June 4, 2025
Good evening/morning,
” Prayer is not doing but being. It is not words but the beyond-words experience of coming into the presence of something much greater than oneself. ” Katheleen Norris in Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. page 350
I have had Norris’ book for a long time but never read it. I guess I have time now. She grew up in the Presbyterian Church, but left it during her university years. She became a poet and a teacher. She and her husband moved to North Dakota later in life, and she returned to faith. She was shaped by the local church of her grandparents, and by the local Benedictine ( Catholic order ) monks and monastery.
When I had my heart attack, I could not pray nor read the Bible. I cannot remember how long this experience lasted, but I would say at least three months. I invited the Floradale church to do my praying and reading for me. I was trying to recover from the trauma of the heart event and surgery. I needed someone to do it for me. I was trying to exist or to be.
In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus says, ” Ask and it will be given to you “. Pray and you will receive whatever you ask for. I do not know what this means, because we all know we do not get what we ask for. We try to explain it away with this thought and that argument, and any new idea. Maybe it is better to just “be” in the presence of God. I have been trained for 66 years to ask, and so it is hard to just ” be”.
I have been blessed by the songs of Taize, and they are all about ‘ being ‘. ” Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom. ” is one of their songs. It is hard to learn new things especially about prayer. God says to the Psalmist in Psalm 46, ” Be still and know that I am God. ” I still need to pray for peace in the Middle East. I will try to be in the presence of God for my life. What is your prayer life like ?
Dear Lord, continue to be the voices of peace in our world. AMEN
Fred
black and white shadows
crush humanity’s freedom
am I complicit ?
MPL 2025
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Ponder Anew 