Prayer Pan-en-thea

IN-God let us feel our hearts

Let us warm our hearts and accept that we are here and alive today

IN-God let us be present

Let us come forth in our selves

Let us come out to the forefront of our awareness and look with open eyes

IN-God let us stake a claim where we are

Right here, right now in space and time

IN-God let us be grounded

To wiggle our toes in this sandy shore and feel our connection to our earth

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O God, you are the beating of our hearts

The blood coursing through our veins

O God, you are the embrace of this very room

You are the light of our minds within us

O God, you are that shiver which settles at the base of our spine

You are the weight of our feet upon the earth

IN-God, let us acknowledge all things great and small

All things around us, all things beyond us, all things within us

And let us confess that we are all, each and everyone of us, IN-God

O God, you are the great embrace of existence

You are cosmos, you are mystery, you are imagination

O God, you are the flesh in which we each stand here today

And you are our neighbor who stands beside us

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Today, let us IN-God be vulnerable

IN-God let us allow ourselves to feel

Feel our concerns, our weights, and our sorrows

Let us gristly mill and spill our wants and worries

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Let us let our losses be real as they are, as real as we are real who hold them

As real as ALL things are IN-God

IN-God let us exhale a gentle whimper which bravely breaks from our hearts

IN-God let us drop our bags and allow our hearts

To thud, to tip, and spill a glistening ribbon of grief

O God, you are the bed in which we cry

You are the pillow we punch

O God, you are the veil of our darker days

You are the silent depths of our seas

IN-God let us breathe deep
Let us blow the stink from our chests
Let us holler a walloping way
IN-God,  let   us   breathe!

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O God you are the pressure of our tears
Our lumping throats, and our bursting cry
You are our lost and tingling lips

O God, in your bad lands we lay ourselves honest and spent

IN-God let us scoff the smarmy pleads of bliss

Let us mock all pretense that all will just be “ok”

IN-God let us dig our heels into the fact that we, and all these things

Are inextricably IN-God, for better or worse

O God, you are the intimate truths that must be told

You are the sharp pierce of our deafening silence

O God, you are the spite of our depressions

You are the relentless persistence of our long, long weariness

O God, that we should die, O God how may we die?

Let us drip and die, and submerge in your searchless depths

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IN-God we let go

IN-God we lose ourselves

IN-God we spill this cup

O God!  You are our forsakenness

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Yet IN-God we remain

Denied and barren, we are not let go

IN-God we persist

Damn the release!  We are not gone and out to pearly pasture

IN-God our chests still heave

IN-God we rasp a gutteral rasp

O God, you are the spite of spite

You are the waster of sorrows

You are the tear stained eye, blurred and hot

O God, you are the rushing torrent of life, plunged even where we cannot breathe

O God at last we can hold it no more

We lurch and gulp your water

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IN-God we sink and fall

And IN-God we rise and float

IN-God we lie face down, with the sun on our backs

IN-God we wash ashore

And IN-God we belch and heave that which could not truly kill us

O God, you are the waste that never was

You are the lost island of our stormy seas

O God, you are the no of our no’s

You are the stop of our stops

O God, you are the denial of our denials

Yet here we are, again in your presence

Here we are, O God, homeless, naked and bare

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What now O God?
.

IN-God let us stand
.

Let us count our wrinkled fingers and toes
.

IN-God lets us look left and look right
.

Let us shake these limbs, wet and weak as they are

O God, you are the fatal presence of life in death

You are the earth, immediate and void of form

You are the sky which both calls and chases all storms

O God you are every energy and smack of life

Under these bruised and broken ribs O God

You are our brazened and burning hearts

O God, we fall always on grace

IN-God we stand, sifted and sure

OF-God we press these foot prints

Retread, resoled, and new!

Amen.