I saw this the other day and thought I'd share it:
May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.
May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.
May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.
Thanks for sharing this post. In Russia we don't have a car and so we get to walk a lot around our neighborhood and community. We often pray over the people, businesses, and other places we walk by. This is a blessing I will love to pray over this area.
Thanks so much.
Aaron Mc.
Thanks for this post. The last petition is the most difficult, I think. See enough of the human condition and hope for change, even with God's grace, bleeds out. This is a good prayer.
I’m in a Brother Sun and Sister Moon mood.
Howling at the moon. Already had my morning run. Under the Sun.
What do I get for my sweat?
I come here for love? And get irritated?
I return to work – and see William Blake’s – Michael Binding Satan – set as my desktop wallpaper. Blake’s insanity mad-making me for years.
So I’m sufficiently Blakean-mad. And now Franciscan irritated. With a pile of poverty law cases on my desk.
Trying to know if the Lamb’s war (mostly an in-house Quaker reference - apologies) – is won by me? – Or the Lamb?
Cheer,
Jim
I dunno about this.... I can't see this being "speeched" by Palin or Bachman; and if they can't rally these ideas, I don't know if I can get behind them... but they sound so Christ-like; I'm confused.
Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann demonstrably have more innate compassion than the vast hordes of self-important liberals whose major claim to fame is professing compassion and then using other people's money to lock the disadvantaged into a cycle of generalized, soul-crushing dependency. As to Bachmann and Palin, their biographies prove it. But it's clear you have not bothered to check the facts, Mike, opting instead to buy into the liberal media-punks' narrative. Sad, but predictable.
I guess you missed the sarcasm there?
Actually qb, I would consider myself closer to David Brooks styled conservative than a classic liberal.
As to sources of soul crushing, "free-market fundamentalism" I would venture, has done more to crush the souls of individuals and families over the past 30 years than any "liberal" attempt to compensate for injustices instilled in our democratic society by their dogmatic approach to reality; dogmas that have become equivalent to natural laws even though they're products of our imagination.
As to my criticism of Bachman (I live in her state) and Palin, certainly they can take refuge in this prayer's third stanza. Stanza's 1, 2, and 4, I would argue, confronts them: they both act as if all of life can be reduced to a single recipe and that they are in complete charge of the ingredient list.
I arrive at this conclusion, not by reading or listening to interpreters in the guise of Limbough or Beck (and their resulting echo chambers) but by listening to them in their own presentations. In other words, my sources of information are primary- not secondary.
So even if you're biased to the belief that all news sources except for fox, are liberal and innately unfair to Palin and Bachman, and any criticism is considered proof in service of such belief, my criticism has by-passed echo chambers on both the left and the right.
Mr. Beck,
Do you mind if I reshare the blessing?
-Vallie
It's not mine, share away!
Benedictine Prayer by Sister Ruth Fox 1985
NOT Franciscan