From http://wordsmatter.org/
Words affect all of us differently. As you read this prayer, read with generosity, and consider which images and words speak to you, and which make you bristle. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing in the “Comments” section, please use that space to expand upon an image or word from the prayer that resonated with you, or that you felt was missing, and write an expansive prayer of your own.
God of light and matter,
Gazing into fierce dark energy,
here on earth, not that which makes up space,
Gazing into all that darkness, spongy and close,
piecing out gravitational pulls on us, it’s time
to sort what makes and breaks us. Watching
for Doppler shift, in that vast vacuum, seeking
what brings light from so far away–why it comes
to us, here now, in the midst of our nighttime?
Seeking grace, and escape, like solar winds,
breaking loose to find that which is way out there,
while You? You reside within and among,
hard for us earthbound to grasp your incarnation,
Your presence housed in something akin to ours,
a body shared and broken in the midst of a vast vision
for humanity, while we seek comfort, and not the wide
expanse to which You call us, not the vastness to which
you whisper, “Come!”
As the earth circles the sun again this season,
as Lent sprawls out through this universe, hither
and yon, may it rest in me, may it remake me:
new energy, new matter, new purpose:
*To orbit Truth like a satellite, to remember
home, how far I’ve come, how far I have yet
to go.
*To remember the One whose voice
echoes through the light years, calling me,
and all.
*To recall what was noise to one, proved the origin
of the universe to another, in the story of static
and the cosmic microwave background.
*To sort sonance and sounds, to finally tune in to Your
“I am.”
Selah.
Rev. Susan Baller Shepard
“I love theoretical physics, although last night I had to call a physics friend of mine to help me
understand, again, special relativity, still, I love the expanse of it all.”
The award-winning writing by Rev. Susan Baller-Shepard, MSW has been published in the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post “On Faith,” Spirituality & Health, Patheos, Writer’s Digest, and Church & Society, along with a number of newspapers, denominational publications, web sites, and poetry anthologies. Susan has her Master of Social Work and Master of Divinity, is a parish associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church-Normal, and for thirteen years has been editor of an international spirituality web site http://www.spiritualbookclub.com with its blog. She is completing a non-fiction manuscript. Author of the children’s book Matching Yu, she was interviewed by a PBS program about the adoption and faith journey http://www.vimeo.com/8769752 . She blogs about faith & life in motion at www.patheos.com/blogs/transient.
New Church of Montgomery, in Glendale 