Prayers for the tired spaces

This morning I finally realized that I have been feeling blue and a little bit sad. Sad for our country, our world, and all of the people who have lost loved ones to COVID-19. And blue about winter’s arrival and the prospect of many long cold weeks ahead. So today I offer you

Prayers for tired spaces

The sun is shining today and temperatures are milder than they have been for a week or so. I plan to go out for a walk this afternoon at French Regional Park. On my walk I shall look for wild altars and perhaps even photograph a few beautiful little scenes that nature has created. Then I’ll go home and do some Soma Yoga in my living room with the sun streaming in on me as I follow along with a recording of last week’s online yoga class.

The walk and the yoga will be my prayers for tired spaces. Like prayer flags flapping in the breeze, I shall offer up my own prayers for our world and community and all who are suffering.

So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars.  

Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies.  

Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears.  

Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us.  

Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug, let’s lick the earth from our fingers.  

Let us look up, and out, and around.  

The world is big, and wide, and wild and wonderful and wicked, 

and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable and full of meaning.  

Oremus.  

Let us pray.

   — Padraig O Tuama, from “Oremus” in Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community.

How are you doing today my friend? Perhaps you too need some prayers for tired spaces?

May you walk in beauty.

Note: I made the image at the top of this post from a photograph of a model that I made in a photography class many years ago and a photo of treetops that I made this fall.