(x = space)
x
x
Before We Leave
(or stay at home)
x
Keep us
Safe at home
Safe far away
Safe in a crowd
Safe on our own
x
Fed
Watered
Like valued plants
We also sometimes
Talk to
Sheltered from
All evils
All extremes
That cruelly stretch
Reason out shape
For decent use
x
Help us to use
Our senses
As we have them
To expand
And justify
And celebrate
Your placing us
On Earth
Inside the cosmos
Our greater purpose
Serving you
Two great
Commandments
x
C L Couch
x
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
An Odd Prayer to Share
x
God, help us
As we must know you
Something besides us
For people fail
They go away
Often for normal reasons
We are inside
And something should be known
Outside the skin
Of each of us
x
We breathe
And that’s good
What is breathing for
And other pleasures?
And when it hurts
And they
What then?
Where is the reason
Who’s the reason?
x
Nature is good
We can humanize
When we’re not exploiting
Its indifference
With our indifference
We can worship it
It will not specifically respond
We can destroy it
But then
We can destroy each other
Too
(not recommended)
x
There is something
That is not us
Someone
Who is not us
We are talking to you
Unless we’re sure there’s nothing
And we’re only talking
To ourselves
x
Either way, something more
Is needed
Not that each of us is bad
Or useless
Not that self-destruction is a choice
And we’re committed
(or we’re careless)
In which case
There is no talking
To oneself or anything
And we choose that way
x
Or talk us out of it
(and here is a conceit
if not a cheat,
for this is a collective prayer)
Set us on paths
Toward light
Toward life
Toward righteousness
Not the indignant kind
Not ego-driven
But has illumination
As a cause
x
Beyond self
There are so many things
So many people
There is much within us, too
Even the storm
And we are enough
For that
For them
For us
x
C L Couch
x
x
a prayer to say together, on behalf, or one by one
x
Photo by Erika Giraud on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
3 poems for summer solstice
x
x
Merry July
x
Solstice
It’s summer now
Summer weather smacks us
Here
Temps aiming for 90
I guess in Australia
New Zealand
New Guinea
Little America
Winter is begun
Throw logs on the fire
Sing winter carols
Withholding Christmas and
The other holidays
‘Til the start of summer
In December
Christmas in July
A custom mostly mercantile
In the north
Could be the real thing
With trees and
Were it high enough
Some snow
Ornaments and lights
Certainly
Merry Christmas in
Alice Springs
Wellington
Tierre del Fuego
On the Falklands
At the southern pole
Santa’s summer home
Like winter
x
x
Intentions
x
God, what shall I
Say to you?
I worship you
In contemporary ways
I’m sorry for sins
You have seen in me
And known for centuries
I thank you for your presence
Having made all good things
And the ways to deal
With the bad
I ask of you
To welcome home
Those who die
And heal those who live
Cure cancer
End war
Well, I can ask
x
x
Siblinghood
x
It’s like science fiction
Slipping out of time
Our of normalcy
Eating meals on time
Cleaning on a schedule
Ingrained expectations
Instinctive, conditioned
Responses
x
To fall outside of these
To live with fewer clothes
To hope for decent meals
In penury,
To dream of trips
But only travel like Thoreau
Walking to and from
The town
x
Everything else happens
On the inside
How sad this is
At least how strange
But there’s a purpose
Those who fall outside
Will look back
And when not wistful
Will prophecy
In art
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Saint John’s (Midsummer) Fire at Dragør Beach (Denmark)
XSimon, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53634435
x
(x = space)
x
x
Prayer Starting Day or Night
x
God keep us
This day
Or night
Through everything
God keep the family
As families
Arranged or redesigned
But families
x
Teach and affirm
Our hopes
Our plans
If you speak to us
In dreams
As Joseph dreamed
And Joseph
The magi
Several saints
Then offer clarity as well
The humility
The dare
In hearing from you
And then acting
After
x
Who knows your will
But we must know
Your will
We have your words set down
Help us to study
To inform our prayers
Enlivening the prayers
That do not change
x
Lord, love us
Forgive us
Save us
And spirit us
So that
We might not be led into temptation
We might dwell with you
As is said
And offered
Invited
Forever
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
All Shall Be Well, Because She Says So
x
I have not talked of God today,
Which might mean
I haven’t talked
To God
As well
x
Dear God, what would you
Have for us?
