Morning Prayer Tuesday, 1 December 2020

Already I
By Choi Seungja 

Translated from the Korean by Won-Chung Kim & Cathy Park Hong 

Already I was nothing:
mold formed on stale bread,
trail of piss stains on the wall,
a maggot-covered corpse
a thousand years old.
Nobody raised me.

I was nothing from the beginning,
sleeping in a rat’s hole,
nibbling on the flea’s liver,
dying absentmindedly, in any old place.
So don’t say you know me
when we cross paths
like falling stars.

I don’t know you, I don’t know you,
You, thou, there, Happiness
You, thou, there, Love.
That I am alive
is no more than an endless
rumor.

Good morning and welcome to Morning Prayer

The night has passed, and the day lies open before us;
let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence is kept. 

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day,
so may the light of your presence, O God,
set our hearts on fire with love for you;
now and for ever.
Amen. 

Breathe in

Breathe out

Be still…

I arise today,
embraced in the arms
of God the Father,
empowered by the strength
of God the Spirit,
immersed in the love
of God the Son.
I arise today
in the company
of the Trinity,
Father, Spirit and Son.
I arise today

Amen

Presence

“Come to me all you who are burdened
and I will give you rest”
Here I am, Lord.
I come to seek Your presence.
I long for your healing power.

Freedom

I try to let go of any prejudices and narrow mindedness
That may be clouding my vision at this present moment.
I hand them over to God’s merciful care,
So I can pray in freedom at this time.

Consciousness

There is a time and place for everything, as the saying goes.
Lord, grant that I may always desire
to spend time in your presence.
To hear your call.

The Word of God 

Luke 10:21-24 

At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said,
‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you
have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent
and have revealed them to infants;
yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father;
and no one knows who the Son is except the Father,
or who the Father is except the Son and anyone
to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately,
‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!
For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired
to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear
what you hear, but did not hear it.’

WORDS OF WISDOM 

Curiously, what remains hidden or obscure in [Merton’s] very public discourse on matters of the sacred is the significance that the natural world played as the ecstatic ground of his own experience of God. But a close reading of his voluminous writings reveals his intimate rapport with and progressive espousal of creation as the body of divinity—at once veiling and unveiling the God he so longed to behold and be held by.

[Merton] chose to live alone in the forest as refuge for his own existential pain, but also to make reparation for the violation of earth and earth peoples. Here he became a poet, a protester, a prophet . . .

Deignan’s selections from Merton’s journals demonstrate how his love for nature (he even calls the forest his “bride”) leads him to grieve and denounce nature’s abuse:

I love the woods, particularly around the hermitage. Know every tree, every animal, every bird.

When I am most sickened by the things that are done by the country that surrounds this place I will take out the [Hebrew biblical] prophets and sing them in loud Latin across the hills and send their fiery words sailing south over the mountains to the place where they split atoms for the bombs in Tennessee.

There is also the non-ecology, the destructive unbalance of nature, poisoned and unsettled by bombs, by fallout, by exploitation: the land ruined, the waters contaminated, the soil charged with chemicals, ravaged with machinery, the houses of farmers falling apart because everybody goes to the city and stays there . . .

It is necessary for me to live here alone without a woman, for the silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world. I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center of all other loves. I cultivate this plant silently in the middle of the night and water it with psalms and prophecies in silence. It becomes the most beautiful of all the trees in the garden, at once the primordial paradise tree, the axis mundi, the cosmic axle, and the Cross.

Sister Kathleen Deignan / Fr Richard Rohr 

https://cac.org/mertons-love-of-nature-2020-11-26/
Copyright © 2018 by CAC. Used by permission of CAC. All rights reserved worldwide.

PRAYERS & 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. 

May God the Father
prepare your journey,
Jesus the Son
guide your footsteps,
The Spirit of Life
strengthen your body,

The Three in One
watch over you,
on every road
that you may follow.

Amen  

THE BLESSING 

May your day be blessed
by moments of quietness,
light in your darkness,
strength in your weakness,
grace in your meekness,
joy in your gladness,
peace in your stillness.
May your day be blessed

AMEN  

Thank you for join us…have a wonderful day!

Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga