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Below are some poems, prayers and reworked psalms that are useful for drawing you into silence, or in thinking about this.
They are great for using on retreats, in silence based prayer groups and quiet services, or your individual times of silence. |
Dark
Malling Abbey Church
Here in the dark
do not speak.
Only
listen, hold your peace
and wait for the wordless gift:
the lifting of the lark's voice,
choice and sweet,
repeating its high note of love,
speaking your name,
calling you over and over
again.
Do not speak.
Let the visiting bird,
silence, do her work:
sift your heart,
heal what is broken,
sundered apart,
restore what is plundered,
repair the rift,
knit to one piece the unravelled mind,
scattered and split.
Wait for the gift,
the lifting of the warm,
beating wings,
the sudden shudder
under the brooding breast.
You must enter
here in the dark
where the heart sings.
Do not speak.
In Nicola Slee, Praying Like a Woman,
(London: SPCK, 2004), p43.
Malling Abbey Church
Here in the dark
do not speak.
Only
listen, hold your peace
and wait for the wordless gift:
the lifting of the lark's voice,
choice and sweet,
repeating its high note of love,
speaking your name,
calling you over and over
again.
Do not speak.
Let the visiting bird,
silence, do her work:
sift your heart,
heal what is broken,
sundered apart,
restore what is plundered,
repair the rift,
knit to one piece the unravelled mind,
scattered and split.
Wait for the gift,
the lifting of the warm,
beating wings,
the sudden shudder
under the brooding breast.
You must enter
here in the dark
where the heart sings.
Do not speak.
In Nicola Slee, Praying Like a Woman,
(London: SPCK, 2004), p43.
Slowly
She celebrated the sacrament of
Letting Go…
First she surrendered her Green
Then the Orange, yellow, and Red…
Finally she let go of her Brown…
Shedding her last leaf
She stood empty and silent, stripped bare
Leaning against the sky she began her vigil of trust…
Shedding her last leaf
She watched its journey to the ground…
She stood in silence,
Wearing the color of emptiness
Her branches wondering:
How do you give shade, with so much gone?
And then, the sacrament of waiting began
The sunrise and sunset watched with
Tenderness, clothing her with silhouettes
They kept her hope alive.
They helped her understand that
her vulnerability
her dependence and need
her emptiness
her readiness to receive
were giving her a new kind of beauty.
Every morning and every evening she stood in silence and celebrated
the sacrament of waiting.
Macrina Wiederkehr (published source currently unknown but will be credited once identified).
She celebrated the sacrament of
Letting Go…
First she surrendered her Green
Then the Orange, yellow, and Red…
Finally she let go of her Brown…
Shedding her last leaf
She stood empty and silent, stripped bare
Leaning against the sky she began her vigil of trust…
Shedding her last leaf
She watched its journey to the ground…
She stood in silence,
Wearing the color of emptiness
Her branches wondering:
How do you give shade, with so much gone?
And then, the sacrament of waiting began
The sunrise and sunset watched with
Tenderness, clothing her with silhouettes
They kept her hope alive.
They helped her understand that
her vulnerability
her dependence and need
her emptiness
her readiness to receive
were giving her a new kind of beauty.
Every morning and every evening she stood in silence and celebrated
the sacrament of waiting.
Macrina Wiederkehr (published source currently unknown but will be credited once identified).
Psalm 23 Redux
This I know:
My life is in your hands.
I have nothing to fear.
I stop,
breathe,
listen.
Beneath the whirl of what is
is a deep down quiet place.
You beckon me to tarry there.
This is the place
where unnamed hungers
are fed, the place
of clear water,
refreshment.
My senses stilled,
I drink deeply,
at home in timeless territory.
In peril, I remember:
Death's dark vale holds no menace.
I lean into You;
Your eternal presence comforts me.
I am held tenderly.
In the midst of all that troubles,
that threatens and diminishes,
You set abundance before me.
You lift my head; my vision clears.
The blessing cup overflows.
This I know:
You are my home and my hope,
my strength and my solace,
and so shall You ever be.
In Carla A. Grosch-Miller, Psalms Redux: Poems and Prayers,
(London: Canterbury Press, 2014), p13.
This I know:
My life is in your hands.
I have nothing to fear.
I stop,
breathe,
listen.
Beneath the whirl of what is
is a deep down quiet place.
You beckon me to tarry there.
This is the place
where unnamed hungers
are fed, the place
of clear water,
refreshment.
