Prayer for the Beginning of Lent

When you ask me today,

Friend, what are you doing?

I will tell you,

I am building the inner room.
I am letting the inner room build me.
I am constructing a place for the spirit of God to dwell.

You will say to me, Friend, show me the place!
For I wish to labor there also. Show me the hillside, that I may find it pleasing to my Lord,

and I will tell you,

I am building a room without walls – I am building a house without beams to hold it.
I have taken my ribs for walls, and my spine will be the ridgeline of the roof.
My eyes will be its windows, and the roof of my mouth the lintel posts.

Oh, my beloved friend, if I could admit you!
If I could show you truly the dwelling place of God within me. For it is my wellspring and my delight,
It is a place truly pleasing to me,
And I would share it with you always.

Let my words go in and out from my doorways into yours,
Like friends moving between our two houses
and in that way your place will be known to mine
and mine to yours.

----

One of my goals for Lent this year is to do a little bit of spiritual reading once or twice a week, and I decided to start that I'd go to Mass today. It ended up being a little bit more emotional than I bargained for (think me and crying and looking ridiculous over nothing except being in church reading) and, of course, when I get emotional, I write. I wrote part of this on the way home.

I figured out I really, really like being able to visit other people's inner rooms, as they're described in the poem. If you want to talk about God, I'm listening. My inner room is open to you.

Prayer from Someone Failing At Her Job Search

Prayer from Someone Failing at her Job Search.

Aloud I cry to you, Lord God of the Universe,

Loud I cry, and listen for your voice.

For you will not abandon me, you will not desert me,

You and you alone will beside me in every hour of my need.

Oh, that I were Elisha in the temple, that I might hear you!

That I were a prophet of old, that I might know your way for me!

I have sat in your temple and listened, and heard nothing –

I have sought you in the woods, and in the mountains, and you have kept hidden from me.

I have lost the path, I have stumbled. There are rocks in my way and I cannot move them.

You have sent wise council to speak to me – in their voices I hear the beating wings of angels,

And in the echoes the temptations of the false prophets, and of pride.

To them I cannot speak of my distress! You alone know it – you alone will do right by me.

Would that the way were straightened, God, and the road smooth, and easy to make out.

Would that I did not travel by night, and the Sun of your goodness could guide me.

I am beset with evils – desperation sits at one shoulder, and on the other is despair.

How am I to use the gifts you gave me, God? Who will hear your handiwork in my words and in my deeds?

Aloud I cry to you, Lord God of the Universe,

Loud I cry, and listen for your voice.

--

So I was passed over --twice -- for another job today. I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't know whether to even continue trying to apply for jobs as an educator, despite everything everyone tells me about how well I teach or interact with visitors or anything else. Everything in  my life right now seems to be saying that if I ever want to get anywhere in life  (as in, out of my parents' house) I should just pack it in and get a real person job in Visitor Services or something.

I decided to take the experience and try and make something good from it, so I sat in my car for a good five minutes when I got home and prayed, and this is what came of it. The act of writing a prayer, as I think I've remarked before, is simply the act of praying the prayer, over and over, until it resonates the right way. 

I was trying to figure out if I should tell my mother I didn't get the job a second time. 

I'm still not sure.

Quiet Time

I talk a lot on this blog about secular writing -- writing stories, writing songs, writing about my life. I'm going to take a break from that for a little while and talk about something I don't discuss a lot about: writing prayers, which I have been known to do from time to time. Oftentimes when I write a prayer I don't actually commit it to paper -- I just say whatever comes to mind about what I'm thankful for around a dinner table or with some friends. Yet this, too, is writing. Some of those have been pretty good, so I've starting writing prayers, on paper, for other things.

It's my first day back at campus, and lately I've been thinking a lot about the fantastic examples on how to live life that I see in the people around me. So I thought I'd write a prayer about it. A freind of mine, Cody, who is a great deal more religious than I am, told me that when writing a prayer one is actually praying it a number of times while one composes it, going over the words and the ideas one wants to put on paper.

As I sit here in my t-shirt from the Arboretum near my house, it's not hard to imagine me as a tree-hugger. I love trees, and I love being outdoors, and I love the image of the Tree of Life, as well as that line in John's gospel "I am the vine, and you are the branches; Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." People are a lot like trees; we grow up, we reach out to people, we put down roots. When I first had the idea for this prayer, I only had the first line -- "You have set me, a tiny seedling, in the midst of a great forest."

As I finished writing this piece this morning, I was thinking a lot about the freshmen and women who are just starting their orientation process today at Saint Ben's and Saint John's. Really, this prayer is for them, the tiny seedlings who are being transplanted in this forest here in central Minnesota and the many other seedlings in other colleges all over the United States who are beginning classes this week, including my brother. I pray that they can grow tall where they are planted, just as I feel I have.


Great Creator God, Cultivator of the Universe,
you have set me, a tiny seedling, in the midst of a great forest.
Let me grow here, let me prosper;
Let me reach up my branches and feel the warmth of your sun, and the cooling comfort of your rain.
Let the great trees around me be my shelter and my guide;
Let me learn from their example, that I may grow tall here in your Garden of gardens.
When the wind blows, let me bend, but not break;
Where there is rottenness in other trees, let none break my branches or uproot me.
Let my roots grow deep, that none may move me from your holy ground.
May the others in my life use the gifts you have given me,
the shelter of my arms and the fruits of my soul and the shade of my spirit.
When I die, let me seep back into the soil
and enrich another.