{"id":1339,"date":"2008-10-19T21:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-19T21:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2008\/10\/this-sunays-pastoral-prayer\/"},"modified":"2011-11-01T15:12:09","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T19:12:09","slug":"this-sunays-pastoral-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2008\/10\/this-sunays-pastoral-prayer.html","title":{"rendered":"This Sunay&#8217;s Pastoral Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/SPvbxN3T0MI\/AAAAAAAABV0\/dSB5PXgFKtw\/s1600-h\/prayer\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/SPvbxN3T0MI\/AAAAAAAABV0\/dSB5PXgFKtw\/s320\/prayer\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><br>Let us gather our aspirations. Let us throw ourselves with abandon into the great mystery.<\/p>\n<p>Let us pray.<\/p>\n<p>Oh mystery at the heart of our lives. We gather here before the vastness. Some name you God. Others among us have no word for what we encounter when we open our hearts wide. But even without words we intuit something large, something good. As we open ourselves to all that is, we find our hidden hearts revealed.<\/p>\n<p>We gather together filled with all the longings of life. We bring our hurt into this place, some of it marked by deep and open wounds. We bring our hope into this place, some of it bursting with joy at the very fact of existence.<\/p>\n<p>We bring our thoughts and we bring our silence.<\/p>\n<p>Our thoughts are many.<\/p>\n<p>These are tumultuous times.<\/p>\n<p>We are caught up in forces beyond our control. We are entered into a world-wide recession, perhaps worse. Some things are within our control. Our nation is hurtling toward a momentous decision, to elect our next president. We are also electing senators and members of congress, state legislators, city council members and mayors.<\/p>\n<p>Much depends on what will happen in this election. In the process truths, half-truths and lies are thrown about with reckless abandon. Let us seek a different recklessness\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Into the silence we throw our very being.<\/p>\n<p>May we learn what we need to make intelligent, compassionate and wise decisions. May we find those necessary moments of clarity, to weigh and reflect. May we allow the deep wisdom to come that comes when we allow our hearts and minds to be recklessly, wildly, prayerfully, open.<\/p>\n<p>We throw ourselves fully into presence\u2026<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic\">(A time of silence<\/span>\u2026)<\/p>\n<p>Amen<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/33904114-8927920213148925102?l=monkeymindonline.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let us gather our aspirations. Let us throw ourselves with abandon into the great mystery. Let us pray. Oh mystery at the heart of our lives. We gather here before the vastness. Some name you God. Others among us have no word for what we encounter when we open our hearts wide. But even without [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>This Sunay&#039;s Pastoral Prayer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let us gather our aspirations. Let us throw ourselves with abandon into the great mystery.Let us pray.Oh mystery at the heart of our lives. We gather here\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2008\/10\/this-sunays-pastoral-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Sunay&#039;s Pastoral Prayer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Let us gather our aspirations. Let us throw ourselves with abandon into the great mystery.Let us pray.Oh mystery at the heart of our lives. 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