Evening Prayer Tuesday, 23 February 2021
Derailleur of the Heart
By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Because our conversation
feels like riding a bike uphill,
I think of gears. I think
of how easy it is to shift
lower, how a simple flick
of the thumb makes the impossible
possible. Where are the gears
for love? There must be better
ways to use our teeth
than biting words. There must
be a series of notched wheels
in the heart that allow us
to move forward with less force,
some mechanism to make
the chain hop from one sprocket
to another, changing the way
we engage. I want to find that gadget,
those gears, the ones that help us
hear each other, the ones
that help us say what must be said,
the simple tools that allow us
to move forward at all.
Good evening and welcome to Evening Prayer
That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful,
let us pray with one heart and mind.
Silence is kept.
As our evening prayer rises before you, O God,
so may your mercy come down upon us
to cleanse our hearts
and set us free to sing your praise
now and for ever. Amen
Breathe in
Breathe out
Be still…
Come, O Spirit of God,
and make within us your dwelling place and home.
May our darkness be dispelled by your light,
and our troubles calmed by your peace;
may all evil be redeemed by your love,
all pain transformed through the suffering of Christ,
and all dying glorified in his risen life.
Amen.
Presence
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
I dwell for a moment on the Presence of God around me,
in every part of my body,
and deep within my being
Freedom
By God’s grace I was born to live in freedom,
free to enjoy the pleasures He created for me.
Dear Lord, grant that I may live as you intended,
with complete confidence in your loving care.
Consciousness
Where do I sense hope, encouragement,
and growth areas in my life?
By looking back over the last few months,
I may be able to see which activities and
occasions have produced rich fruit.
If I do notice such areas, I will determine to give
those areas both time and space in the future.
THE WORD OF GOD
Luke 5:27-32
After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them.
The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
WORDS OF WISDOM
Although most Sunday church services don’t foster it, the essential religious experience is that we are being “known through” more than knowing anything by ourselves. An authentic encounter with God will feel like true knowing, not just in our heads but in our hearts and bodies as well. I call this way of knowing contemplation, nondualistic thinking, or even “third-eye” seeing. It is quite unlike the intellectual “knowing” most of us have been taught to rely on. This kind of prayer and “seeing” takes away our anxiety about figuring it all out fully for ourselves or needing to be right about our formulations. At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with us, and we are not afraid of making mistakes.
No wonder all of the great liturgical prayers of the churches end with the same phrase: “through Christ our Lord, Amen.” We do not pray to Christ; we pray through Christ. Or even more precisely, Christ prays through us. This is a very different experience! We are always and forever the conduits, the instruments, the tuning forks, the receiver stations (Romans 8:26–27). To live in such a way is to live inside of an unexplainable hope, because our lives will now feel much larger than our own. In fact, they are no longer merely our own lives and, yet, paradoxically, we are more ourselves than ever before. That is the constant and consistent experience of the mystics.
It is within this context that I offer this week’s Daily Meditations on the healing, liberating, and contemplative power embodied in the African American spirituals of the last three centuries.
One of our Living School alums, Arthur C. Jones, is a scholar and performer of African American spirituals. In his book Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, he observes that “There are many people today who have virtually no understanding of what the spirituals are and why they are important.” He makes the case that:
the legacy of the spirituals is worth our continued attention now, not only as “museum music” (a phrase often used by the great jazz artist Miles Davis), but also as a broad-ranging cultural tradition that remains relevant to pressing present-day social realities, not just for African Americans, but for people everywhere who are concerned with issues of social justice, community bonding, deep spirituality and—most importantly—the healing of deep wounds surrounding the shameful history of American slavery.
If you are concerned, as I am, with the issues that Arthur Jones mentions—social and racial justice, community bonding, and deep spirituality—I hope we can engage with this material with the “ears” of our hearts attuned to what the Spirit has to teach us.
Fr. Richard Rohr
https://cac.org/christ-prays-in-us-and-through-us-2021-02-07/
Copyright © 2021 by CAC. Used by permission of CAC. All rights reserved worldwide.
PRAYERS AND INTERCESSIONS
We pray for the world…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
We pray for the universal church of Christ…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
We pray for one another and all those known to us…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer
As our Saviour taught us, so we pray
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.
Final Prayer
Abide with us, Lord, for it is evening,
and day is drawing to a close.
Abide with us and with
your whole Church,
in the evening of the day,
in the evening of life,
in the evening of the world;
abide with us and with all
your faithful ones, O Lord,
in time and in eternity.
Amen.
THE BLESSING
Keep us, good Lord,
under the shadow of your mercy.
Sustain and support the anxious,
be with those who care for the sick,
and lift up all who are brought low;
that we may find comfort
knowing that nothing can separate us from your love
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Thank you for join us. Goodnight and God bless.
Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga
