Supermarket Prayer

The net of a contemplative's prayer is cast wide. Nothing of life falls outside the parameters of prayer: traveling on a vacation, sitting at the computer, keeping the house, working in the yard, raising the young ones, loving a spouse, setting out into a weekend, having people over for a meal.  I stopped in a supermarket the other day and then sat in the car for awhile waiting for a friend to come out from the doctor's office. Here's the prayer I wrote:

Father, Son and Holy Spirit
praise to you for all this diversity,
these apples:
Ambrosia, Fuji, MacIntosh, Gala.
For the workers who picked them,
packed them,
shipped them.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
praise to you for all this diversity,
blackberries,
strawberries,
raspberries,
blueberries.
For the hidden farmer workers
on the bottom rung,
picking fruit to keep us healthy,
while they remain broken,
away from home,
fearful,
insecure,
un-insured.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
a blessing for the young fellow
who while stocking
asparagus,
avocados and
cherry tomatoes
onto shelves,
had the presence of mind
to say "good morning" as I walked by.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
keep an eye on this young mother
scanning the shelves
for baby cough syrup,
or baby ear drops,
or baby teething drops,
or baby congestion drops,
or baby diaper rash cream.
Anxiety
on top of anxiety,
give her the support she needs,
the remedy she's hoping works,
joy and peace of mind.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
a blessing for the cashier lady
who wasn't troubled by my delaying anxiety
at not being able to locate the plastic discount card
among the fifteen others attached to my car keys,
but who joked a little at her own confusions.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
returning to the car
some elderly folks with canes
slow,
slow,
are going into the nearby clinic.
They want to be freed of their complaint,
hoping for wholeness -
some easing up
of troubles.

Let Everyone And Everything Praise God

Snow Crystal Alyssum

God of imagination, I greet you!

Let the greeny-blue orb of our journeying around the sun praise you.
Let the birthing of stars and planets undiscovered praise you.
Let the mountain majesties and the humbler hills praise you.
Let the oceans, wide and deep, praise you.
Let the rainfall, snowfall, leaf-fall praise you.
Let the dwindling forests praise you.

Let the ferns and mosses, the flowering plants and prairie grasses praise you.
Let the animals of feather, fur and fin praise you.
Let the farms and fields, the soil and air praise you.
Let the winds and breezes, the day time and night time praise you.
Let the honeybees and butterflies praise you.
Let the great blue heron and the hummingbird praise you.

Let our thinking, our feeling and our doing praise you.
Let our days, our weeks, our months and years praise you to eternity.
Let the cathedral and the chapel, the temple and the mosque praise you.
Let the merciful and the clean of heart praise you.
Let the peacemakers praise you.
Let the ancestors in their struggles praise you.

Let the brokenhearted in their sea and desert crossings praise you.
Let the children of border incarceration praise you.
Let the families of separation praise you.
Let the people of panic and dismay praise you.
Let the victim girls and boys of greed praise you.
Let the people of no-conscience praise you.

Let Mary - Mother, Friend and First Disciple praise you.
Let Peter, James and John praise you.
Let Abraham and Sarah, Francis and Clare, Benedict and Scholastica praise you.
Let the monks and nuns, the mothers and the fathers praise you.
Let the excluded, the vulnerable, the dead-ended praise you.
Let the elites and the comfortable praise you.

And may I, close to the earth about myself, praise you.

Father Stephen P. Morris

Intercessions ~ Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We join Pope Francis in prayer,/ asking that our families would be schools of true human growth./ May his visit to Africa this September be safe and fruitful./ We pray to the Lord.

Monday is the Feast of St. Martha,/ who with her siblings,/ Mary and Lazarus,/ was a friend of Jesus./ We pray for the people God has given us as friends,/ especially those who are not well,/ or who are suffering and struggling in any way./ We pray to the Lord.

The plural words: us, our and we/ appear eight times in the short prayer Jesus  teaches us to pray/ as we stand before the Father./ May we learn well/ that Christianity is a religion of welcome,/ inclusion and belonging./ We pray to the Lord.

The prayer of Jesus also enjoins us to forgive others as we have been forgiven./ May we learn to pray for the well-being and salvation of all./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the President of the United States to be a healer of wounds and divisions./ For our nation to model for the world a new protective regard for our planet-home./ We pray to the Lord.

May we never be begrudging in our giving,/ but always ready to give happily,/ to the poor,/ the aged,/ the needy,/ and especially the causes which serve children,/ We pray to the Lord.