Evening Prayer Tuesday, 20 October 2020
GLIMPSE
by Chase Twichell ©
It was as if a window suddenly blew open
and the sky outside the mind came flooding in.
My childhood shriveled to a close,
thread of smoke that rose
and touched a cloud — or the cloud’s
replica adrift on the slow river of thinking —
and disappeared inside it. In that dark water,
a new lily was opening, sky-white out of the muck.
It was only a glimpse, quick,
like a bird ruffling,
but I saw the flower’s
beautiful stark shape, an artichoke
brightened from within by the moon.
A path lay shadowy at my feet,
and I followed it.
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
Dear Jesus, today I call on you in a special way.
Mostly I come asking for favours.
Today I’d like just to be in Your presence.
Let my heart respond to Your Love.
Freedom
Lord God I thank you for the gift of freedom.
Help me to use this gift with integrity.
I am free to make choices.
Help me to choose to follow you,
to live in a Christian way by caring for others.
Remind me to consider always those less
fortunate than myself,
the oppressed, the prisoner, those who
are not free to worship in public.
Guide me always to seek your holy will
in all the events of my life.
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
Psalm 32:1-2
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Job 1:21–22
He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave,
and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.’
In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.
Matthew 7:12
In everything do to others as you would have them do to you;
for this is the law and the prophets.
WORDS OF WISDOM
The silence of the Creator is thunderous,
Drowning out everything else,
And hiding in endless creativity.
—Thomas Keating, “Out of a Stone”
One of Thomas Keating’s greatest legacies will surely be his development and teaching of Centering Prayer, a Christian form of silent meditation. It has been my (Richard’s) preferred method of prayer for decades and I recommend it to anyone seeking to enter more deeply into the mystery of God. In today’s meditation, Cynthia Bourgeault explores a profound teaching on silence found within Keating’s poem “Out of a Stone,” excerpted above.
A theme that continues in all the poems contained in The Secret Embrace is that silence is not absence, but presence. It is a “something,” not a nothing. It has substantiality, heft, force. You can lean into it, and it leans back. It meets you; it holds you up.
That’s hardly how it’s understood in our culture at large, of course, where silence is typically seen as “vacant space,” waiting to be filled up with content. We try to cram every “empty” moment full. Even when we begin a meditation practice, this preference for content remains, and we will often approach silence as a kind of inner desert, a place of inner uncovering, which we enter to hear “messages from God.” It’s the messages that most grab us at the start; we’re all ears for whatever new insight emerges out of the silence.
Gradually, as we progress in Centering Prayer—or in any meditation practice, for that matter—we begin to reorient. Centering Prayer’s instructions to let go of all thoughts, regardless of content, directs us back to the silence itself, and we gradually learn the shape of the new terrain. As we stop grabbing for content, we gradually discover that silence does indeed have depth, presence, shape, even sound. As we mature in Centering Prayer, the perception that the emptiness is in fact the presence becomes more and more palpable. Thomas Keating encourages us that this “sound of silence” keeps right on growing. By his own later stage in the journey, it has become “thunderous.”
In fact—says Thomas—this “thunderous” silence is actually the most intense, concentrated “dosage” of divine presence we can bear face-to-face. In a paradoxical way, the dance of creation, beautiful and enchanting as it is, is like a veil over the face of the naked presence of God—like the veil that hides the Holy of Holies in the temple. These two faces of God—veiled and unveiled—live in symbiotic unity, and out of that unity everything pours into existence in a cascade of sheer delight.
For Thomas, creativity is “the diffuse shining of God” (to borrow a striking image from that other celebrated contemporary Thomas, Thomas Merton). It’s what allows us to know our Creator not only in the “thunderous” silence of [God’s] direct presence, but in the dance of life itself. Either or both ways are fine, for they spill unceasingly into one another. From this “veiled embrace” between pure silence and joyful creativity at the very heart of all creation, flows life in all its beauty, goodness, fluidity, and magical wonder.
Cynthia Bourgeault
https://cac.org/the-sound-of-silence-2020-10-20/
Copyright © 2018 by CAC. Used by permission of CAC. All rights reserved worldwide
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PRAYERS AND INTERCESSIONS
We pray for the world…
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Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
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We pray for the universal church of Christ…
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Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
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We pray for one another and all those known to us…
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Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
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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.
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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.
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THE BLESSING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz_IpHIkwcA
