Tag Archives: HebridesPrayer

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

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.).

 

What Am I Thinking?

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 In My Speaking

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.

 

God To Surround Me

What surrounded me today?  Images on screens, traffic, Ikea shoppers, clothes on the drying racks.

What surrounded you?

I wish I had taken the time to ask for God’s presence in what I saw on various screens, on routes 495 and 24, in the aisles at Ikea, and in my bedroom. But I didn’t.

Lucky for me, God is willing to work with what’s here rather than waiting for the state of my soul to improve.

That’s true for everyone,  including you.

Thank God.

The Deer’s Cry, The Pilgrim, Rita Connolly, Shaun Davey, 1994

Prayer from the Hebrides: God To Enfold Me

God to enfold me

God to surround me,

God in my speaking,

God in my thinking.

[Prayer from the Hebrides, 1st stanza. David Adam, The Eye of the Eagle, London: Triangle, 1990, p. 83. For full prayer, click “Prayer of the Hebrides” above.]

David Adam offers this prayer with these instructions: Pray it regularly with the use of your imagination.

There are days when it is only with my imagination that I can speak these four words – God to enfold me. What I assume is God’s embrace isn’t always what God’s embrace is. God enfolds me in ways that I cannot grasp. Like the air that enfolds me and gives me life, God may be invisible even when I am enveloped in a divine embrace.

The imagination I need isn’t a flight of fancy; imagination is opening my eyes to see what my spiritual blindness has hidden from me. Imagination can remind me that the face of God that I cannot see and the embrace of God that I do not feel aren’t because God is absent. I cannot see and I do not feel because I have’t opened my eyes or allowed myself to be held.