These are the days of Miracle & Wonder!

Coptic Daily Prayers pt 4

The first three posts in this series were of the section of these prayers that originates specifically in the Coptic Church, but the remainder are far older than that: they are Psalms, and there are four of them.

The first Psalm is one of introspection, repentance, and forgiveness - a chance to get the ugly things out of my system and to reallign myself to God.  Some days this is as far as I get, but I know that I always need to get this far.
 

PSALM 51 [abridged]

Have mercy on me O God, according to Your loving-kindness;
According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
Cleanse me from my sin;
For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Create in me a clean heart, O God
Renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from Your presence,
Or take Your Holy Spirit from me,
But restore to me the joy of Your salvation
And uphold me with Your generous Spirit.

For the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart;
These, O God, You will not despise.

Hear Your servant's humble prayer. 

 

 

I have been told that the further you walk with God, the more utterly aware of your own fallen nature you become, and maybe that's true.  But I had always wanted it to mean that I would progressively get harder on myself, due to achieving increasingly high standards in Godly living, whereas the reality is not that I'm getting any more righteous, only more aware of my need for forgiveness.

I can't spend even a few minutes under the weight of sin, which clouds everything and burdens everything and twists me into self-hate.  That's why I need this prayer.

I'm grateful for King David writing it (and having the guts to distribute it for public use, written at the lowest point in his life), for the emphasis on the magnitude of God's mercy, and particularly for the reminder that the worship God is interested in comes from a broken and contrite heart.  He loves and restores us.
 

JRR Tolkien on the death of his wife Edith

Since I came of age, and our 3 years separation was ended, we had shared all joys and griefs, and all opinions (in agreement or otherwise), so that I still often find myself thinking 'I must tell Edith about this' - and then suddenly I feel like a castaway left on a barren island under a heedless sky after the loss of a great ship.

... the Luthien Tinuviel of my own personal 'romance', with her long dark hair, fair face and starry eyes, and beautiful voice...

But now she has gone before Beren, leaving him indeed one-handed.

[from Letter 332 of 'The Letters of JRR Tolkien']
 

Melancholic moments sometimes strike me, and I feel for a second something of how I would respond if Maria were to die.  I won't describe it now, but I will say what happens in the middle of it: I find myself loving her more (or being more aware of the degree to which I love her).

'The way to love anything is to realise that it may be lost' said Chesterton.

a humble pride in the impossible truth

So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility,
I am very proud of my religion;
I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition.
I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds
(as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity),
for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead,
and only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.

–G. K. CHESTERTON, in Autobiography, 1936

Brennan Manning: 1934-2013

Some small snippets from this great man:

As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity,
we... accept that we are impoverished and broken,
and realize that, if we were not, we would be God.

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark.

There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face
and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

Do the truth quietly without display.

The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.

Basic Rules of Religion

From A Resident Alien [letter 12]

Letter 12 - The one in which Maria & David prepare to leave Charleston

The Englishman-in-America undergoes a daily dose of being asked where he is from.  At present, I spend about thirty hours a week waiting tables in a restaurant, serving in the region of 200 people; about 20% of them ask me where I'm from.

"Where's home?" they ask.

Answering is tricky.  What is 'home' anyway?

Optional answers:

i. Wherever I lay my hat, that's my home
But I've had about sixteen homes in the last twelve years, in four countries, and I wouldn't regard any of these houses as 'home'.

ii. Home is where the heart is
Sadly, it isn't feasible to set up perpetual camp on Stanage Edge outside Sheffield, nor in the blackberry-strewn sunken lanes of east Devon in early September.  Alas.

iii. Home is where you're from
I was born in Yorkshire and raised in Hertfordshire, to parents from the Westcountry whose antecedents include Cornish, Norman, German, Irish, Welsh, and Saxon people.  And my wife is Lebanese-German-English-American.

iv. Home is where you're going
Which means that if I've been adopted into the family of God, I will always ache to be 'somewhere else', and if I haven't, then home is an idealised construct that will never exist outside my imagination.  Checkmate.

In the context of the restaurant, it's not really important to have an answer - most people are only asking so that they have an excuse to tell me about their friend who once went to London, or to ask me what I think of William and Kate - but it's worth thinking about at the moment, since Maria and I are preparing to move (again) in our neverending quest for life in all its fullness.

We have been invited by Joce and Josiah Lockhart (friends from our time in Edinburgh) to partner with them on establishing the Lockhart Family Farm,* and will be moving up to Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the next few months to commence our new life there.

