Fencing Bear at Prayer

And that's it, I've told you everything.  All of my deepest, pettiest, most envious thoughts.  All of my weaknesses, all of my sins.  And you, Lord, have washed me clean.  Even in my darkest moments, you have been there, whether I believed it or not.  Guiding me, loving me, making manifest "the uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom." Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy, and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity. Wash me yet more from my iniquity,  and cleanse me from my sin,  for I know my iniquity  and my sin is always before me. Truly, you have been here with me, in ways I could never have dreamed five years ago when I began this blog.  Then, I was but a little bear, still so full of fear and anxiety.  Now I am an older bear, older but thanks to you wiser.  You have guided my footsteps into the desert and been with me as I wrestled with my demons, making me...

" Let all your works confess to you, O Lord, and let your saints bless you [Psalm 144 (145): 10].  The psalmist prays, Let all your works confess to you .  What does he have in mind?  What about the earth?  Is it not God's work?  And are not the trees his work?  And all the animals, tame and wild, the fishes, the birds?  Are not all of them works of the Lord?  Most certainly they are.  But then how can they all confess to him?  It is not difficult to see that his works confess to him if I consider the angels, who are obviously God's works.  So are human beings, and, when humans offer their confession, this too is the confession voiced by his works.  But what about trees and stones?  They surely lack the voice to confess to the Lord?  By no means: all his works are summoned to confess to him; all, without exception.  What are you saying?  Earth and trees, too?  Yes, all his works.  If all of them c...

"When you look at all these things [clouds, winds, storms, rain, lightning, thunder, hail, snow] in our lower world you are struck by how changeable they are, how turbulent and terrifying and prone to decay.  Yet they too have their place, for they keep their appointed order and contribute in their own way to the beauty of the whole, and therefore they praise the Lord.  This is why the psalmist, turning to them and addressing his invitation to these lowly things too, began by saying, Praise the Lord from the earth, you dragons and all the depths [Psalm 148:7].  He wanted us to praise the Lord through our study of them, for, when they move us to praise God, they themselves are praising him. "Now dragons favor watery habitats.  They emerge from caves and take to the air.  They create major atmospheric disturbance, for dragons are very large creatures, the largest of all on earth.  This is probably why the psalm began its consideration of earthly creatures ...

An exercise given to our women's group this afternoon by fellow parishioner Vinita Wright 1.  Say how you feel.   Lord, I am lost, my nerves all a-jangle. I practiced all week, but I still couldn't play. Our teacher changed the rules, challenged us to play his way. I was so nervous, my body went cold and my hands started to shake. Even the things I could play by myself, I lost. Why am I so afraid? 2.  Say what you know is true of God . I know that you are with me, that you delight in my wanting to play. I wish I knew more, but you seem so far away. All that I know of you, I learned in a book. Yet I hear you in the music when others play. Why can't I hear you in mine? 3.  Ask for what you need. I need to know that you love me and want me to succeed. Lord, help my impatience, it is only you that I need to impress. All these obstacles are simply steps that you are giving me to climb. You are there at the top of the stairs, but my legs are so we...

" I sought the Lord, and he hearkened to me [Psalm 33 (34): 5].  Where did the Lord hearken?  Within.  And where does he give you what you ask?  Within.  There you pray, there you are heard, there you are made happy.  You prayed, your prayer was heard, you are happy; yet a person standing beside you knows nothing about it, because the whole transaction took place in a hidden way, as the Lord commanded in the gospel: Go into your private room, shut your door, and pray in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will give you your reward [Matthew 6:6].  Entering your private room means entering your heart.  Blessed are those who enjoy entering their hearts, and find nothing unpleasant there.... "Do all you can to make your home-coming to your own heart pleasant.  Clean it, because the clean of heart are blessed, and they will see God.  Take the filth of disordered desires outside; get rid of the dirt of avarice and poisonous super...

Ooo, ooo, ooo! My first question to answer , and it's a good one, too. William asks: "Praying aloud or in silence. I feel like I'm talking to myself when I attempt to pray aloud. I suppose that would differentiate myself from those of FAITH and casual believers." Okay, okay, I can answer this one. At least I think I can. Let's see. Puts on professor hat. Takes professor hat off. Trying to find the right voice with which to respond. Maybe I should try a prayer, perhaps the one used at the opening of the Morning Office : "Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise." Says it aloud several times . Thinks a bit more . What is the difference between reading this prayer aloud and simply saying it to oneself in one's mind? Okay, so I'm sitting here on the back porch, nobody can hear me if I say it, well, nobody but God. And maybe those workmen whose voices I can hear from across the way. I'll say it really softly. Hmm...

It was that second glass of wine that did it, I'm pretty sure. Or maybe the excitement of seeing so many of my colleagues and friends after being in hiding for these past eight or nine months. Or possibly the exercise of tidying up before and after. Or maybe again the after-effects of finishing the draft of chapter one this past Wednesday and the encroaching horror of the thought of starting on chapter two (What if I can't think of anything to say? What if I haven't read enough? What if I don't have the sources? What if...?), albeit not for a week. Be that as it may (and would I ever say "Be that as it may" without being seriously sleep-deprived?), here I am, still awake, watching for the morning. I've done everything I could to help myself feel sleepy again: washed the dishes, surfed the Internet, read a bit more in Post Captain , fed the cat, drunk several glasses of water and tea, rearranged the furniture, fed the cat (oh, I said that). But noth...

It's addictive, using these posts as a way to warm up for my writing each morning. I feel like I should be doing my morning pages--more private, less structured--but there is something about putting words on the page that you know others will read that makes it more vital, if nevertheless rather more constrained. If these were morning pages, I might start by writing about people with whom I am frustrated or things that I wish I could change about myself, but here, on the blog page, I am doing something different. Trying to communicate with you, my blog readers. Who are you?, I sometimes wonder. It is comforting to know (thanks to my sitemeter) that you're out there, but, no, it's not necessary that I meet all of you (although I am very grateful for all of your comments!). Reading someone else's words is at the same time a very public and a very private experience, something to be shared but also something to be cherished (or grimaced over) in solitude. One of my f...

This is very likely the most provocative post I have written to date, but it's getting in the way as I try to start working on the draft of my book and I need to think about it out loud. This morning I was reading the psalms for Lauds in M. Basil Pennington's The Abbey Prayer Book (Ligouri, MO: Ligouri/Triumph, 2002), and I came across this passage from Psalm 147, vv. 19-20: "He reveals his word to Jacob, his statutes and rulings to Israel: he never does this for other nations, he never reveals his rulings to them." Pennington is working from The Jerusalem Bible (1966). According to the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV, 1994), the passage is just as categorical: "He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and ordinances to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation: they do not know his ordinances." I don't know how you feel about it, but I have a hard time with claims such as these. It's important for my purposes because Psalm 147 (in...