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Prayer of the Lame

Prayer of the Lame

 

Dear Lord

I hope I can do this right

What I have left

To live, to give, to try

I doubt I understand humility

But being filled with nothing but myself

Is no fun, either

How many times have saints

Asked to be emptied of themselves

So that they might be filled

With sanctity, with piety

To serve

I’m sure I can’t go that far

Too many times I’ve lost myself

In other ways

And fear to come near the edge

Of that again

 

I don’t want to make divinity of will

And, you know, I don’t love myself so much

But there is something

(your fault)

In genesis

In being made and trying to figure out

The puzzle, after

The pieces that we have

Without the border, without corners

Believing, though, there is some shape

Some definition

Of both kinds, shape and meaning

 

Dear Lord

Please let me have this day

And promise of another

I might work nothing out

But maybe heart

And mind and body, as is (as are)

Have meaning in existing

The energy in pushing blood

In cracking synapse in the brain

In what is known

And unknown

Done and not done

Sin and virtue

Understood, worked out

Correctly, with discretion

For a change

 

Dear Lord

Help us, not

Know it all

Or even much

But to find the joy and peace

That might

You know

Indeed, pass all our understanding

And come back to live with us

Prodigal salvation

Broken heart

Faith in fractures

As I am

As we are

Old song, missing notes

Still sings

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Alev Takil on Unsplash

 

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Naphtali

Naphtali

(Genesis 49:21)

 

We say grace

As an association with blessing

Bless our food, bless us

As we eat it

And as we use the nourishment

Singly and together

 

I was asked (selected) to

Share grace at family camp

Deer Valley, Pennsylvania

I wanted to say something grown-up

Over the microphone

But was told to say the childish

One we learned to say at dinner time

I was a child

So it was okay

 

Now I can’t recall which prayer

It was

Wait, here it is

 

Thank you for the world so sweet

Thank you for the food we eat

Thank you for the birds that sing

Thank you, God, for everything!

(a sibling can correct me)

 

What is the source for a proper

Citation?

I don’t know; I don’t think I want to know

The source is childhood

And grace in remembering

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Yangfan Gan on Unsplash

 

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Pity the Party

Pity the Party

 

Wow, pain is such a disconnect

Like depression

That I also take a pill for

What is there to care for?

What do I care about?

Who cares for me?

I have accoutrements

A blanket ‘round my shoulders

While I’m cold

Toast (the start of a loaf)

Some grapes (the last of them)

I gave up coffee and caffeine

As if it were my own form of Lent

Though I can’t recall

A decision for

The sake of my soul

 

Pills have side effects

These press down, too

I am surrounded

The best thing that I have

Are movies

But I’d rather be the artisan

Than the spectator

So sit up to write

A little more

 

I’d rather make

Than borrow off

Another’s making

I mean, there’s allusion

Citation when it’s proper

Or otherwise might render

A source beyond reach

If not belief

Or to leave it all, hoping for

Belief in the beholder

 

Well, some system

Is protesting

The strain of illness

Or the medication

Most of this I doubt I’ll leave

Though there might be something

I can’t see or hear

That someone else

Much better at beholding will

 

Do I pray?

I do and hope for more

But I haven’t a perspective

The thermostat is broken

Someone else must regulate

What happens next,

Which is what I think

The praying’s for

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by ImageParty from Pixabay

 

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Process of Prayer

Process of Prayer

 

God

I love you

I don’t know if you know that

But you are perfect

So you must

And know this better than I

What is real

What is faked

What is performance

From a holy script

Or my own from the ground

The dirt, the dust of my own use

Of words

I hope that if I reach out with my mind

You are receiving

So many of my prayers are silent

They wouldn’t have to be, I guess

I count on you for reading thoughts

Is that all right?

Thought is reality

Is has to be

I hope it may also be

Salutation

Supplication

Air into which

I might air grievances

Also dreams

And gratitude

If not for dreams, then for life

Itself

I guess I trust you hear me

That silences still count

So as my words go out

They must go in as well

 

C L Couch

 

 

A nonconformist chapel in Pwllheli, Wales. Unlike historic chapels, this is not attached to a larger place of worship.

