Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim

We had a celebration last night, Shrove Tuesday, where we burned palms from last year's Palm Sunday service which will become ashes used during today's Ash Wednesday service. Our Senior Associate, who is brilliant at finding lovely words, offered the following prayers for us to recite as we piled our cares and burdens, hopes and dreams, petitions and thanksgivings, on the pile of burning palms. They are adapted from Edward Hays, Prayer for a Planetary Pilgrim (A Personal Manual for Prayer and Ritual), 1989 (I do not have the rights to this text and mean no copyright infringement):

Listen, all dry branches, as these flames transform your earthly form to be a sign to us of our own mortality, teach us the lessons of change. Even though our own bodies will die, help us to know that we will not enter an endless winter, but simply a stage in the unfolding mystery whose name is Life. On this night of feasting, may we taste with delight the promise of pleasure that grows in the womb of winter, fully alive, fully hopeful, anticipating the birth of a new joy in the empty tomb.

Come, O Life-giving Creator, and rattle the door-latch of our slumbering hearts. Awaken us as you breathe upon a winter-wrapped city, gently calling to life virgin Spring.

Awaken in the fortified days of Lenten prayer and discipline our dreams of holiness. Call us forth from the prisons of numerous past defeats and narrow patterns of being, and make our ordinary lives extra-ordinarily alive, through the passion of love.

Show to me during these Lenten days how to take the daily things of life and by submerging them in the sacred, infuse them with a great love for you, O God, and for others. Guide us to perform simple acts of love and prayer, the real works of reform and renewal of this overture to the spring of the Spirit.

Of Father of Jesus, Mother of Christ, help us not to waste our precious Lenten days of our souls' spiritual springtime.

Amen.

 Preface of Lent:

Who dost bid thy faithful people cleanse their hearts, and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast; that, fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, and renewed by thy Word and Sacraments, they may come to the fullness of grace which thou hast prepared for those who love thee.

Here are some great resources for your studies:

40 Days: The Daily Office for Lent, Ed. Frank L. Tedeschi:  <Many people want to "take on" a discipline for Lent rather than "give up" something. One of the disciplines that many Episcopalians--and other Christians--wistfully think about taking on is the regimen of structured daily prayer that includes the course-reading of Scripture. Forty Days: The Daily Office for Lent offers an accessible, doable, toe-in-the-water introduction to the private recitation of Morning and/or Evening Prayer . CONTENTS Rite two morning and evening prayer the Book of Common Prayer The collects, and all Bible readings for both lectionary years (we're in "B", I believe), from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday.>

There is an easily navigable on-line resource of the same material here:

Self-Directed Morning Prayer

If you like a Podcast, there is a BEAUTIFULLY narrated version with soothing music of Daily Prayer here:

Morning Prayer Podcast

Finally, if you'd like a longer and more comprehensive (read: Roman Rite), more traditional offering for the Liturgy of the Hours, this link has:

• Office of Readings, which has many psalms, old and new testament reading, a short spiritual selection and petitions for us and the world which combines with
• Morning Prayer (which is the only thing you'll see on the mission clare link above)
• and there are also options for prayers at noon (Terce), 3pm (Sext), 6pm (None), Evening Prayer (after dinner) and Night prayer (compline, just before bed) 

 

 Liturgy of the Hours

I told my girlfriend Elizabeth+

<I don't know if you're a Sondheim queen like me, but I think you know enough about his creations to know that his music is NOT easy to sing. I've performed a couple of his shows and the most hilarious thing is you have in your mind what it's all going to sound like at the first rehearsal and then the pianist starts playing and the conductor looks at you and says, "You know you were supposed to come in four measures ago". Wuhl, scuse me! I'm waiting for the percussion and the OBOE to give me my note and then you realise it's a very different world between rehearsal and a full orchestra. Whenever my friends and I reach opening night, we shake hands at places and say, "Downbeat's in a minute. Good luck. See ya at curtain call." I don't know why, but I'm sorta feeling that way about this Lent.>

xoxoxo, your auntie dasch