Prayer of St. Francis Jane Wolfe

Modified Prayer of St. Francis

 Use as a Monthly reading especially in Advent or Lent. Read one line a day for 2 days as if God/Christ/Holy Spirit/ your Higher Power is saying this to you.   Begin again with first day of each month.

1. I am the instrument of your peace.

2. I will sow love where there is hatred.

3. I will pardon where there is injury.

4. I will bring union where there is discord.

5.  I will give faith where there is doubt.

6.  I bring hope where there is despair.

7.  I bring light where there is darkness.

8. I bring joy where there is sadness.

9.  I will console you.

10. I understand you.

11.  I love you.

12.  I give myself to you.

13.  I pardon you.

14.  I will die for you.

15.  I give you eternal life.

Modified by Jane Lee Wolfe,  Spiritual Health and Fitness for the 21st century, Woodstock, Vermont janewolfe@aol.com, http:www.bogchapel.org

 There is a classic book about personality type and prayer styles, Prayer and Temperament: Different Prayer Forms for Different Personality Types  by Monsignor Chester P Michael and Marie C Norrisey. The book is based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment and writes about five types of personal prayer developed over the centuries. If yours is the type Augustinian (Intuition, Feeling NF) where it is most meaningful that scripture or a message is written or speaks directly to you, this modification of the Prayer of St. Francis may speak to you.  In this prayer adapted by spiritual director, Jane Wolfe, God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit is praying, speaking directly to you.

On the other hand, the more traditional version of the Prayer of St. Francis may be meaningful to you where you are praying directly to God. So, I have included it as well.

PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Book of Common Prayer 833

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Spiritual vs Religious

Spiritual vs Religious Nadia

“I think this is why we at House for All Sinners and Saints sometimes say that we are religious but not spiritual. Spiritual feels individual and escapist. But to be religious (despite all the negative associations with that word) is to be human in the midst of other humans who are as equally messed up and obnoxious and forgiven as ourselves.” Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints 2015

Again, and again, Nadia makes us sit up and take notice. I have heard so often that phrase, “spiritual but not religious,” and I know I have said it as well and have seen it as a badge of courage. What I hear is that this person has a relationship with God but not with a religious institution or church or creed or denomination. This person is trying to “home school” God, as I have actually heard some say. They often have been harmed by the institutional church or have been misunderstood by the church or may even misunderstand the church themselves. I hear this often from people whose experience of church was not a church that believed as much in a loving God as in a vengeful God watching their every step to catch them doing something wrong. They have been wounded, but they so want to have a relationship with God. They are truly seekers. Nadia, however, is reminding us that God calls us to more than a one on one relationship. God constantly calls us to community, and that is where we will so often experience God in the unlikely humans we learn to live and work with, especially when we are a part of a community believing in a loving and forgiving God.

Joanna         joannaseibert.com

Buechner in search of the God Hole

Buechner In Search of the God Hole

“FOR ADAM AND EVE, time started with their expulsion from the garden. For me, it started with the opening of a door. For all the sons and daughters of Eve, it starts at whatever moment it is at which the unthinking and timeless innocence of childhood ends, which may be either a dramatic moment, as it was for me, or a moment or series of moments so subtle and undramatic that we scarcely recognize them. But one way or another the journey through time starts for us all, and for all of us, too, that journey is in at least one sense the same journey because what it is primarily, I think, is a journey in search. Each must say for himself what he searches for, and there will be as many answers as there are searchers, but perhaps there are certain general answers that will do for us all. We search for a self to be. We search for other selves to love. We search for work to do. And since even when to one degree or another we find these things, we find also that there is still something crucial missing which we have not found, we search for that unfound thing too, even though we do not know its name or where it is to be found or even if it is to be found at all.”

Frederick Buechner, Originally published in The Sacred Journey

Greek vase of Odysseus chained to boat with winged Sirens hovering

Buechner so well describes what others have called the search for and our attempt to fill our “God hole”. There is a paradox within us. Within each of us there is a part, a spark of the divine, a part of God within us. Also within ourselves is an emptiness, a God hole, which can only be filled by that relationship with God, the God of our understanding, a power greater than ourselves. Our society presents to us a smorgasbord of possibilities to fill that God hole, fame, fortune, a career, work, family, relationships, alcohol, sex, drugs. Some options more quickly fill the hole than others. Some are basically good for us, but they turn on us when they become the most important part of our life. They become the god of our understanding. My experience is that only God, a relationship with God, turning our life and our will over to God will fill that hole and bring us peace. More and more our society tells us that the other choices are what will bring us peace and happiness. So, we may find a relationship with God, but then we start to miss our relationship with one of the other possibilities. They all can be like the Sirens of Greek mythology constantly calling us and luring us with their enchanting music to a rocky coast where we ultimately will be shipwrecked.  Sometimes one shipwreck is enough to get our attention, sometimes it takes many. Sometimes we must be ultimately and completely destroyed before we get the message. Is there any hope? I weekly visit a place where I see a room full of miracles, a room with almost standing room only with people who have been shipwrecked and who know their only hope is to fill their God hole with the God of their understanding, a power greater than themselves. They are holding up and encouraging each other, and they clap when they see God peeking up out of the hole for all to see. They call it a 12-step meeting.

Joanna joannaseibert.com