Sunday, September 9, 2012

morning prayer


Reverence draws out bliss.
Let the heat of the water on my neck in the morning be an engine for a righteous fire on behalf of my best efforts, my kindest impulses, and my truest hopes.
Let the taste of Greek yogurt and Grape Nuts I share with the dawn chorus remind me of every sweetness possible in the yearnings of sunrise over Sharptop.
Let the conversation I have with the barista who’s overwhelmed with latte orders be one of grounding humor and understanding.
Let the laughter I share with my students before the day begins be a chord of play and a cord of openness between us.
Let the hour I have to myself in the middle of the morning be a space for reclaiming my breath and honoring right livelihood with a little bit of stillness.
Let the ears I hear my students with be fresh and free of any judgment.
Let the air I share with the leaping deer in the meadow off Mineral Springs Road be clean and salvific, the kind of air that tells its own stories and makes them easy to hear, cool with coming October.
Let me understand my role in the sweep of the day with tenderness and fire, with patience and a lover’s soul.
Amen.

This is something I wrote several years ago and tweaked tonight. 

10 comments:

  1. Oh my. If you add, and let me keep doing this always, you'll have nicely paraphrased the entire 23rd Psalm, a beloved favorite --even to us non-Christians-- and universal truth. Thanks for this "something" you wrote and tweaked. I rather needed it just now.

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  2. huh. how about that. thank you!!

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  3. do you think it translates, laura, to those around you? are you able to live it and do you think your students are changed in the presence of it/this kind of prayer? i truly hope so. i fail at translating prayer into my working life too often. it seems so much easier to maintain when alone and becomes muddied in the presence of others.

    xo
    erin

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  4. A beautiful, heartfelt prayer, Laura. Both of my girls are teachers and I pray for them every day. xo

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  5. thank you, Marion. erin, it has been easier to live it this past year. it is still very challenging. last year was a good year, mostly, in terms of connecting with my students, but it was also a year of huge personal upheaval, transformation, confusion, and grief. lots of grace, too, though. I think I am doing better at living it, but sometimes I have little left over for my personal life.

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  6. Laura, that is incredible. Thank you.

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Georgia, United States
I live at the edge of the forest in a little town in the north Georgia mountains. I teach sixth grade Language Arts and am writing a memoir of sorts about family, spirituality, and narrative. I am also exploring a possible writing project having to do with contemporary lay contemplative experience and how it might be informed by the Desert Fathers and Mothers of early Christianity. I am a relatively recent convert to Roman Catholicism and an admirer of Pope Francis, Leonardo Boff, Joan Chittister, and Richard Rohr. I'm a Lay Associate of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers, Georgia. I am interested in indigenous cultures, narratives, and spirituality, especially how these can inform my spirituality as a lay contemplative. I write, read, take pictures, play around with creating ephemera from paper and cloth and other organic things. I cook, hike, watch wildlife, and collect random bits of interesting oddness, both tangible and abstract. I am a seer of smallness and a caretaker of ridiculous minutiae. If you want, e-mail me at riverrun67@gmail.com or lksorrells@hotmail.com.