C3/CCC Prayer Transcript for August 12, 2007 We pause to reflect once again on our place in our communities and in this world. As stardust, we are woven with life, textured with love, living our lives in a crucible of changes and challenges. We are grateful for our soulful, sensual and even shadowy selves that take in this grand existence even in the midst of discouragement and pain. The world is good and beautiful....and we often miss it or declare it otherwise. Indeed we are grateful for cosmic expansion and indescribable forces at work just as we are grateful for the daily: taking children to practice, cleaning a house, time with friends, a movie. In silence, we consider again the amazing life force at work in, around and through us as well as how intimately connected we are with all things and all peoples. (Silence) As a community on the way, we are mindful of ways to both improve the world and enjoy the world. May we, with holy Presence, negotiate the seductions and illusions of our daily lives so that we work toward justice; May we, subvert the paradigms of oppression and dominations in the personal and global realities; may we enjoy the pleasures and ecstasy of being human on this earthly sphere. And perhaps in and through it all, welcome both the ease and dissonance that come by living in this culture of excess and true freedom. In silence now, we commit to becoming and remaining open-eyed, open minded and open armed to the delights, dramas and dilemmas of being human. (Silence) As community, we remember those we love, those we miss, those ill, those receiving chemotherapy and radiation, those in the recovering community, those struggling with mental illness, those grieving, those angry and empty. We remember families in the aftermath of losses of ones loved. May our remembrances go hand in hand with our responses - a smile, a note, phone call, embrace, tear shared, laughter enjoyed, a meal delivered. In silence we lift up those coming to mind and those close to heart. (Silence) These prayers and meditations, spoken and unspoken, we present in honor of those we love, in honor of one, Jesus, who guides us still, and in honor of life itself and all things good and beautiful. close window | ^ top | home |