June Prayers | For Rest
“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
DEAR FRIENDS,
What a gift to have seasons of rest in anticipation of our Great Rest. The early church even saw our sleep each night as a dress rehearsal for our own deaths which is echoed in some of the compline prayers handed down to us: “now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…”
Whether we’ve practiced this small daily surrender or not, for most of us, summer provides an opportunity to remember that we are more than just worker-bees. We exist in relationship to our Creator, to others and to this created world. May this month offer you moments to remember from Whom you came and to Whom you will return; may you experience the childlike rest that comes from contemplating such a holy mystery.
To Live in the Mercy of God
BY DENISE LEVERTOV
To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
before ribs of shelter
open!
To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.
And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.
To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.
To float, upheld,
as salt water
would hold you,
once you dared.
.
To live in the mercy of God.
To feel vibrate the enraptured
waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.
To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?
Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
flung on resistance.