A Prayer for Heavy Times

I flew to Orlando two days after the shooting at Pulse Nightclub, and two days before the little boy was killed by an alligator at a Disney resort. It felt heavy, all of it, and I found myself writing a prayer. I thought about sharing it at the time, and it just didn't feel right yet.

Now there is the bombing in Baghdad and the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. And other things too, so that scrolling down my news feed this morning, it all just felt really heavy. And I went back to that prayer and prayed it again.

I share it not because I'm awesome at writing prayers, but because sometimes praying other people's words can be really meaningful to me, and I wanted to put this one out there for others who feel the heaviness of all this.

A couple of notes on the process of writing this prayer:
I've been practicing understanding God in different ways, stepping outside the images of God as father or God as king (while those images are certainly true and found in many places in Scripture, they are not the only meaningful ones). Lately I have been praying to Jesus as my Brother, which is both beautiful and strangely intimate.
Also, I drew heavily from Psalm 123 for this prayer.

A Prayer for Orlando (and Other Heavy Times)

Brother Jesus, we are spent with grief. Brother, we are broken. We are an open wound. Have mercy, Brother, have mercy; for we have had more than enough contempt. We have had more than enough scorn and more than enough hatred and more than enough fear. Be gracious to us. In your great mercy, show yourself kind.
Amen.

A Steadiness of Hand

Found this poem in a notebook I was flipping through--written circa my junior year of college, I think. I'd completely forgotten about it, but I rather like it so I thought I'd share.

He steps back as I draw the bow,

left arm straight, right hand on the string.

I am still as windlessness at night.

I release.

In the edges of my sight,

his figure stills my hand,

stops my breath.

My arrow quivers

at the center of the mark.

He stills my hand.

A Letter To A Friend Which I Poemed Because It Felt Poemy

The seams of my being

had been bulging alarmingly for days,

but yesterday evening and today were such a relief.

I sent my thesis draft to my committee last night,

which I'm fairly convinced triggered a rush of endorphins,

(turning things in—a grad student's drug of choice).

It means a brief reprieve

(hm, there's poetry in those two words together, I think),

not from having to do things,

but from feeling anxious about them.

I looked at stars tonight

and breathed deep

and did not feel rushed.

My defense is two weeks from tomorrow,

and two weeks from tomorrow is gloriously finite—

two weeks is practically nothing.

After feeling for months that this dreadful thing

was going to go on forever,

it finally feels finite.
My soul is still tonight.

Deep Down Things

It’s spring today,

because spring isn’t a date;

it’s slate-layered thunderclouds

backdropping the rounded

shapes of blooming

Bradford pear trees,

and the thick scent
of rain.

"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things."

--Gerard Manley Hopkins