Prayer Cycle / Soul of a Pilgrim / Day 4
Day 4: The Practice of Making the Way by Walking
Video, Audio and Written Guides for Morning and Evening Prayer
Morning Prayer
Video podcast release May 2024
OPENING PRAYER
As the poet Antonio Machado wrote, “the way is made by walking.” This morning we continue to journey by putting ourselves on the ancient paths of rest, peace, love, life, and beauty. We ask ourselves searching questions so that we might continue to be true to our deepest desires and allow those to carry us forward.
OPENING SONG
Remember the Path
Put yourselves on the ways of long ago,
Remember the path of rest.
Put yourselves on the ways of long ago,
Remember the path of rest.
This ancient path of rest, my friends,
The ancient path of rest.
Put yourselves on the ways of long ago,
Remember the path of rest.
2. Peace
3. Love
4. Life
FIRST READING: Howard Thurman
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life? What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?
SUNG PSALM OPENING
O Grace open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. (Repeat)
PSALM 139:7-14
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where from your presence can I flee?
If I ascend to the heavens, there you are;
if I recline in Sheol, see, it is you!
If I take up dawn’s wings
if I settle at the farthest reaches of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely darkness shall cover me,
and night will become light behind me,”
even darkness is not dark to you’
night is as daylight,
for dark is the same as light.
For it was you who crafted my inward parts;
you wove me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am awesomely and marvelously made.
Wonderous are your works;
that my soul knows full well.
SUNG DOXOLOGY
Glory to the Maker, Lover, and Keeper; as ago, in this breath, and will be ever. Amen, Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING: Matthew 2:13-15
When they had departed, behold, the angel of God appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled,
“Out of Egypt I called my son.”
SILENT CONTEMPLATION
PRAYERS OF CONCERN
God of fertile darkness, forgive us for the harmful paths we have walked and fill us with the courage to step out into the unknown. As we seek new ways of being together in the face of climate collapse and social unrest, give us the humility to let the marginalized lead the way, and grow in us creative, communal responses.
Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, we make the way by walking.
Spirit of God, you are untamable, shepherding us on journeys through wild, beautiful, and unexpected terrain. Give us eyes to recognize your presence in hidden places. Teach us to embrace the messiness of a path guided by love. Grow our capacity to laugh and to wonder.
May all who long for direction receive the assurance that you are already walking among us.
Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, we make the way by walking.
Christ who is our Way, guide our steps in paths of peace, love, and life. Ground us in you, our source, and nourish us for the journey with glimpses of your commonwealth coming on earth as it is in heaven. When we are weary of walking, encourage us to rest in your presence. May we follow you in discerning the rhythms that provide for the flourishing of all Creation.
Sung Response – O Pilgrim God, we make the way by walking.
CLOSING SONG
Now I Walk in Beauty
Now I walk in beauty.
Beauty is before me,
beauty is behind me,
above and below me.
Above, below, within me.
CLOSING BLESSING
Journeying One,
you help us to navigate the path,
placing one foot in front of the other,
even when the way ahead is not visible.
We set aside our desire for maps, GPS, and guidebooks
and surrender to an inner knowing and direction
sparked by the deepest longings of our hearts.
We know the desire for new life we feel has been kindled by you.
May we surrender our need to steer the course
and let every step we take carry us into
greater intimacy with you.
Help us to see others as fellow pilgrims on the way
with their own fears and struggles.
Compel us to reach out a hand
in loving compassion and support
and may we recognize all those holy guides
who disrupt our intended paths
as sparking a new direction on our way.
SUNG AMEN
Credits
All songs and texts used with permission
Opening Prayer: Written by Christine Valters Paintner
Opening Song: Remember the Path by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan from the album Monk in the World: Songs for Contemplative Living
First Reading: Howard Thurman, Meditations from the Heart, Beacon Press, 1999. page 29.
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 193-194.
Second Reading: Matthew 2:13-15. 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 Painter and Simon de Voil, sung by Simon de Voil and Alexa Sunshine Rose
Closing Song: Now I Walk in Beauty by Lorraine Bayes from the album Earth, Our Original Monastery: Singing Our Way to the Sacred
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. 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
Video podcast release May 2024
OPENING PRAYER
As we journey into evening, we call upon St. Gobnait who was directed in a dream to leave her home and travel to the place of the nine white deer and establish a new community. We too hear calls that feel challenging and lean into Spirit’s compass to guide our footsteps until we reach the place of our own resurrection.
OPENING SONG
Saint Gobnait
Refrain:
Is there a place for us,
where we no longer yearn to be always elsewhere?
Always elsewhere?
Where our work is simply to soften and wait,
attend to what’s at hand.
SUNG PSALM OPENING
O Grace open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. (Repeat)
PSALM 80:1-7
Shepherd of Israel, pray, hearken,
you who lead the line of Rebekah like flock.
You, enthroned upon the cherubim, pray, shine forth.
Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh,
stir up your might and come to save us!
God restore us and let your face shine,
that we may be saved.
SOVEREIGN of heaven’s vanguard,
how long will you fume at the prayers of your people?
You have fed them tears for bread,
and you have given them tears to drink thrice over.
You make us the scorn of our neighbors;
our enemies laugh among themselves.
God of heaven’s vanguard, restore us and let your face shine,
that we may be saved.
SUNG DOXOLOGY
Glory to the Maker, Lover, and Keeper; as ago, in this breath, and will be ever. Amen, Amen.
READING OF THE NIGHT: Richard R. Niebuhr
Pilgrims are persons in motion – passing through territories not their own – seeking something we might call completion or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.
CLOSING POEM
This is what it is like to yield:
to finally feel that place of tightness – your left shoulder,
the crick that has been in your neck for as long as you can remember,
the hard point between your eyes – soften, and all that is left is the
overwhelming desire to dance,
to stop resisting the endless and aching grief over a thousand
small losses, and the one great loss of your own deepest dreams,
to fall into that ocean of tears and
find yourself carried gently to shore,
to feel the soft and trembling belly of your aliveness
turn upward toward the wide sky
as a prayer of supplication
and an act of revelation,
to tumble down on a mossy meadow
blanketed with dandelions and clovers
and the golden evening sunlight
and know yourself at home,
to surrender the striving,
the grasping at what seems so important
in favor of what is
essential and true.
What would it mean to walk away from
all the “to do” lists
and commit to only one thing:
to be.
What would it feel like to yield your
own stubborn willfulness
which has brought you so far in
this world of achievement
and allow the things you could never have
planned for, to unfold?
I must end this poem now,
not with wise words for you to carry away
and ponder, but only this:
a reminder of that fierce and endless longing
for what is soft and supple beating in your own
beautiful heart.
CLOSING SONG
In the Silence
In the silence we hear music.
In the stillness we dance your prayer.
And our prayer comes alive
As we lose ourselves in the dance.
Credits
All songs and texts used with permission
Opening Prayer: Written by Christine Valters Paintner
Opening Song: Saint Gobnait by Simon de Voil from the album Earth, Our Original Monastery: Singing Our Way to the Sacred
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 206.
Reading of the Night: Richard R. Niebuhr, “Pilgrims and Pioneers: Themes of Spiritual Pilgrimage,” Parabola Magazine, August 1984, page 7.
Closing Poem: “This is what it’s like to yield.” 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: In the Silence by John Coleman from the album Monk in the World: Songs for Contemplative Living
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.
