Tag Archives: Contemplative Living

A Simple Prayer for Easter Season

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Living God, who raises all to new life,
Slow us in these moments, turn us around, for we don’t recognize you. You aren’t found where we expect you. You don’t appear as we desire. Clear away our expectations, open us to ways we don’t understand. Send torrents of living water through the desert valleys of today. Strengthen us to live amongst selfish and deadened politics. Bring us to meet new formed community in gardens of grace where resurrection prevails and death is no more. Thanks be to Christ.

A Simple Prayer for Holy Week

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Releaser of Captives, whose grace goes out ahead of us.
In stillness and silence, your powerful Presence reveals all that holds us from living fully. Open our hearts to your leading through this Holy Week ahead. Give us an honest clarity at our private rationalizations and our comfortable self-deception. Help us surrender ourselves with you so that we can be purified of our idols and addictions. As we break free, we trust that others gain their freedom also. May we go forth as monks in the world, gently and firmly, placing each step with mercy and peace. Amen.

A Simple Prayer for Our Lenten Journey

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Ancient of Days, who accompanies us on our inward journey,
We draw near to you in this silence, waiting for your love to carve away our excess, so that we may find what is truly valuable. Your relentless grace guides us into our interior shadows, softening away our hardness with your compassionate Presence. Make this Ash Wednesday be the doorway to a season in which our inconsistencies are revealed. Unbind us from any fear, envy, pride, sloth or perfectionism. Release us into your creative light so we can become more fully yours. Remind us that this path is not a solitary one but for the whole community. Amen.

A Portrait of Your Ways

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Source of all Hope, available to us in every realm on earth and in heaven,
Your Presence makes real your encompassing love. Even when we are swept away into lives that are not of our own choosing, we do not despair. You give us clarity, comfort and conviction, placing a right spirit within us. Answer in us questions for others. Make our lives a portrait of your ways. Amen.

A Simple Prayer for Advent

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Divine Hope, who is found both beyond and within us, 
As we begin this season of preparation, we admit how often we fear silence, fight stillness and resist the unknown. Move us beyond the exterior material in our lives toward the inner rooms of our hearts. As we explore in these depths, adjust our seeing toward each new reality that arises out of shadow and darkness. Through our sense of relief, stir us to passion for others, leading us beyond mere survival to fullness of joy. Amen.

A Simple Prayer of Thanks

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Blessed Provider, 
who picks up the pieces of our lives gathering an abundance where we saw not enough, 
Soon we will be together at table; families, friends and foe. For some of us, the empty places at our tables reflect what has happened in our hearts. Change us to be those who trust rather than fear, turn our yearning into gratitude. Move us to respond to your grace by giving before we take. Fill us with your Loving Presence. And if ever any hostile encounter threatens to separate; extend our arms to reach out in love through your life-giving Word. Amen.

A New Season

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Simple Prayer:

Creator of Beauty, who colors outside the lines to a new season,
As this season changes the earth, new light comes in through open spaces and dark nights blanket us in. Teach us to accept, adapt and change in response to both. Reveal new patterns and designs in our relationship with you until the colors of your mercy extend hopeful layers to all people. And together, we breathe thanksgiving. Amen.

Delicate Touch

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Maker of the heavens and earth,
who arrives in flickers of translucence, 
Fill us with your breath in this moment and set our intention on finding your Presence in this day. Open us to all the ways you work to restore our bond with your creation. We so often fear spaciousness, we are afraid of letting go, we cling to the towers of our own making. Transform us with your delicate touches of grace where we might acknowledge the fullness of your Presence. Remind us to remain watchful for the reverent flow of life where Love emerges inviting us to enter in. Amen. 

Withering Beauty

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God of mercy, whose creation is ever before us
Even the falling leaves whisper their consent. Even the fading flowers express their beauty as they wither. Help us to recognize the visible strength found in delicateness. Slow our pace, remind us to pause as living things return to the earth. Increase our trust in the rhythm of the seasons that follow. You breathe your goodness and gladness in us, make us satisfied to breathe in you this day. Amen.

2 Cor 4:16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Even Today

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Let us all seek to find some piece of glory amidst tangled brambles, today.  Stop and listen for your breath in that place.  Make a way for some kind of peace to be revealed. Even the most delicate veins yield tremendous strength. Even today, your life has a purpose.  Amen.

 2 Cor 12:9
 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”