesus Christ,
enter into _______,

a precious child [or creation] of yours
and heal that which is broken

in me [or him or her or it]. Amen.

Sometimes I pray the prayer with me in mind. Some­times I pray it with any number of specific individuals in mind... Sometimes I am mindful of Kathy and each of my children... or my brothers and sister... Sometimes I pray it with Strawbridge in mind or the Church in general. Sometimes I pray it with all creation in mind and heart. Broken and fallen are we all—physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually. All of us are in need of His restoring and redeeming touch.

When I get to the cross (i.e., knots and beads are equally and symmetrically arranged around the cen­tral cross), I stop to savor the Lord’s Prayer. I pause with each line and envision that petition. (Another post in the days ahead will convey my experience of that prayer as a walk "around the cross"... More to come!) Sometimes I say “Our Father” and sometimes I personalize it, saying “My Father in Heaven...”

But ours is more than brokenness -- something which invites me to engage the beads on the "other side" of the cross... with another prayer for those I prayed for on the "front side" of the cross:

Lord Jesus Christ,

enter into __________,

a precious child [or creation] of yours

and strengthen all that is good, right, and true

in him/her/it. Amen.

Working my way through the knots and beads is not the fullness of my prayer life. Sometimes I do allow it to make its way into morning or evening prayer time. Mostly, though, I find it becoming a part of the hours in between: stuck at a traffic light or in traffic, knots and beads take me home; waiting for a meeting, knots and beads remind me of who I am and whose I am;...

Sometimes I make it through the rounds once, sometimes a couple of times, sometimes half way. Ever there is the need to make the process meaning­ful—forbidding that it simply become a mechanical and mindless/heartless rifling through the circuit.

No, I don’t have to take it off from around my neck as I pray: the knots and beads can be felt through my shirt as my fingers trace their way through my “Protestant Rosary.”

Am I suggesting that you need to take up this dis­cipline? Of course not! But I do want to nag you with the question: “what are you doing to make prayer and Christ a meaningful and regular part of the rhythm of your day?” For me, tracing the knots and the beads is one way of keeping Christ before me... and keeping me before Christ.

Forgive the repetition, Friends, but I am con­vinced it is true: as breathing to the physical body, so prayer to our spiritual vitality. For the Christian, prayer is not one part of life among many. Prayer is life!

With You, in the Quest for a Daily Rhythm in Prayer and Spiritual Breathing!