OPALINE

DISTILLING THE STILLNESS

UNSUNG

I didn't rise for Matins

In anything but heart

Leaden limbs under the duvet

Tracing the restless

Leaf-lace on the nets

In bruise-bright ambulance blues

Hurtling through the oven of night

Pale ceiling fanned with someone

Else's tragedy

I held their panic up against

The small hours' looming

Wideness

Listening past the siren

Past the unsprung dawn

For unsung mystery and mercy

I cannot fall through you

This valley runs between wrists

That weighed a world and found it worth the cradling

Cushioning fingertips that meet in mercy

Touching wet cheeks that turn the other way

The trinity of joints that lift my sinking

Balancing grace like rain that falls to quench

Pleading

Coaxing

Holding

Bolstering

Cherishing hands

Underpinning my downward spirals

Undergirding the flimsy in me

Stabilising with a parent's tender

Soothing the bruises

Handling hurts like gathering gossamer

Filbert nails point forward, onward, upward

No fluster or waggle

No matter how fragile

Patient palms

Nurturing, nestling

I cannot fall through you

My Lord, my All.

Pancake Day - entering Lent with laughter!

Today is Shrove Tuesday.  Pancakes-a-go-go! No surprises there, then.

This is the day folks traditionally use up all their fat and flour, eggs and other goodies in the larder in the production of  pancakes before giving up such treats for the 40 days leading up to Easter Day.

Feast days and fast days. High days, low days, holidays. Carnival and Lent.

My mouth is watering as I prepare some traditional flat crepes for tea, ready to drench them with good things like lemon and orange juice in a burst of "St Clements" flavours! 

Lately, we in the UK have also discovered the delights of the thicker American style pancakes. The ones that are maybe smaller and rounder, more like proper fluffy cakes, fat as gateau slices, sticky with maple syrup or even studded with chocolate drops (or is that just in my dreams?)

However you like your pancakes, I hope you'll enjoy them today with all the "nom nom nom"-ing that always accompanies such a moreish feast.

For me, this year, I'm not planning to give up anything, as such, for Lent, starting tomorrow on Ash Wednesday. I won't be foregoing the usual chocolate (I'm diabetic anyway) or Facebook (for me it's a way of ministering laughter and hope to friends as well as a lifeline for those who are housebound or limited in their ability to reach out into the physical world so easily, myself included at the moment!)

But I've decided this year to use each day of Lent to follow twice daily the prayer patterns of Ignatius of Loyola. Simple! In his "Examen" Ignatius gifted the world with his suggestions for drawing closer to God in our everyday life.

I'm going to do this during Lent 2011 by simply taking a few moments or more twice a day to have a time of what Ignatian Spirituality calls the "Examen" or examination. Amid the whirl and rattle of life, to remind myself I'm walking with my Father and best friend.

To cut to the chase, this means quiet reflection on the day so far, so we can become aware of God's presence with us, where he always is, and to discern his direction for us, giving thanks.

In his book "Spiritual Exercises", Ignatius suggested this prayer time might usefully take place at noon and at the end of the day. So, that's what I'm going to do for Lent this year.

This means:

1. Becoming aware of God's presence wherever you are.

2. Looking back on what's been happening with gratitude.

3. Paying attention to what you are feeling.

4. Choosing something from the day so far to pray about.

5 Looking forward to what's next with God's help.

Seeing God in everything. Drawing close enough to know him as our intimate friend and recognise his whisper in our lives and be brushed by the grace of his touch in unexpected people and events around us.


This Lent, I'm already getting more than a tad excited about Easter!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOU4mjBgZVM&feature=fvwrel 

Cloudy and unknowing?

