Prayer Cycle / Soul of a Pilgrim / Day 2
Day 2: The Practice of Packing Lightly
Video, Audio and Written Guides for Morning and Evening Prayer
Morning Prayer
OPENING PRAYER
God of simplicity, we awaken to a new day and ask that you help us to hold things lightly with palms open to receive the gifts that come. We know we must release that which no longer serves us to make room for the new that awaits us. We lay open our whole lives to you, trusting you, O Holy One.
OPENING SONG
I Lay Open (Psalm 25)
I lay open my whole life to you, trusting you, O Holy One.
FIRST READING: Howard Thurman
The central element in communion with God is the act of self-surrender. The symbol of my prayer this day is the open heart.
SUNG PSALM OPENING
O Peace open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. (Repeat)
PSALM 104:1-4
Bless the FOUNT OF LIFE, O my soul.
MOTHER OF ALL, my God, you are very great.
You don honor and majesty,
Wrapped in lights as a garment,
you stretch out the heavens like a tent-curtain.
She who lays on the waters the beams of her upper chambers,
she who makes the clouds her chariot,
she is the one who rides on the wings of the wind.
She is the one who makes the winds her celestial messengers,
fire and flame her ministers.
SUNG DOXOLOGY
Glory to the Maker, Lover, and Keeper; as ago, in this breath, and will be ever. Amen, Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING: GENESIS 12:1-2
God said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
SILENT CONTEMPLATION
PRAYERS OF CONCERN
God of the abundant enough, you are the fullness our souls long for. When we fill the space around us with the clutter of possessions or a busy calendar, when we seek isolating comfort or frenetic distraction, calm our hearts. Hold our wounded places tenderly. Release us from the fear of scarcity. Ground us in the certainty of the goodness and beauty that flow from you in abundance.
Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, you ask us to live simply.
Compassionate God, we remember those who pack lightly not by choice but by necessity: refugees, the desperate poor, orphans, the abandoned, and victims of natural disasters. Move us to compassion, draw us to wisdom, and compel us to act. We seek to embody your hands, providing for the needs of others, as well as your heart, opening to strangers in hospitality.
Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, you ask us to live simply.
Our Liberator, you call us into freedom. Where we are captive to patterns, ideas, or systems that constrict the flourishing you have created for us, free us. Where we are burdened by messages and images that diminish our love of neighbor and of self, free us. Turn our whole beings to you. Gently open our hands to let go of all that weighs us down so that we may receive your joyful simplicity.
Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, you ask us to live simply.
CLOSING SONG
Open Hand
Open hand, open hand ready for blessing beyond our choosing.
Open hand, open hand prepared for goodness out of the blue.
Should a free blackbird come to nest here laying her gifts in my life
Or a breeze borne seed come to rest here growing its gifts in my life. . .
CLOSING BLESSING
Winnowing God,
you ask us to release, let go, surrender, and yield all that we can
in service of making space for what is most essential.
The more we set aside that which burdens us and takes up too much space
the more room opens within us for wonder and gratitude to flourish,
the more we find the freedom to see the world as enchanted.
Sustain us on the path of simplifying our lives
and traveling on this Earth more lightly
so that we no longer live beyond what can be sustained.
As we continue on the pilgrim’s path, unencumbered by so many things,
may you open our hearts to delight in the simple beauty of the world.
SUNG AMEN
Credits
All songs and texts used with permission
Opening Prayer: Written by Christine Valters Paintner
Opening Song: I Lay Open (Psalm 25) by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan from the album Trust
First Reading: Howard Thurman, Meditations from the Heart, Beacon Press, 1999. page 174.
Sung Psalm Opening and Doxology: Richard Bruxvoort Colligan from the album Monk in the World: Songs for Contemplative Living
Psalm Translation: Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church © 2021 Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY 10016, used by permission. (Year W) page 75.
Second Reading: Genesis 12: 1-2. Scripture quotation is from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Prayers of Concern: Written by Cassidhe Hart
Sung Response: Tune by Betsey Beckman, lyrics by Christine Valters Paintner and Simon de Voil, sung by Simon de Voil and Alexa Sunshine Rose
Closing Song: Open Hand by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan from the album The Soul’s Slow Ripening: Songs for Celtic Seekers
Closing Blessing: Written by Christine Valters Paintner to companion her book The Soul of a Pilgrim (Ave Maria Press)
Please note: All of the songs and prayer responses are published on CDs in the Abbey of the Arts collection except for “I Lay Open” by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan (see credits for source). In addition, these songs & responses have accompanying gesture prayers and/or dances created by Betsey Beckman that can be found on the corresponding DVD (each album has a DVD companion). Audio and video recordings of the Prayer Cycles are available at AbbeyoftheArts.com.
