01 April 2009

Three Prayers

I've been trying to pray. There are many things that I am pretty good at, prayer is presently not one of them. I only have three:

1) Fix This, Amen.
2) Save The World, In Your Mercy
3) Jesus, WTF?

This is not a very wide range of original thinking. Sometimes silence works as a prayer but I get squirmy.

I think I need to be in a prayer cover band for a while. Learn some traditional licks before branching off on my own.

If anyone has any ideas for a playlist, let me know.

Namaste.


6 comments:

Unknown said...

Anne Lamott writes that there are two basic kinds of prayer: "Help me, help me, help me" and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." I'm not sure it really gets more complicated than that.

As for resources, you might try some of the collects from the Book of Common Prayer or a Catholic prayer book. There's often some good stuff there. Or the Trisagion hymn:

Holy God
Holy and mighty
Holy and immortal
Have mercy on us

spankey said...

I just taught a lenten series on prayer practices based on Tony Jones' book, Soul Shaper. I think it has been re-released as The Sacred Way.

Also, my tradition, The Episcopal Church, has been rocking the cover band thing since 1549. In the US the current edition is the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. It offers daily office services as well as prayers for various occasions. You can find a free version, online, at www.bcponline.org

Sarcastic Lutheran said...

1. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

2. Guide my feet

Anonymous said...

Roshi-Prayer is what you make it out to be. Over the last 13 months, prayer has been the power that has helped me deal with all of the medical problems that your sister has gone through. I was taught that prayer as simple as a thank you, and as powerful as any drug prescribed. Look over the general prayers that Christianity has and follow the path set before you. You do not have to over think it, just say it to God. He listens.
saintneil

soul and culture said...

I use WTF? quite often. And 'help me'.

As far as a more formal reading/prayer, I'm liking Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours.

Gumbomum said...

I really don't have any advice for you, but I quite like #3.