"And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labour, but love, full of rest." (quotation from “The Cloud of Unknowing” by an anonymous 14^th century Christian writer, sometimes just affectionately known as the Cloud-author,  possibly a priest somewhere in the UK East Midlands)

Stirrings, whispers, knowings,

Deep beneath chatter and chafing

Skittering the surface

Discerning delights

The  hushing centre

Naked blind feeling of being

Held

Held in yolk-warm golden safety
Stillness beyond science

Repenting and emptying

Pure love’s hasteless in-flowing

Plunging all else down, away

Shed through the space that separates

To forgetting’s nebulous nowhere

Synapses sparking in a rage of strive and grasp

Heart-darts of longing love

Pierce up like a child’s finger tracing the rain on the roof,

Unleashing giggling showers

Startle and shiver

All-wise fountain father

Flow your Spirit of chaste vigorous rapture

Love that laps

 through crosslife obedience

To the sour prickle of a world’s thirsts

Flame, cradled and fanned in fragile palms

Candle shooing the shadow

Mirror of grace

Glass of revealing

Cross spreading to gather,

Raising us up,

To healing simplicity

Helpless to reach

Already reached

Mission Shaper

Fill up your heavenly home, Lord,
Incarnate love for those driven by world-weight purposes
Further towards the cliff's bone-grey edge;
Flesh out our mission to become your body;
Melt us into grace for broken citizens
No longer dithering between departure gates
But sitting in the lounge where you're tuned off the tannoy.

Right where he stands, defiant,
Where she despairs of meaning,
Aching without alignment,
Raging at betrayals
And hypocrisies,
Send us robed in the humility of all we share
With every neighbour dechurched,
To reveal the vulnerable whisper at the heart of hopeless,
Jesus, among his own.


We need to be your oil-stained, water-puckered fingers
Baptising into radiance the flaked exhaustion of consumer chaos.
Long we looked away, pious and uncomforted
Tongues locked against repent
Ritualled in our culture
Charity disembodied, compassionless,
Guarding our arches and blue carpets
Against His own,
Afraid we might leak out
And be found threadbare as scarecrows in the living field.
Harvesting with blunted blades,
Hearts on our personal rockets to rapture,
Pushing outsiders (for surely, wasn't that their name?)
To the front pew (or chair, if we'd lost that age-old fight)
If ever they braved a way in
To bewilder and keep them alien and safely peregrine.

Father, forgive; Merciful Lord, have mercy
On us, confessors and professors of your radical journey,
That we have mapped it static
With our dowager's hump of stubborn rooted pride.

Now teach us who count you creator, Saviour,
The obedient walk on your light-drenched, narrow path,
Not past our neighbours to holy huddledom,
But to kneel where we always knew they were,
When our eyes were averted from wandering loved ones
For whom their Lover Lord weeps and waits and longs.

Prayer

Lord, already listening and loving,
leaning in close to hear us, You astonish us,
That You don’t just listen,
waiting for something more important to come along;
You don't just listen, in the hope we’ll get it all perfect this time;
You don't just listen, suffering our stammerings;
You lean closer, closer, tenderly, joyful to hear all prayers from the hearts of Your children!

You watch us with eyes of pure love,
Delighting to see us toddling or stumbling forward into Your arms!
No hesitation, now Lord,
We come with everything we have and all we are
into Your awesome presence.

So many things distract us,
So many worries we won't leave with You
Because although deep down we know we can't,
We imagine we can carry all our heavy burdens in secret from You!

Lord, we confess:

Prayer changes things
And change is so scary!

Life creator,
Life changer!
Father, we creep closer, under Your wings,
In the stillness, we feel Your heartbeat,
Transforming our own, pacing us, protecting us
May our hearts beat right now with the rhythm of Your Holy Spirit

Gathered into Your graciousness,
What a privilege to pray together!
Gathered and blessed, together
We adore You!
We need more of You!
Precious Lord Jesus,
We want to want more of the things You want!
We'd so love to love more of the things You love!
We desire to desire what You desire!
Help us through prayer to build Your future with You!
Fill us, freshen us,
Help us see Your breathtaking world from Your point of view,
To see everything as Your gift, Your grace, Your challenge, Your opportunity!

God of lonely places and loud ones!
God of safe places and sticky ones!
God of the bouncy and the battered!
God of the difficulty and the dream!
God of each and every one of us,
We praise you, and open our lives for your transforming touch
More than special to share!

Gently seek whatever stands between us,
And unblock our lives with the sweep of Your Spirit!

As we feel and celebrate here Your power of prayer pulsing through our world, Your kingdom,

Awesome Saviour,
As Jesus taught us, so we pray together: [Lord's Prayer]