Guests of the “Prayer and Creativity: Practices for a Holy Lent” retreat, guided by Dr. Kathleen Staudt, are departing today. We hope that the Spirit spoke to them in a special way, inspiring this sacred season of waiting. Creativity within the written word is often the most touching and the poets below are some of the many gifted writers who can express what we’re already feeling in a profound way. Let’s sit in the stillness and let this creative form of expression be our prayer today.
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
-John O’Donohue
I said to my mind, be still, and wait without hope.
The cosmos dreams in me
while I wait in stillness,
ready to lean a little further
into the heart of the Holy.
I, a little blip of life,
a wisp of unassuming love,
a quickly passing breeze,
come once more into Lent.
No need to sign me
with the black bleeding ash
of palms, fried and baked.
I know my humus place.
This Lent I will sail
on the graced wings of desire,
yearning to go deeper
to the place where
I am one in the One.
Oh, may I go there soon,
in the same breath
that takes me to the stars
when the cosmos dreams in me.
~ Joyce Rupp