Evening Prayer
OPENING PRAYER
As the day grows darker and evening draws around us, we consider the places today where we felt tangled up and knotted over things, plans, and achievements. We call upon Mary as the Untier of Knots to support us in gently loosening all that binds us so we might live with greater truth and ease. We can then surrender more fully to the loving embrace of the God who holds us.
OPENING SONG
Undo Me
Undo me, Untier of Knots, I am ready.
Undo me, Untier of Knots, I am ready.
I am ready.
Because I am tangled, longing to be free
Free from these patterns, undo me.
Because I am wounded, aching to be healed
Healed to be joyful, undo me.
SUNG PSALM OPENING
O Peace open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. (Repeat)
PSALM 69:10-13, 30
Now I humbled my soul with fasting,
and they reviled me.
And I wore sackcloth as my clothing,
and I became to them a byword.
They speak against me, they who sit in the city gates,
while the drunkards make songs [about me].
Yet I make my prayer to you, the WISDOM OF THE AGES.
At a favorable time,
God, in the wealth of your faithful love, answer me,
with your certain salvation.
I will praise the name of God with song;
I will magnify her with thanksgiving.
SUNG DOXOLOGY
Glory to the Maker, Lover, and Keeper; as ago, in this breath, and will be ever. Amen, Amen.
READING OF THE NIGHT: Kerry Walters
When we feel more secure, powerful, confident, and self-sufficient, we are nothing. We are most abjectly not. But when we’re stripped naked by desert despair, helplessly and hopelessly decreated by all of our facades and deceptions, we are most real, most substantial. We are. Our being is proportionate to the destitution forced on us by the wilderness.
CLOSING POEM
Invite Wonder
What if you bowed
before every dandelion you met
and wrote love letters to
squirrels and pigeons
who crossed your path?
What if scrubbing the dishes became
an act of single reverence for the gift
of being washed clean, and what if the
rhythmic percussion of chopping carrots
became the drumbeat of your dance?
What if you stepped into the shower
each morning only to be baptized anew
and sent forth to serve the grocery bagger,
the bank teller, and the bus driver
through simple kindness?
And what if the things that make
your heart dizzy with delight were
no longer stuffed into the basement
of your being and allowed out to play
in the lush and green fields?
There are two ways to live in this world:
As if everything were enchanted
or nothing at all.
There is no in between, although you
keep trying to live this divided life knowing
deep down something is awry.
You have lived long enough
with this tearing apart.
Come out into the wide world
and discover there, companions and guides
at every turn, and even those who summon
curses from your heart have
a divine spark within them bright enough
to invite wonder.
CLOSING SONG
Surrender
Fág faoi mu chúramé.
Gráim thú, a stór.
Surrender to the holding
and the loving you, a stór.
(“A stór” is an Irish term of endearment.)
Credits
All songs and texts used with permission
Opening Prayer: Written by Christine Valters Paintner
Opening Song: Undo Me by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan from the album Birthing the Holy: Singing with Mary and the Sacred Feminine
Sung Psalm Opening and Doxology: Richard Bruxvoort Colligan from the album Monk in the World: Songs for Contemplative Living
Psalm Translation: Wilda C. Gafney, A Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church © 2021 Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY 10016, (Year W) page 228-229.
Reading of the Night: Kerry Walters, Soul Wilderness: A Desert Spirituality, Paulist Press, 2001. page 80.
Closing Poem: “Invite Wonder.” Excerpted from The Soul of a Pilgrim, copyright ©2015 by Christine Valters Paintner. Used with permission of the publisher, Sorin Books®, an imprint of Ave Maria Press®, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556, www.avemariapress.com.
Closing Song: Surrender by Deirdre Ní Chinnéide from the album The Soul’s Slow Ripening: Songs for Celtic Seekers
Please note: All of the songs and prayer responses are published on CDs in the Abbey of the Arts collection. In addition, these songs & responses have accompanying gesture prayers and/or dances created by Betsey Beckman that can be found on the corresponding DVD (each album has a DVD companion). Audio and video recordings of the Prayer Cycles are available at AbbeyoftheArts.com.
