A Prayer For Friday

Mick Comstock

§ February

“This weather is dour and changeable. Winter, embarrassed by its performance so far, holds its breath, not knowing whether to blow cold or warm, then blows both hot and cold. Confused Winter, forgetting where February was folded up and put away, blows March winds and rains by mistake.

Quiet for once, a blue jay huddles in the bottom of a bush and braces for whatever comes next. A concerned cat, hurrying past seeking shelter from uncertainty, doesn’t see its breakfast shivering there. And we, too, turn south, seeking sun and north seeking snow as we try to escape this day you have made for us to rejoice and be glad in.

Oh God, you give us this day and no other, so teach us to love this day. Free us from our yesterdays and our tomorrows and from the greener grass and deeper snow elsewhere. For today there are neighbors to love and be loved by, mourners to comfort and be comforted by, sick people to heal and be healed by, imprisoned ones to visit and be freed by, naked people to clothe and be warmed by.

All are one, and we are one in Jesus Christ, through whom we give you thanks and praise.

§ The Power of Our Refusal

We are born, clinging, dear God, and all our lives are a reluctant learning of letting go. Enduring monuments to the power of our refusals populate even the long silences of our sleeping.

Yet, while our nights persist, our days go by, each one deftly and faithfully eluding our clinging, undermining our refusals, offering themselves one by one for our new embracing, working at our clenched fingers and saying,”Go,” and opening your arms, and saying, “Come.” You are in the middle of each one of them.

And at what cost to you?

Do you, also, suffer our refusing-clinging and the time between our letting-go and our returning-embracing? And does the cross that haunts our lives and breaks our grasping-clinging also haunt yours?

The refusal in us demands that it should not be so – that you should instead stand unmoving and unmoved and thus be God for us. Teach us, we pray, in the passion of Jesus, that the passion and pain of your love for us is like the passion and pain of our love for our own children, and thus be God for us.

Allen M. Comstock, Seasonings: Prayers of Praise and Complaint

§ Fragment

“As it was,

As it is,

As it shall be

Evermore,

O Thou Triune

Of grace!

With the ebb

With the flow,

O Thou Triune Of

Of grace!

With the ebb

With the flow.”

Alexander Carmichael, The Sun Dances Prayers and Blessings From the Gaelic