Tags
Ancient Songs Sung Anew, Lynn Bauman, pray, presence of God, psalm 67, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vision, voiceless
This spring has been unusually cold and rainy. Today promises to be the only day this week with no rain but predictions also say we may be wet again by 6:00 this evening. Before I start to moan and groan about it I need to pay attention to Psalm 67 which today reminds me to look farther and deeper than my own back yard. As Lynn Bauman suggests, Our task as contemporary creatures is not simply to pray for ourselves, or narrowly for those around us who are dear to us, but to give voice for the whole earth…Imagine yourself as creation’s voice, as an instrument through which those without a voice can enter with praise the presence of God.
He is speaking, of course, about more than the weather although in some places the loss occasioned by that one element in the world has lately been monumental. He goes on to offer a challenge to us that carries us beyond the borders of our own lives and our own times to a larger vision. Listen:
Reflect upon your vision of the future for the world. There is often a wide gap between the the vision of beauty held out for the world and the experience of pain and ugliness we find within it. Those who pray hold these two regions together and will not let them fall apart.
As you pray this prayer (Psalm 67) imagine yourself praying for the voiceless creatures of earth, and for those human beings who have lost hope that such a future might even exist. (Ancient Songs Sung Anew, p. 166)