Push My Buttons Prayer
Lord, it's likely
that sometime today someone will push my buttons, challenge my good will, misread my intentions, tick me off, try my patience, rattle my cage, judge me in haste, test my kindness,
make me lose it, or do all of the above...
Give me the grace I'll need at such times to respond with patience to trust and accept, to listen carefully to reach out in peace, to be fair and just, to anctipate goodness in all my words and deeds...
I know this is a lot to ask, Lord, but I need your help to do for others as I'd have them do for me...
Father Austin Fleming, Belmont Catholic Community, Massachusetts.
Slow Me Down - Orin L. Crain
Slow me down, Lord! Ease the pounding of my heart By the quieting of my mind. Steady my harried pace With a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Give me, Amidst the confusions of my day, The calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves With the soothing music Of the singing streams That live in my memory.
Help me to know The magical power of sleep, Teach me the art Of taking minute vacations Of slowing down To look at a flower; To chat with an old friend Or make a new one; To pat a dog; To watch a spider build a web; To smile at a child; Or to read a few lines from a good book.
Remind me each day That the race is not always won by the swift; That there is more to life Than increasing its speed.
Let me look upward Into the branches of the towering oak And know that it grew great and strong Because it grew slowly and well.
Slow me down, Lord, And inspire me to send my roots deep Into the soil of life's enduring values That I may grow toward the stars
Of our greater destiny.
Prayer for Peace and Calm
Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm.
- John Greenleaf Whittier - In the 30-year struggle in the United States to abolish slavery, John Greenleaf Whittier played an important role as a poet, as a politician, and as a moral force. His insistence was on tolerance of all, regardless of race, colour or creed, a quality he had come to cherish all the more through his study of the persecution of his Quaker ancestors.
"Dear Lord and Father.."was not written by him as a hymn, but is just a few stanzas from a much longer work "The Brewing of Soma", a treatise that came from his deep Quaker roots. It described, as he saw it, the true method for contact with God, as practised by members of The Society of Friends, sober lives dedicated to doing God's will, seeking silence and selflessness in order to hear the "still, small voice", described in I Kings 19:11-13 as the authentic voice of God, rather than the "earthquake, wind or fire" of established religion!
Archbishop George Appleton wrote about the time of increasing frailty, loss of hearing, sight and mobility; the time when we have to ‘begin the long journey’, detached from ’the loveliest things’ but freed to focus on the life that is to come.
LOOKING FORWARD
There will come a time, Lord,
When my links with earth grow weaker,
When my powers fail,
When I must bid farewell to dear ones,
still rooted in this life,
with their tasks to fulfil,
and their loved ones to care for,
when I must detach myself from the loveliest things
and begin the long journey.
Then, I shall hear the voice of my beloved Christ, saying, ―
It is I, be not afraid.
So, with my hand in His,
from the seeming dark valley,
I shall see the shining city and climb with trusting steps
and be met by the Father of Souls
and be clasped in His eternal embrace.
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