You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

Meister Eckhart

The Unfolding Process

Holy Creative Presence,
We accept the unfolding process of evolution today,
and we surrender to your mystifying creative dream,
glistening with divine elegance.
Around us the diversity is bewildering,
the dangers daunting, the parameters all unknown.
Therefore, awe is our silent song,
and we enter the continuing story with trust,
accepting your ways as they contrast and school our own.
May your creative designs blossom
and shine in all their beauty and wonder,
and ourselves be useful in the evolving drama,
honored to be a part of it.
May it be so.

Conversing With Creation

Holy Spirit-Force of Creation,
source of life’s beginning and end,
we thank you for our story,
honored as we are to be part of your greater story.
We are grateful for our consciousness and our memory
and for the multiple episodes of our life in all their ambiguity.
Their ebb and flow make sense in your purview,
and we bless you for your caringness
through all the eons of evolutionary unfolding.
May our story be a worthy part of a conversation
with creation itself,
transparent and meaningful
in a larger context that we can begin to comprehend.

From: Prayers to an Evolutionary God

God of Mystery, be with us
in our pondering,
our questioning,
our sharing,
as we face the challenges ahead of us.
Open us to your wisdom and love.
Call us beyond our present vision
into newness.
Re-energize us
as we continue to be
Your love made visible in our world.
May your Spirit guide us
as together we move forth in love
…because it matters.

Go with me, God,
Through honest self-knowledge
To a proportioned humility,
From fevered accusation
To accurate apology,
From delicious aggrievement
To a shared cup of forgiveness,
From stunting addiction to my biases
To crediting the other side,
A glimpsing of the larger, inclusive view
Seen by four eyes or more, instead of two.

Ted Loder

Praise to the One whose love
Threads the energy of friendship
Stitches the strength of fidelity.

Rupp

Thich Nhat Hanh

May all beings be free from anger,unwholesome states of mind & worries.May all beings know how to look at themselves with the eyes of  understanding & love.

A Prayer for Leadership

by Joan Chittister

Give us, O God,
leaders whose hearts are large enough
to match the breadth of our own souls
and give us souls strong enough
to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.

In seeking a leader, let us seek
more than development for ourselves–
though development we hope for–
more than security for our own land–
though security we need–
more than satisfaction for our wants–
though many things we desire.

Give us the hearts to choose the leader
who will work with other leaders
to bring safety
to the whole world.

Give us leaders
who lead this nation to virtue
without seeking to impose our kind of virtue
on the virtue of others.

Give us a government
that provides for the advancement
of this country
without taking resources from others
to achieve it.

Give us insight enough ourselves
to choose as leaders those who can tell
strength from power,
growth from greed,
leadership from dominance,
and real greatness from the trappings of grandiosity.

We trust you, Great God,
to open our hearts to learn from those
to whom you speak in different tongues
and to respect the life and words
of those to whom you entrusted
the good of other parts of this globe.

We beg you, Great God,
give us the vision as a people
to know where global leadership truly lies,
to pursue it diligently,
to require it to protect human rights
for everyone everywhere.
We ask these things, Great God,
with minds open to your word
and hearts that trust in your eternal care.

Amen.

A Psalm for Midwives

by Miriam Therese Winter

You will know when it is time to bring to birth
the new creation. The signs will be all around you,
urging, insisting: Now is the time.
You have to know just when to bear down
And concentrate on one thing only.
It takes labor, hard, hard labor
to bring to birth something new.

Everything

by Meister Eckhart, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Everything I see, hear, touch, feel, taste,
speak, think,
imagine,
is completing a perfect circle
God has drawn.

Thanksgiving Grace

Generous God
we give thanks today in a very special way.

We thank you for this country
for our ancestors
and for the many men and women who developed this land.

We thank you for our families
those we have gathered with today
and those we sadly miss.

We thank you for good friends
those who have supported and sustained us,
in acts.
those who need our prayers.

We thank you for ourselves
for health
for love
for understanding
and for the opportunity to be together.

Help us to be people of gratitude
aware of the things that really matter,
aware of those who have little,
and thankful for the gifts we recognize
and for the ways in which you surprise us.

Journeying God

Anonymous

Journeying god,
pitch your tent with mine
so that I may not become deterred
by hardship, strangeness, doubt.
Show me the movement I must make
toward a wealth not dependent on possessions,
toward a wisdom not based on books,
toward a strength not bolstered by might,
toward a god not confined to heaven.
Help me to find myself as I walk in other’s shoes.

Whole

By Abigail Wurdeman

Though I stomp and whine and moan
for my own idea of completion,
I see that You have already made me whole.

And so I praise you
for the body that sustains me
and the spirit that fills me,
for the friends that support me
and the family that guides me,
for the work that challenges me
and the play that thrills me,
for the knowledge that grounds me
and the faith that centers me.

You infuse my life with Your spirit.
Thank You for the kind of completion
only Your hands can design.

Similar, Yet Different

By Tanja Cilia

A thousand lives, like doors;
bolted shut, ajar, or wide open;
swing doors that don’t fasten;
glass panels; mortised doors;
Barred ones of self-made prisons.

A pathway leads to each.

We can choose to walk along these alone;
or to ask for help when we falter.
In the course of life we meet those who dither,
waiting for our shoulder to lean on.
Let’s help them limp their way home.

Emerging

By Abigail Wurdeman

I am great at withdrawing,
at crawling deep inside myself,
forgetting that I do not,
cannot operate in isolation.
Draw me out again
and show me the community
You’ve given me.
Make me humble enough
to accept the blessings of others,
bold enough to offer gifts of my own,
and clear-minded enough
to see brilliant streaks of You
throughout this priceless community.