Yesterday (2/6/16) I had the honor of talking with those who are beginning their journey as ‘Lay Cistercians’ of our order. We talked about the ‘Rule of St. Benedict”, focusing on obedience and humility. I shared some of my own struggles with these topics in living out my own monastic life. There is never an arrival point. A place where ‘it is gotten’, but a continuing deepening of how one fails, as well as how the seeking of living out these values are also freeing and life affirming.
Anne, one of the people who were with us yesterday shared a prayer that she had written. I was quite taken by it. I find the prayer beautiful and it flows from a place of humility as well as someone seeking to be obedient to the call we all have as Christians as well as others who seek to grow in love, compassion and understanding. She said that it was an expression of anger as well as frustration on how we can relate to one another. So it is a prayer for ‘all’ as well as a confession of sorts, one based on a deepening self knowledge that leads to inner freedom and openness to God’s Holy Spirit. Below is the prayer, I hope that some find it helpful as well as thought provoking. I find it so. It is based on a woman’s struggle as well as her calling for grace and healing. It is a prayer of deep humility and flows from a deep sense of obedience to the Gospel message. Thank you Anne for allowing me to share this with others.
“Dear Lord, Today I offer a prayer for those emotionally, spiritually and intellectually crippled by political and religious hatred, whether it be those in other nations, our own nation or our own neighborhoods. I pray for my own self-examination, that my faults be revealed and that I may serve you always. Help me to sustain compassion and not to hate or demean those who may have differences whether it be in gender, sexual preferences, religion, politics, race, social class, wealth or lack of wealth, or mental or physical challenges. Please God, help me to cast out of myself those things I condemn in others and to recognize everyone as part of your creation, divine spirits whose difficulties I may never see, whose acts of virtue and kindness I may never witness. —Prayer written by Anne Bleakley Jones”
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Moanstery
