Advent Reflections: Hope

Rest

A Mennonite Woman

The end of the process of “lectio divina” – which we used weekly when I was pastor at Methacton Mennonite – the last step is when you just rest in the presence of God, rest in love, without words. This is the step called “contemplatio.” This is what I want more of for the whole church as well as each person within it. A more contemplative, restful experience of life with God. Another word for the “resting” stage of prayer, when you’ve done the meditation and the conversation with God, with Jesus, when you’ve done the previous three steps of “lectio,” the fourth and last step is contemplation.

That’s why this sermon from the Canadian Mennonite Assembly this past July was so important to me. The preacher, Betty Pries, was calling the whole church to contemplation. She quoted this phrase: “I have spent time in the womb of the divine.”

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Prayer-poem for Lent 5, Year A

We are watching.
Craning our necks listening in the darkness,

aching for any sound of your breathing,
more than the night shift
ache for their beds,
more than the night shift
ache for their beds.

Our darkest valleys hold long empty spaces,
and beneath that, bones—
and there is no condemnation,
and you will breathe and our bodies will spring up, awake.

Will you?
Will you put your breath in us
and bring us out of our graves
so we will know that you are YHWH,
the One who brings into being,
the One who was, and is, and will ever be?

 

You stand by our closed tombs and weep.
You cry out our names.
In bone-dry valleys,
in our valleys full of brittle bones
white on the desert floor,
you send your breath.

Stay with us.
Watch with us.
Our eyes are closing in the cool spring night.
Stay with us until
we are no longer breathing,
and you are breathing us.

Lead us into our valley of bones;
rattle them,
put on flesh,
send your wind
until we stand on our feet, a vast multitude
coming out of our graves,
still wrapped in stench, blind
and speechless under open sky,
and alive.

Prayer for Lent 2, Year A

Keeper of your people,
you neither slumber nor sleep,
but hold us always
in your sheltering gaze.

We come to you in secret, by night,
with fear and questions.
Your waking hours stretch
through our centuries in one endless day,
yet you keep your vigil in peace.
Breathe into our anxious sleeplessness.

You call our names
as you called our brother Abram
so abruptly:
Get up,
go
to places we do not know.

How can we leave now? We are not ready to die.
We are not even ready to risk ourselves to winter’s potholes.
How can we, who are grown, who have grown
so comfortable—
who are so familiar
with all these words you speak to us—
how can we crawl back into your womb and be reborn?

Some of us have dozed off; some pretend to be sleeping;
some of us are wide awake with pain.

You are the only One
both sleepless and at rest.
You are the One who sees the road
beyond our squinting.

Recall us to our first steps,
that all people may find blessing in our trusting—
that all may open, listen, follow
to the place that you will show us.

Give us faith to stand like the bare trees,
arms open to cold winds,
waiting, putting on buds.

We feel the chill of newness coming,
but we do not know where,
or where it is going.

O Savior, keep us;
keep our life—our going out and our coming in.
O Breath, flow even into our feet, that we may keep step with you. Amen.

Enjoying group

Really enjoying our conversations. Last time we were talking about how we are formed not only by spiritual disciplines but by our political environment. I recommended a sermon I listened to recently by Nate Greiser on the Sunnyside Mennonite website, about politics. He does a good job of highlighting our faith as our first political commitment. He suggests that our 4th of July in the church is Pentecost.