Alan Fryer, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12537842

 

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The Other Side of Prayer

The Other Side of Prayer

 

I hear you, rascal

Talking with me as if I were

A pal with loaded pockets,

Which is all right

You know I love you, anyway

I could solve and resolve

Everything for you, it’s true

And I won’t say

But then you wouldn’t learn anything

(because I did)

As for turning back and forward time

Take that up with Einstein

And with Rosen

About a bridge

But here’s what I will do

I will love you, anyway

I will always be here

Even when you don’t want me to

Because you do

When you remind yourself

 

I’ll wait

I’m not as jealous as some others say

(I don’t think that’s

understood, a problem in translation)

Not do I easily take offense

Though I am demanding

 

Maybe if you serve

I will prove a fit leader

And your troubles helped

At the same time

Maybe not

I know you love me, anyway

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash

Gothenburg, Sweden

Walked in on this great seating situation with very forgiving light. Shot on the X100F.

 

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Invocation in a Parking Lot on a Saturday in Spring

Invocation in a Parking Lot on a Saturday in Spring

 

I’m here

You’re here

You’re where I was

 

Even when I don’t know

Or might choose otherwise

Such is sin

You do better than the

French

And the Pimpernel

You don’t hide

It was Adam and Eve who hid

For vanity and shame

Pointing everywhere

But to the heart

 

Wake my heart, O God

Goad me to love, as you must

Because I won’t have it any other way

 

C L Couch

(drafted there)

 

 

Photo by Hendrik Morkel on Unsplash

Gelnhausen, Germany

 

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One Thing I Forgot to Mention

One Thing I Forgot to Mention

 

I pray for the victims

Every one I hear of

On the news or on-line

On the page or when someone

In the room tells me

I pray for them to come home

 

And if I learn

I’d rather not have prayed for one

Too bad for me

The soul is not my bailiwick,

Thank goodness

Spirits are not on my plate

In my scale pan

Or wherever

That is someone else’s charge

The one who does it perfectly

 

So I pray

Briefly, mostly in a straightforward way

Depending on concentric circles

From my heart

 

I’m only human

I have favorites

But then I also need to keep in mind

The universe is biased toward gravity

God is biased toward love

Perfection mollified

For me

For you

For all of us who need the chance

Of human fallibility

To make it home despite the storm or any conflagration,

Anyway

 

C L Couch

 

 

Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic (Syriac)

 

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Signing Petitions

Signing Petitions

 

It was about prayer

Something I was thinking while

Nodding off

(officially, I’m trying to learn napping)

Prayer can be done in any stance, I think

(for instance, the entry into dozing)

Standing, sitting, kneeling, even

Prostrate

For we see the nuns and monks do this

And others in obeisance

Maybe the positions are for us

Appealing to ourselves

A signal to our peers

A sign of intent

 

What do we need to concentrate,

What makes a prayer a prayer?

It might be focus

It might be lining up the body to have this

To promise it

But can’t we pray on the fly?

In an instant, while we must be doing something else

A prayer sounding

Off the cuff in an

Emergency

 

Like a child who baptizes someone

In a dire situation

It counts

The books must record it happened in

This way

 

So prayer matters

In whatever way

Whichever muscles might be

Angled here or there

Sometimes we can’t apologize enough

Sometimes we can’t apologize at all

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Bill Kuykendall, Photographer (NARA record: 2708009) – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17118564

 

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Lord,

Lord,

 

I don’t know what I’m doing

I know I often act misdirected

But where is the magic

The spotlight that tells me

I’m in the right place

And on the good way?

 

Came out of nowhere

I just heard that phrase used to

Sell something

A cliché, but it’s poetic

Really

Out of nowhere, ex nihilo

Philosophy

But isn’t that how you create?

Out of nothing appears

Matter

To set new flesh upon a wound or

Fill a gulley in the desert with

Water unheard-of in the

Season

 

Out of nothing I was made

The spark in emptiness that fused

A spirit to new cells,

And I am here

Though you’ve always been here

 

And I can’t say I understand that

How you are in the charges

Of my neurons

And the pulses of my heart

And over Earth

And through the universe of chances

 

Although I still feel useless

And pathless

For the Gethsemani contemplative

It was enough to know

Random instincts somehow speak to

Providence

 

That isn’t me

I’m not so smart

Or self-sufficient

 

Maybe

He wasn’t, either

We both want to know

And what do we find out?

We wander an agnostic landscape

Step toward uncertainty

An answer in a

Moment

And for the next,

Maybe

 

Will that do?

For us, it has to

And bold enough, if cautious

To go beyond the mortal shell

To tread in a fossil sea

To take a walk on Mars

 

C L Couch

 

 

Mars by Curiosity

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040628.html

 

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