Tag: Prayer

Wrestling Angels

Through the night Jacob had to fight,

Eye to eye, arm to arm,

held, twisting, pulling, knees. elbows,

Muscles and joints tensed in the search for purchase,

Pressure building in desperation and frustration,

Why must we wrestle, how is that love?

But the fight will not end,

Where is mercy, where is peace?

No space, face to face,

Only hard eyes and harder fists,

Down on the solid earth,

Bruising,

Tearing,

Ripping,

Bleeding,

In the dust and the dirt, stinging raw flesh,

Grinding bones and bedrock,

Forcing breath, and sweat and pain.

Day breaking, body breaking,

By the crooked river,

Bones are bent out of shape,

Forever crooked.

Scars born in love and hope,

Wounds exchanged for a name,

a blessing ripped from deepest injury.

With the rising sun a gift of pain that remains.

A reminder of the most intimate battle.

Not won or lost, just fought.

Stand in the gap

Stand in the gap,

When they want to force you to take up an extreme, refuse.

When they want to you to be polarised, refuse.

When they want you to ignore the complexities and conundrums of life, refuse.

Instead stand in the gap where the real people stand.

Where the people who do not want to be pushed or defined by others insecurities and obsessions stand.

Stand where the subtle colours shift and shine, where the deep and generous patterns flow.

Stand with the thinkers and dreamers, the survivors and strugglers, the lovers and yearners, the busy and distracted, the confused and the searching, the poets and the prophets.

Plant your feet in the shifting sand and stand with the ordinary and extraordinary.

Stand while the edges shout their insults and slogans, their extremism and their intransigence.

Stand whilst they shout themselves to a deafened standstill in their fear and their anger.

Stand in the place of humility and love,

Stand in the place of unknown adventure,

Stand in the place of wonder and expectation,

Stand in the place of the God of desert and river, of exile and pilgrimage, of birth and rebirth, of love and sacrifice.

Stand as an invitation to others to stand there too.

God who is misunderstood

God who is misunderstood,

May we find our understanding in you.

May others judge us for being too kind, and condemn us for giving too much.

Let people look at us and laugh at what fools we are for exposing our brokenness,

And dismiss us as idiots for caring, for risking everything to see another smile.

May they ridicule us for our tears and rubbish us for our bleeding hearts.

Lord, as they stare and point because we refuse to worship the god of self, and won’t bow down to appease the god of greed, may we look up and smile contented.

May love be our downfall in the eyes of those who look at us, and peace be our weakness.

Let those who attack us do it because we stand undefended, and because we welcome them for who they are.

May our homes be not our own and our lives a gift to others even when they show no respect or gratitude.

When we hand over the things we value and give away what we have worked for may we welcome the grabbing hands.

Lord, when you take what you have given us to offer someone else, help us trust in your wisdom for their sake.

May we find our understanding in you,

God who is misunderstood.

Prayer for peace and strength

Peace and strength are one,

We are weakest when pain and hurt rule,

When our minds are pulled and pushed by the cruelty of others,

When anger is the energy that moves and drives us,

When shame and guilt are the lenses through which we view life,

When insecurity drains our ability to see how beautiful we are,

When we walk in fear of what will happen around each coming corner,

When we see only loss ahead and live for what we do not have,

When frustration for what hasn’t been flows fast in our veins,

Peace and strength are one,

We are most powerful when our spirits can be still.

When we find our true self in it’s imperfection,

When we gain a new understanding of deep beauty,

When we meet those who only add to us,

When we feel our feet solid upon the world we walk in,

When we banish the judgement of others and know divine grace,

When we can grieve and feel loss, but not allow it kill our hope,

When we learn how to stop and simply be who we were made to be.

Peace and strength are one.

Peace is my prayer.

Today in Westminster

Sadly, I can’t see today bringing any peace or answers for our torn nation!

I pray for humility and honesty, for the peacemakers and the meek, for those who seek to heal division not ferment it, for a willingness to think of the best for us all not just what is expedient for the few, and of the future together not the present polarities. I pray that our governors would be humble enough to recognise mistakes, brave enough to correct them and generous enough to put aside differences for the sake of us all.

Lost

Young faces on the television News,

Old photographs taken in first day uniform,

Smart, expectant.

Premature combatants in oversized Khaki,

Armed, innocent.

Gripped in panic on ramshackle craft,

Blank, petrified.

Lost.

We are lost.

to talk to you

most days I find a space to talk to you,
I never quite find the right language to use though.
my words often pause in the depth of my mind,
as I wrestle with their appropriateness.
they shuffle on feet that don’t know where they stand,
like a stranger who has found themselves in a conversation,
they are not sure they have truly been invited in to.
do I even need to speak?
is silence enough?
is it too much?
without seeing your face it’s hard to know.
sometimes I feel the need to shout,
to wait to hear if there is an echo,
a bounce-back when I cry into the emptiness.
so sometimes I just sit,
sometimes I am still,
often I fight the urge to shift and resign,
I struggle not to impose upon the secret conversation,
and play in sand of my choosing,
or stare too long into the water at my own image.
my senses are wild beasts that run and roar,
as I become still they strain and pull,
for a moment I let them lead me,
and then return to the silence.
sometimes the silence speaks,
images painted,
melodies playing,
words form that are not mine,
and I listen.
and I listen.
most days I find a space to talk to you,
because some days you talk back.

New year prayer

I don’t make new year resolutions, I don’t believe in saving up change for one day a year…

So my prayer is that whenever the need for change happens in your life you will find the courage and the confidence to make it! May you be surrounded by people who love you for who you are not what you give to them or what you might become. May you have friends who want to journey with you and who allow you to journey with them. May you know when to jump in and take risks and go on adventures. May you know when to be still and to be in the stillness. May you know what to give up because it drains you and what to pick up because it gives you energy. I pray that the next four seasons will flow with blessing, learning, grace and love for you and those you love.

Thank you!

Thank you if you’ve viewed. liked or followed any of my poems this Advent. This has been my first real attempt at poetry! I’ve very much appreciated you even looking at my first fruits. Because of you I will keep writing and blogging! Thank you!