Tag: prayer

Fred, make sure your ears are open.

(Hannah got home to Amman on Sunday after having flown through Qatar.) Thank you for your prayers .

I did not listen in the right frame of my soul. I missed it. Your ears have to be open, and your hearing aids turned up high for you/me to hear the right words spoken. Magdalena Falk Redekop was presenting ” Translation of Self and Other.” I thought she was delivering a lecture. I was not impressed because there was little coherence or logic. But, she was speaking her memoir, life not in a straight line. I woke up in the night and had a revelation. I had disliked her lecture but when I understood it was a memoir it was great. I was not listening to the right story. I knew Redekop’s husband Clarence. He was my first year political science prof at Trent University in 1977. He died from a sudden heart attack at 56 in 2000. Why do we use the adjective sudden when talking about a heart attack ? It is always sudden. It is redundant. Maybe I was thinking about that from beginning to the end of her lecture.

So, I missed her speaking. Then, maybe, most likely, I  was thinking of my own heart attack, sudden or otherwise.

The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.
 They have ears, but cannot hear,
    nor is there breath in their mouths.
 Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.               Psalm 135:15-18

The above Psalm is directed at people who worship idols of silver, gold or wood, but sometimes I am my own idol, and think only of myself. This passage and the experience I had listening to Ms. Redekop might hold me accountable next time with my ears and eyes wide open.

Lord have mercy everywhere and anywhere. Please keep me open to all things.

AMEN.

Fred

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom

am I complicit ? MPL 2025

My Prayer to the Lord

Sunday June 8, 2025

Good morning

Prayers  

Oh God,

Lord of the Starfields, Ancient of Days, Universe Maker

Where do you reside ? 

in heaven, 

in my brain

      or my soul,     

  or my Spirit  or nowhere,    like quantams

My prayers seem to go somewhere     

   but where do they land         in the trees,       

       on the stars           

     in the smell of the lilacs in spring,

I am assuming     that you do not stand still,           like protons     

              in the smallest parts of your creation.

I will offer the words to you,    \

 in faith 

   in hope   

        and in uncertainty

Our Father,     

who lives or exists in heaven or elsewhere   

Holy is your name for ever and ever.   

Your kingdom will arrive    

       hopefully today   

           but at least  by tomorrow   for sure !

 Your will,

or your strategic plan is all we have.

Continue to give us our potatoes, meat and bread 

  and please give to everyone, 

   all 8 billion of us.

And  forgive all my sins, obstruction, errors, terrors , transgressions and other awful stuff   

  and make me, cajole me, and demand of me to forgive everything of everyone else today

and lead me not to the devil, but to you,   and lead me from the devil, the evil one,     

 even when it is myself

  ( a paraphrase of the Lord’s prayer ).

AMEN

Fred

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom

am I complicit ? MPL 2025

Being in the presence

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

Immanent and Transcendent

March 29, 2025

Good afternoon/evening

Prayers of a Pilgrim

Dear God, 

You are personal   

 like a spouse, child, friend, child, cat or a favourite flower,

Some theologians  ( I think it was Moltmann )   

refer to you , O God    as a ‘ God of the ditch.’

You are knowable  you listen to our prayers   

 and

    I can almost call you friend or neighbour,   

              you are so very close and intimate.

Then,    

        O God,           

  you are the opposite,             

    Transcendent                

     Unknowable                   

   Divine                     

   Distant Father                 

   Beyond the the bounds of the Universe       

     Omnipresent                           

    Omniscient. 

 Both, 

     far and near,     

   big and small   

      here, and not here     

in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God of all mystery, 

 we offer to you our lives and our worship,   

           even when we do not, nor ever will, fully understand.                                                                              or comprehend. AMEN

Praying for peace all of over the world. AMEN

Fred

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom

am I complicit ? MPL 2025