Day 5: The Practice of Being Uncomfortable and Embracing the Unknown

OPENING PRAYER
We gather this morning to remember how the pilgrimage we are on is not on behalf of upholding the status quo, but of disrupting our old patterns and habits in service of something new breaking through. We will inevitably encounter discomfort and unknowing along the way and ask the God of radical hospitality to support us in welcoming in the stranger, as St. Benedict wisely counselled.

OPENING SONG
Welcome in the Stranger
Welcome in the stranger through the door of your heart.

FIRST READING: Barbara Holmes
The human task is threefold. First, the human spirit must connect to the Eternal by turning toward God’s immanence and ineffability with yearning. Second, each person must explore the inner reality of his or her humanity, facing unmet potential and catastrophic failure with unmitigated honesty and grace. Finally, each one of us must face the unlovable neighbor, the enemy outside of our embrace, and the shadow skulking in the recesses of our own hearts.

SUNG PSALM OPENING
O Justice open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. (Repeat)

PSALM 71:4-11
My God, rescue me, from the hand of the wicked,
from the clutch of the cruel and the ruthless.
For you are my hope, Sovereign, WORTHY ONE,
my trust, from my youth.
Upon you I have leaned from birth;
from my mother’s belly, you cut me.
You will I praise for all time.
As a portent have I served to many,
yet you are my strong refuge.
My mouth is filled with your praise,
all the day, with your glory.
Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
when my strength is spent, do not forsake me.
For my enemies speak about me,
and those who watch my life take counsel together.
They say, “Pursue and seize them,
God has forsaken them,
for there is none to deliver.”

SUNG DOXOLOGY
Glory to the Maker, Lover, and Keeper; as ago, in this breath, and will be ever. Amen, Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING: John 4:7-9a, 10
A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

SILENT CONTEMPLATION

PRAYERS OF CONCERN
God of Mystery, sometimes we can’t see where we are or where we’re going. It’s as if we’re driving at night in the pouring rain. Strengthen our faith at times when the road before us is barely visible, and we don’t know the curves on the winding roads, the unexpected hills, or the dangerous side ditches ahead of us. Make the way clear, or simply give the courage and will to keep going, knowing that in all of this we are following you, who has never left us alone.

Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, you rest with us in mystery.

We are not meant to travel by ourselves, lone and lonely souls. Thank you for other pilgrims along the way, warm, strong hands to hold on our way to destinations unknown. It is you that we trust in, though you are cloaked in mystery. You walk beside us to catch us when we stumble, and when we fall down, you are there with gentle hands to pick us up and place us back on our paths.

Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, you rest with us in mystery.

Holy God, you are the way. We live and move and have our being in you. Help us remember this moving forward. Give us peace for our journey. When we meet the stranger, fallen and battered on the road, be the Source of Love in us, so like good Samaritans, we tend to the wounded, taking them to safety.

Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, you rest with us in mystery.

CLOSING SONG
Promise to the Saints
Follow the wind. Follow the wind.
Let go your oars.
Sail to the land promised to the saints. (4x)
It is the voyage that makes us strong
so from this port follow the wind.
Follow the wind.

CLOSING BLESSING
God of wild edges and new horizons,
we seek your presence in those moments
when we feel out of place and miss the comforts of home.
Sustain our journey in the ache of strangeness,
the quiver of anxiety, the fear of doubt,
and help us discover a deeper knowing in the midst of it all
that doesn’t rely on us desperately clinging to our plans
but calls us to open to the discoveries
arriving on the doorstep within.
Help us hear the beating of our hearts
as a clarion call to hold the paradoxes of life:
communion and loss, beauty and suffering,
love and violence, as invitations into
a song of both lament and praise.
Let us be undone by the mystery
of it all, and then refashion us
into a wiser, humbler, and more compassionate wholeness.

SUNG AMEN