2022-11-23 A Prayer: Time Together

O Lord, if there is any legitimacy, any truth to what occupies our mind, grant real experiences to match with real obligations and visits this holiday season. So detox us of hate; so put paid to our longings, that, no longer bashful, we keep ears tuned for a new melody. Help us simply to show a side of us unknown, or, if known, this time around receptive of nods and agreement. So flatter us that others do pay attention to more than their own reality; they pay attention to us. Help us receive, from Your bounty. Help us contribute, from Your lead. Help us be awakened, and to hear defeat along with victory; it is a defeat, the ruts and meaningless banter, but it is a victory, what is at time a call to Quiet, at times a call to Agreement, at times a call to be an Oddball out, with our personal choice of ledge to occupy.

We occupy a place that is needful but also sated. We occupy a place that never concedes, never gives up, never hands over the hour to defeat complete, but does stay tuned in and very hopeful. Do these people have any need I can relate to? Do these people have any cubby-holed role I can look at differently from others? Do these people feel guilty? Do these people have a longing for some drunken or indulged repose, forgetful of all whose company is shared? So help us to bless, and to be the ones awakened to a Possibility, to the culmination of a life of experience, summarized this day in Love and Patience and Appropriate roles.

We long to see rubber hit the road, as far as all our private hopes and aspirations, now Named with Your Name. But here is life actual and in fact: grant that marriage of idea and substance, of design and form, of plans and fruition, to be consummated.

We dream; help us be those brave and those called and those serving, through every hunger and every familiar emptiness and every diminished role called Judgment. We long thus to persevere past such judgment, such dismissal, such disappointed audience or perception of it all being a jest at us. We know that great Rising up, where we are given new ears, a forgotten number of chances past, and one more chance here and now.

We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.