Tag Archives: prayer
On seeing the risen Christ
You may be familiar with the drawing depicting both a young woman and an old woman at once. Several versions are circulating. If you look at it and see a young woman, it can be very difficult to see the old woman, and if you see an old woman, it can be next to impossible […]
Simply to fall on our knees
National Poetry Month, Day 21 // Nothing sensory for me surpasses in glory the chorus of birdsong that rises in the predawn hours of early spring. As much as anything that bursts from the ground or buds from the greening branches of trees, and more than most, birdsong heralds the return of the season of […]
Silence will an answer be
On November 15, if I live that long, I will complete my allotted seventy years. It’s not a limit I take literally; there are plenty of exceptions on either side of the number. But it’s a good reminder of the brevity of life and of the certainty that it will end, and of the need […]
Listening in the silence
To pray is to sit in silence until it silences you.
Faith on the brink
Especially since November I’ve returned regularly to one of my favorite hymns, one that was unfortunately dropped in the 1989 hymnal. Unfortunately, because it’s perfect for times like these when the faith of so many of us is strained and tested. Here are two of its stanzas: O for a faith that will not shrink, […]
Lord, teach us to pray
Just after the shootings in Orlando, Bishop Mark Webb called us to prayer. He didn’t need to do that; surely we’ve been praying hard. Like the proverbial widow at the door of the unjust judge, we’ve knocked on God’s door till our knuckles bleed, and the shootings continue. The challenge, I think, is not to […]
Holy unpredictability
Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, and a normal week in the rest of America. Conversation at the coffee shop turns on when we’ll get our first snowfall. Retailers are speculating about the shift of shoppers from stores to the Internet. And on a sunny workday morning two young parents walked into […]
Attentiveness
Being completely silent and fully present in the moment, being perfectly immersed in prayer or in any relationship, is hard work! “How rare the moment and how brief the duration,” Nelson Thayer, my meditation teacher in seminary, often said. He was referring to that moment in prayer or meditation when distractions let go and we […]