My senses stilled,
I drink deeply,
at home in timeless territory.
In peril, I remember:
Death's dark vale holds no menace.
I lean into You;
Your eternal presence comforts me.
I am held tenderly.
In the midst of all that troubles,
that threatens and diminishes,
You set abundance before me.
You lift my head; my vision clears.
The blessing cup overflows.
This I know:
You are my home and my hope,
my strength and my solace,
and so shall You ever be.
In Carla A. Grosch-Miller, Psalms Redux: Poems and Prayers,
(London: Canterbury Press, 2014), p13.
From Thoughts in Solitude
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.
In Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence: Prayers and Drawings, (London: SPCK, 2002), pvii.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.
In Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence: Prayers and Drawings, (London: SPCK, 2002), pvii.
I think that maybe
I will be a little surer
of being a little nearer.
That's all. Eternity
is in the understanding
that that little is more than enough.
In R. S. Thomas, Selected Poems, (London: Penguin, 2003), p229.
Clearing
Do not try to serve
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to the world
so worthy of rescue.
Martha Postlethwaite (published source currently unknown but will be credited once identified).
Do not try to serve
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to the world
so worthy of rescue.
Martha Postlethwaite (published source currently unknown but will be credited once identified).
How to pray
an empty room
asks to be sat in
for a long time
at different hours of the day and night
in many weathers
alone without words
perhaps hold an object in your hands
a stone
a cup
a length of beads
for a long time
or place something well chosen
on the floor or a window ledge
where you will look at it
for a long time
a cup a vase a stone
a piece of wood
without asking or telling anything
imposing your own shape on the emptiness
as lightly as possible
leave and enter
many times
without disturbing its silences
gradually over many years
a room thus entered and departed
will teach you how to furnish and dispose of
the paraphernalia of a life
Nicola Slee, in Gavin D'Costa, Eleanor Nesbitt, Mark Pryce, Ruth Shelton and Nicola Slee,
Making Nothing Happen: Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), p32.
an empty room
asks to be sat in
for a long time
at different hours of the day and night
in many weathers
alone without words
perhaps hold an object in your hands
a stone
a cup
a length of beads
for a long time
or place something well chosen
on the floor or a window ledge
where you will look at it
for a long time
a cup a vase a stone
a piece of wood
without asking or telling anything
imposing your own shape on the emptiness
as lightly as possible
leave and enter
many times
without disturbing its silences
gradually over many years
a room thus entered and departed
will teach you how to furnish and dispose of
the paraphernalia of a life
Nicola Slee, in Gavin D'Costa, Eleanor Nesbitt, Mark Pryce, Ruth Shelton and Nicola Slee,
Making Nothing Happen: Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), p32.
Psalm 131 Redux
O Lord, my heart is open
and my mind is freed
from the struggle to make sense
even of who, of how, You are.
(I breathe.)
I come to the broad plain,
the fullness of silence,
to You.
Peace envelops me.
I sink into You.
I want for nothing.
(This is the still point
of the turning world.)
I rest in You.
(This is the beginning.
I am.)
In Carla A. Grosch-Miller, Psalms Redux: Poems and Prayers, (London: Canterbury Press, 2014), p82.
O Lord, my heart is open
and my mind is freed
from the struggle to make sense
even of who, of how, You are.
(I breathe.)
I come to the broad plain,
the fullness of silence,
to You.
Peace envelops me.
I sink into You.
I want for nothing.
(This is the still point
of the turning world.)
I rest in You.
(This is the beginning.
I am.)
In Carla A. Grosch-Miller, Psalms Redux: Poems and Prayers, (London: Canterbury Press, 2014), p82.
Folk Tale
Prayers like gravel
flung at the sky's
window, hoping to attract
the loved one's
attention. But without
visible plaits to let
down for the believer
to climb up,
to what purpose open
that far casement?
I would
have refrained long since
but that peering once
through my locked fingers
I thought that I detected
the movement of a curtain.
In R. S. Thomas, Selected Poems,
(London: Penguin, 2003), p186.
Prayers like gravel
flung at the sky's
window, hoping to attract
the loved one's
attention. But without
visible plaits to let
down for the believer
to climb up,
to what purpose open
that far casement?
I would
have refrained long since
but that peering once
through my locked fingers
I thought that I detected
the movement of a curtain.
In R. S. Thomas, Selected Poems,
(London: Penguin, 2003), p186.