Yesterday I came home and cooked a huge pot of chicken noodle soup – I think it was 95 degrees and we were still wet from the pool. It turned out decent, but honestly, I wanted the smell in the house as much as we needed the meal.
When life swirls, the kitchen can be a place of comfort and clarity, (yes, especially with My Brothers Friends Girlfriends Cake still in the refrigerator. )
But when I make it out of there, somewhere along the way, I have come to love, need, hunger for prayers…Here’s a favorite by Walter Brueggemann.
And Then You
We arrange our lives as best we can, to keep your holiness at bay,
with our pieties, our doctrines, our liturgies, our moralities, our secret ideologies,
Safe, virtuous, settled.
And then you-
you and your dreams, you and your visions, you and your purposes, you and your commands, you and your neighbors.
We find your holiness not at bay, but probing, pervading, insisting, demanding.
And we yield, sometimes gladly,
sometimes resentfully,
sometimes late…or soon.
We yield because you, beyond us, are our God.
We are your creatures met by your holiness, by your holiness made our true selves.
And we yield. Amen.
(October 1998)
If you love poetry and need prayer, or love prayer and need poetry, or are hungry for clarity in a world swirling, this volume is a favorite. Yay for the Great Room Switch which brought forth lost book treasures!
The soup, while missing something, was perfect. Maybe some Adobo??