Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
I am reading in my study at the church. Next door in the parlor a women’s group is doing a bible study. I hear the sound of paper whispering, the heat register clicking, my breathing, the clock tapping its fingers on the bookshelf. Somewhere a door closes. Then through the gentle silence comes another sound: women’s voices, in deep and harmonious unison, rising and falling in brief phrases. I can’t hear their words through the wall, but I can tell by the cadence: they are praying the Lord’s Prayer together. The sound is like waves rolling onto a shoreline, rising and falling, utter and pause, utter and pause. It is like the breathing of the world. I breathe with it. The waves of prayer lay themselves on the beach, wave after wave. They join the sea of prayers, waves moved by all the world’s winds and all its movements, resounding across the ocean, touching every shore. They wash the world. They make it one, a single island surrounded by a sea of prayer. The final little splashes, “the kingdom and the power and the glory,” and there is silence. It is the whole universe’s ocean of silence. And the silence is deep and flowing, and it is in me, and it is full of dark, living mysteries, and I am not alone, and the world is alive.
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
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Unfolding Light
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