What shall we do in this
Sad, broken world
In which we strive for joy
And sometimes meaning
x
What can we do
What can we choose
To make it better
To make us better?
x
Now and then
Now and again
Now and for the next time
No or yes
x
Past, present, future
We don’t handle these
We can’t
Maybe angels move through time
To carry news
That’s sure, having happened
Maybe to stitch
The interstitials
Not to fix fixed things
But things that flexed
Won’t change the larger movements
Of predestined pieces
On the table
x
With permission,
Save a few more
From the shipwreck
Withhold the hand
Sooner from abuse
x
Well,
This is wishing
And not prayer
We pray for now
Into the next moment
If bruises,
Not the cause
But the healing
And to break the cause
The chain of hurt
x
And, who knows,
Maybe a prayer
To increase what is right
Because there are right things
Simply not enough
For Earth to turn
In joy
And all our lives
Amen
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Snehil Jonathan on Unsplash
East Anglia, Norwich, UK
x
(x = space)
x
x
Hurry Up, Please, It’s Time
x
Time to pray
My God, you are here
Sometimes your presence
Seems so thin
Like vapor
In the morning
Then sometimes a
Numbered weight
Sometimes a fire
That frights
x
It’s how we imagine you
Though you are manifest
As you are manifest
Not invisible
Not hiding behind a tree
Awaiting human mischief
For a peak
You are not voyeurish
x
As it is, you’ve seen it
Heard it
Touched it all
Our antics are not of interest
Unless we should please you
x
That would be
A forest of content
With scenes of love and action
(love in action)
That would delight
In fact
And in fact
Of all the constituents
Of nature
And believers
x
Animals might pray
Might live in prayer
We must talk
Must confess
Must ask
Though, yes, we may
Keep it in the mind
Just behind
Or just inside our tongues
x
You hear us
Remarkably, some time
And every time,
Which is the miracle
The need
Even the requirement
To pray
For us to mutter something
You to hear
x
Sorry
Thanks
Love
Amen
x
C L Couch
x
x
(I take the title from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”)
x
Photo by Alex Wing on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Stained/Strained Glass
x
O God,
We believe
Variously
x
Most of the world
(mid- to upper-nineties)
Believe in you
Some way
Somehow
x
I know what
I must believe
But am loath (to use
an antique word)
To insist
That the next one
Must believe as I
x
I’d rather have respect
For belief, lack of belief
And for us meeting
Anyway,
This way
Transacting with each other
And the Earth
x
Bad evangelism, maybe
For us all to meet
With friendship and respect
(as if meeting
friendship and respect
as angels met in
Baucis and Philemon)
To realize
Humanity
Alive on Earth
x
Withholding conscripted hands
By the switch
That only proves
Annihilation
x
So we learn
And maybe for petition,
Maybe gently pushing us
To places where people
Of Earth
Believe otherly
Or don’t believe
But worthy
On both sides
All sides
All around
x
And welcome
To the table
Of the Earth
Amen
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Adam Gonzales on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Second Sight
x
Be Thou, my vision
Begins my favorite song
In church
God should direct my sight
I should set my sight
On God
Maybe to the classic hills
Where help does not come from
Though our mortal selves might hope
But from God
Who made heaven and Earth
And those hills
Behind which God will come
If God wills
The will of God
We want to know
We get in wrestling matches
So to know
But the outcome is unclear, as the child’s
Magic 8-ball used to tell us
And then we grew
x
God wills
It’s no fun not knowing
Inwardly, we might turn into fatalism
And there are less constructive
Ways
Is there a knowing beyond knowing?
I imagine so
But without genetic arranging
Or supernal training,
I must wait my turn
With the rest
Who want to know when heaven comes
And this be paradise
x
Or what to do about tomorrow,
As if clairvoyance
Or supernal understanding
Were a guessing game
Sorry
If such, then such should be respected
All of us may pray, if we may
And we should,
Then use our best impulses
And instincts
Our best use of faith
To go through the day
Hope for tomorrow
x
Clarity, the better vision
Direction, as we know it,
And we have ways to know a lot
With faith and allowance
For the rest
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Roland Seifert on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Slip-Sliding Petition
x
God, I’m tired
Not tired of life
But from lack of sleep
Dreams
That wear me out
So that I’ve lived a day already
Then try to rise
Into waking,
Real agendas
x
This is a prayer
Maybe I could ask for something
x
x
x
I can’t think of anything else
I’ve drifted off
Into Saturday
Or something like
Is Saturday a prayer?
Amen
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash
x
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