God in my life,     God in my lips,     God in my soul,     God in my heart.

[For the complete prayer, click Prayers from the Hebrides above.]

O Lord,  I need your presence not just in the words that slip so easily past my lips, but in my lips themselves. Unspoken things pass through my lips, for good or ill.

May my smile be genuine, and my compassion for your world always in my expressions.

Keep me from those subtle clicks and noises, the puffs of air that offer judgement and lack all courtesy. 

Keep me grateful for the gift of words and expression, and aware of the power they have to wound as well as heal. 

God in my lips. Please.

God in my life,           God in my lips,     God in my soul,     God in my heart.

Wednesday, October 14

My two sons are on the last leg of a five day, cross country drive. Last Saturday morning, my husband and I stood in the driveway and waved them good-bye. Once inside our home, I realized that this five day stretch would be the longest time we’d been by ourselves at home in almost twenty-three years. Sure, we’ve been away for some days here and there, but not at home together. Together with only each other has been the exception since having children – and what Dave calls a preview of things to come.  This will end in a couple of days when our younger son flies back to resume his virtual classes at UMass, Boston. But even when neither son lives with us full time, they will always be in our lives.

Nothing can alter their presence in my life because they have taken root within its geography and chronology.

My grandmother Grace used to say that having a child meant one thing: you’ll never draw another free breath. I don’t think she meant it in a burdensome way – just fully aware that there’s not undoing it when another life enters your own.

I doubt God has drawn a free breath since life itself came to be. God in my life, to be sure. Just as true, though: my life in God.

The same goes for you, too.

And every other member of God’s beloved creation.

God in my hoping

The small park across from my grandparents’ house had seven trees – tall, with limbs just low enough to reach, strong enough to bear my weight, offering a few comfortable places to sit and enjoy the view. I loved the climbing, and I loved taking in my own little piece of the world from a leafy perch. The rough feel of bark and the constant, gentle swaying were so different from my usual feet-on-the-unbending-ground reality. Mindfulness was a tree climbing requirement; carelessness was rewarded with a quick and sometimes painful return to the dust of the earth. I loved the trees all the more for spending time in their embrace, and I loved the ground all the more for spending time away from it.

Some people may consider hoping just day-dreaming, wishing against all good sense that gravity won’t shatter the ideas we throw into the air. I think it’s much more tangible. Hoping is tree climbing. It’s making an effort to leave behind the well-trodden ground and usual vantage point, to find a resting place that bends and sways and moves me even when I am at rest. True hoping requires mindfulness if it is to be more than wishing. But like climbing a tree, it offers something for the effort: love for the time spent in its lofty embrace, and greater love for the grounded daily life for being away from it. If it ends in greater love for the effort, God is in my hoping indeed.

[Photos by Jared Fredrickson]

God in my sleeping, God in my waking,

God in my watching, God in my hoping.

[For the whole prayer, click Prayers From the Hebrides above.]

God In My Sleeping

Sleep is where we work out what’s been lying heavy on our hearts, minds, and souls. In a dreamscape, our minds aren’t quite so narrow, and we can take a swim in the creative sea of images common to humanity – the collective unconscious. Sometimes, solutions come from this deep place, surfacing in our conscious when we are ready for them.

The usual rules don’t apply in our world of sleep. We don’t have the same boundaries, and our sense of self is, perhaps, just a bit more permeable and open to change. But that openness might be to darkness just as much as it is to light.

If I need God anywhere, it’s when I am open to things in this deep, deeply human land we call sleep. No matter how old, I’m young enough to pray this child’s prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

Angels guard me through the night (If I die before I wake),

And wake me in the morning light (I pray the Lord my soul to take.).

God In My Thinking

There’s a spiritual exercise that a professor of mine used to recommend: every time you encounter another person, visualize Christ in the space in between – the space that connects or divides that is normally thought of as empty. For her, it was a way to remember that there are no meetings that occur in a world absent of God.

Asking God to be in my thinking is asking a lot more than God’s presence in my behavior. I can think all kinds of awful things about someone and still act with kindness. It would be an act, of course – my inner reality would still be harsh, critical, and judgmental.

God in my thinking places my mind within God’s grace and love, and asks that something of that grace and love be the foundation of what goes on within it.  Without such a foundation, my keenest thoughts and most creative ideas can be used for ill as easily as for good.

 [Image by Margaret Hill]

God, preserve me from intellect without love. And preserve the world, too. Amen.

God to enfold me,          God to surround me,         

God in my speaking,          God in my thinking.

[The Eye of the Eagle, David Adam; London, United Kingdom: Triangle, 1990, p. 83]

God in my speaking: not just in the words that come from my mouth, but the ones that come from my pen/keyboard. It’s easy to forget that words may have unintended consequences as well as intended ones. Kind words, loving words – even taken out of context, they do no harm. The same cannot be said of harsh words, insulting words. Neither kind can be taken back. I would do well to remember this.

May my speaking be sincere. May my humor be without rancor or bitterness. May the words of my mouth and the words of my fingers be acceptable in thy sight. Please, God.