{"id":30181,"date":"2015-05-20T07:12:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T11:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=30181"},"modified":"2015-05-20T07:12:20","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T11:12:20","slug":"a-prayer-for-discomfort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/05\/a-prayer-for-discomfort.html","title":{"rendered":"A Prayer for Discomfort"},"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><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-30184\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2015\/05\/Benedictine-blessing-1024x468.jpg\" alt=\"Benedictine blessing\" width=\"578\" height=\"264\"><\/p>\n<div id=\"prayer\" style=\"color: #000000\">\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"bigcap\">M<\/span>ay God bless you with a restless discomfort<br>\nabout easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships,<br>\nso that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.<\/p>\n<p>May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression,<br>\nand exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for<br>\njustice, freedom, and peace among all people.<\/p>\n<p>May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer<br>\nfrom pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may<br>\nreach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.<\/p>\n<p>May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that<br>\nyou really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able,<br>\nwith God\u2019s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.<\/p>\n<p>And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator,<br>\nJesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our brother and Saviour,<br>\nand the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, be with you<br>\nand remain with you, this day and forevermore.<\/p>\n<p>AMEN.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"credit\" style=\"font-weight: bold;color: #000000\">a four-fold benedictine blessing \u2013 sr. ruth marlene fox, osb \u2013 1985<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The above prayer was recited at an interfaith Baccalaureate service for graduating seniors at Butler, and I wanted to share it. I found the text on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldprayers.org\/archive\/prayers\/invocations\/may_god_bless_you_with_a_restless.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">the World Prayers website<\/a>. As you can see, there is more than one version of it, and it is not consistently attributed to any one source.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":30184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[623,1104,1242,2711,9411,12310],"class_list":["post-30181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-roman-catholicism","tag-anger","tag-benedictine","tag-blessing","tag-discomfort","tag-prayer","tag-tears"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Prayer for Discomfort<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love\" \/>\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\/religionprof\/2015\/05\/a-prayer-for-discomfort.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Prayer for Discomfort\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/05\/a-prayer-for-discomfort.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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