Creative Prayers

O God,

you are the unsearchable   

 abyss of peace,

the ineffable sea of love,

and the fountain of blessings.

Water us with

plentiful streams

from the riches of your grace;

and from the most sweet 

springs of your kindness,

make us children 

of quietness and heirs of peace.

~Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215) Egypt

There is just something about finding a prayer that you can live and breathe until it lives and breathes within you.  I found this prayer in a lovely book, The Bridge of Stars: 365 Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations from Around the World compiled by Marcus Braybrooke. 

It was written by Clement of Alexandria who was an early Greek theologian and philosopher.  I've been praying this prayer for awhile and even shared it for morning prayers in the form of a book mark at a retreat recently, adding a photo at the bottom to illustrate the early morning meditation I'd been feeling with the prayer.  This morning as I sat with my journal and the book mark I had created, it chose to jump into my journal so I glued it in and as I wondered how to journal with it ... suddenly, I found myself drawn to the colors of the image.  I pulled out some oil pastels and allowed the colors to lead me even deeper into prayer.  It's not about the beauty of the image, it is about the beauty of the soul and I experienced that through this prayer.  I'm in a place of threshold, of waiting, a place of unknowing in my life right now.  Clement's prayer of words and my prayer of colors on the page became a prayer of threshold and a symbol of hope this morning.  I smile, I laugh, I love ...    

Where are you right now?  As you close your eyes, what colors illustrate the way you feel?  What is God saying to you about where you are and how you feel? 

 

when silence falls across our threshold ...

We do not all choose

the same place 

of beginning;

not all doorways 

are meant for entry.

And so

when silence falls

across the threshold

I have meant for welcome, 

may you, guardian of every passage,

cast your shadow

at my door.

~Jan Richardson

Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas

The Chapel Door at Mariawald Renewal Center in Reading, PA

I love doors.  

To me, a door is a symbol of threshold.  Threshold invites.  Threshold calls.  Threshold is a powerful image which holds anticipation and possibilities and mystery. Sometimes, threshold carries chaos.  And into our chaos, threshold evokes a sense of waiting … silent waiting until the door is opened from within.   

Reading Esther de Waal’s book, To Pause at the Threshold, I became familiar with this traditional saying of ancient wisdom, “A threshold is a sacred thing.” 

In many Asian traditions, the sacredness of threshold is honored by removing the shoes.  In a way, entering over the threshold to a home is a “mini-pilgrimage.”  The shoes are physically removed to symbolize leaving behind the outer world in order to enter the inner world of relationship, with the self or with others, depending on whether the home is your own or the home of another person. 

Just as Moses removed his shoes at the burning bush because the Holy One “spoke” into his chaos, when silence falls across our threshold, we come barefoot and vulnerable.  All of our chaos wrapped up like a hobo’s kerchief on the end of a stick, as we fall silent, prostrate and broken, we unwind and unwrap and let go as we enter the threshold spaces within which God resides.     

Meister Eckhart, a 15th century mystic said, "What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God fourteen hundred years ago and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be Mothers of God."  Eckhart reminds me that it is these threshold spaces that connect me to the suffering world, for God invites me ever so gently to emerge from the silence to turn, emerge from the safety and protection I've found in the depths of my threshold spaces and carry the healing love I find in the center back out to the borderlands of my world. 

For me, advent is the most sacred threshold of the year.  Advent is the time of the "already and the not yet," paradoxically and simultaneously, a concept that my mind cannot comprehend ... but images hold so beautifully.

I love doors.

Reflection:  What images hold your advent waiting this year?  Is there an invitation being birthed within the silence of your threshold spaces ... within you?  

Prayer:  Advent God, as I dwell in this wild and mysterious threshold space, hollow me out so that I may carry you with grace, hold you with awareness, and birth you with love into the world.  Amen.