Earth Prayers

                                                                                              Picture by Treena Duncan
O Sacred season of Autumn, be my teacher,
      for I wish to learn the virtue of contentment.
As I glaze upon your full-colored beauty,
     I sense all about you
     an at-homeness with your amber riches.

You are the season of retirement,
     of full barns and harvested fields.
The cycle of growth has ceased,
     and the busy work of giving life
     is now completed.
I sense in you no regrets:
     you've lived a full life.

I live in a society that is ever-restless,
     always eager for more mountains to climb,
     seeking happiness through more and more possessions.
As a child of my culture,
     I am seldom truly at peace with what I have.
Teach me to take stock of what I have given and received,
     may I know that it's enough,
     that my striving can cease
     in the abundance of God's grace.
May I know the contentment
     that allows the totality of my energies
     to come to full flower.
May I know that like you I am rich beyond measure.

As you, O Autumn, take pleasure in your great bounty,
     let me also take delight
     in the abundance of the simple things in life
     which are the true source of joy.
With the golden glow of peaceful contentment
     may I truly apprecieate this autumn day.

~Written by, Edward Hays
From the book: Earth Prayers from around the World
Edited by Elizabeth Rothers and Elias Amidon

— John O’Donohue 

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate; to those who are starving. This love is the deepest power of prayer.

Posted by Sally McShane

Let your God love you

This poem resonates for me in my practice of Centering Prayer!

Bill 

Let Your God Love You

Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.

Let your God —
Love you.

~ Edwina Gateley

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy. Amen. 

St. Augustine prayer to the Holy Spirit

I have learnt to love you late...

 

I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new!  I have learnt to love you late!  You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself.  I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation.  You were with me but I was not with you.  The beautiful things of this world kept me from you and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have no being at all.  You called me;  You cried aloud to me;  You broke the barrier of my deafness.  I tasted you and now I hunger and thirst for you.  You touched me and I am inflamed, inflamed with love of your peace.             

~St. Augustine

 

 

Posted by Sally McShane

 

Jeremiah 5:21-22. Listen, O foolish, senseless people – you with the eyes that do not see and the ears that do not listen – have you no respect at all for me? The Lord God asks. How can it be that you don’t even tremble in my presence? I set the shorelines of the world by perpetual decrees, so that the oceans, though they toss and roar, can never pass those bounds. Isn’t such a God to be feared and worshipped?

I set the shorelines of the world by perpetual decrees, so

are not our own edges that

contain our energy and keep the

outside forces at bay like shores of the oceans

whose boundaries are always in motion? Even though

the waters remain, they

can be as gentle ripples or as towering waves that toss

giant logs like toothpicks; and

when our inner seas roar

and our own tides ebb, we can

remember the seashore: never

settled. In the most deadened times that come to pass

we can pray for the return of energy and the will to live, those

gifts that come through grace, which has no bounds.

 

Sandra Price

“The Edge” published in

 “Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile”

Edited by Deborah Keenan and Roseann Lloyd

Milkweed Editions 1990