The Farm is a social enterprise aiming to address social and environmental issues through permaculture farming, education programmes for adults and children, consumer buy-in schemes, and a bunch more interesting stuff which we will be part of creating.

In addition to farm-related work, we will be looking to continue pursuing our vocations in the spheres of church [me], and of health, fitness, and nutrition [Maria].  And hopefully we will find home along the way.

 

Coptic Daily Prayers pt 3

This section comes straight after the Introductory Prayer (previous post), in which God is approached and thanked.  Here, we get on to some detailed requests.  Reflections below.
 

Therefore we ask, and appeal to Your goodness, O lover of mankind,
That You grant us to conclude this blessed day
And all the days of our lives
In peace and in Your fear.

All envy, all temptation, all works of Satan,
All intrigues of the wicked; rising up of enemies, seen and unseen;
Do cast away from us, and from all Your people,
And from this, Your holy place.

Grant us the endowments and benefactions, Lord, as You have promised,
To trample on serpents, scorpions, and over all the power of the Enemy.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,
Through the grace, mercy, and love of all mankind
Of the only-begotten Son,
Our Lord God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

 

In praying this prayer every day, different emphases and nuances emerge and replace one another constantly.  For example, I have often directed the 'And from this, Your holy place' line to a part of me (eg. the heart, the brain) or to a particular location (not necessarily where I am).  But I'm not in that swing of things just now.

Likewise, there have been (plenty of) times when trampling on 'serpents, scorpions, and over all the power of the Enemy' has been like a wrestling match, with the words standing in stark contrast to my inability to trample on anything whatsoever, let alone demonic evil.

At present, it is the asking to reach the end of the day in peace which is standing out to me, particularly because the prayer is not that the day would be filled with peace minute-by-minute, but rather that a sense of perspective and concluding shalom would be reached, whatever is endured along the way.

Coptic Daily Prayers pt 2

O Lord and Master and Almighty God,
Father of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ

We thank You on every occasion,
And in every condition,
And for all things.
For You have protected, assisted, preserved, and accepted us;
You've had compassion upon us, supported us,
And brought us to this hour.
 

This, taken together with the previous post, is the 'introductory' section of the daily prayers.  Some thoughts:

- There is a process here, with some parts being declaratory, others said to 'us', and others to Him.

- The Copts are very careful to make it clear that we are praying to the Father, but in the name of the Trinity.  I'm not sure what the distinct significance is though.

- The prayer is corporate - 'we' not 'I' - regardless of how many are praying.

- To thank God 'on every occasion' is possibly the hardest thing in the Christian Life, not only because we usually don't feel thankful, but also because we often feel the opposite: resentful, disheartened, let down.  To pray this prayer of thankfulness (acknowledging God's practical involvement in our lives, whether or not it has been noticed) has been possibly the most forming part of this whole 6-year discipline for me, as I've been forced to seek for gratefulness regardless of the situation.

- The imminent ending - 'brought us to this hour' - has often had the effect of making me wonder, "Has everything in my whole life been orchestrated to bring me to this point, this day, this hour?  Is NOW what I have been waiting for, what I have been made for?"

Coptic Daily Prayers pt 1

I pray set-prayers (pretty much) every day, and I'm going to break them down into bits over the next few posts, with some brief reflections.

The mode of prayer I use is from the Coptic monastic tradition (which I was introduced to by YWAM and Dr Atif in 2005).  Monks around the world pray every Psalm every day, with introductory prayers, kneeling/prostration, and space for spontaneous prayer.

And it begins like this.
.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord bless us.
Amen.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.
Amen.

Let us give thanks to the gracious and most merciful God,
the Father of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ,
for He has protected, assisted, preserved, and accepted us,
has had compassion upon us, supported us, and brought us to this hour.

Let us also ask Him, the Almighty God, to keep us in peace;
this blessed day and all the days of our lives.

.

Confessions du Jour

In the name of honesty, and a completely un-called-for level of transparency, here are some of the things that few people know I enjoy:

Sleeping with my head under the pillow.
Weighing myself before and after using the toilet.
Writing with propellor-pencils.
Commentating aloud, whenever watching sport alone.
Wearing two pairs of socks at once.
Cleaning my ears, even though they're already clean.
Re-reading books multiple times, rather than wasting time starting new ones.
Working out the publishing date of maps by what countries were in existence.
Preaching to myself when alone.
Cleaning under my nails with the page-edge of whatever I'm reading.

Hope you found that enlightening :)