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Prayers which address themes of the Eucharist, the Church, the Bible and wisdom

Bread broken

Bread broken
Christ broken

Wine spilt
Blood spilt

The scattering
The separation

The breaking
The consternation

The death
The humiliation

And we can
in the remembrance

And we can
in the conference

And we can
There is a chance

Be together with the broken one
One body out of the chaos

Church and Spirit

Not State
Not Institution
Not Established Church

Not Corporations
Not Hierarchies
Not Structures of Command

These are not the seedbed of the Spirit

They may be necessary
May have some capacity to facilitate
May be better, or worse

But the Spirit grows here

in silence
in smallness
in prayer

That is, in the Communities of the Faithful

Who, recovering the ancient wisdom of the desert
here, in the mechanized, cosmopolitan world
doggedly
uncertainly
stumble towards love

Holy Words

For the rumbustious energy of the Bible
For its flagrant, contrary diversity
For its beauty
For its passion
For its unsettling intensity

Or, to be exact,

For the sweeping myths of Genesis
For the exhilarating liberation of Exodus
For the legal inventiveness of Leviticus
For the careful numbering... of Numbers
For the dutiful retelling of Deuteronomy
For Joshua, I suppose, and his uncomfortably ethnic cleansing
For the wild archetypes of Judges
For the steely commitment of Ruth
For the pained wisdom of Samuel
For the tragic sadness of Saul
For the canny passion of David
For the cosmopolitan sagacity of Solomon
For the reckless awkwardness of Elijah
For the stumbling faithfulness of Josiah, Jehosaphat and Hezekiah
For the anguished faithfulness of Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah
For the scholarly persistence of Ezra
For the political nous of Nehemiah
For the terrifying depths of Job
For the joyous, raging, overwhelming singing of the Psalms
For the calm confidence of Proverbs
For the knowing chuckles of Ecclesiastes
For the sensual extravagance of the Song of Songs
For the serenity of Daniel
For the style of Esther
For the extravagant optimism of Isaiah
For the keening of Lamentations
For the apocalyptic imagination of Ezekiel
For the serious pantomime of Jonah
For the brief shard of Obadiah (and all those other so-called minor Prophets)
For the final exclamation of Malachi

Then

For Mark exploding Jesus across the page
For Matthew weaving the old with the new
For Luke stretching the story from Bethlehem to Rome
For the eloquent meditations of John
For the universal gospel of Romans
For the serious, passionate letters to Thessalonica, Corinth, Galatia, Philippi and Philemon
For the unfurling theology of Ephesians and Hebrews
For the stiff earnestness of Timothy and Titus
For the insights of Peter (one and two)
For the savage kindness of James
For the brief contribution of Jude
For the majestic, eye-popping, fantastical myth-making of the Apocalypse

We thank you, living Word of God, made flesh

Wisdom

Wisdom and desire
Wisdom is the soul of religion
the road less traveled
the way of the crucified One

Wisdom is not limited:
the belief of one denomination
the creed of the intellectuals

She is the mother of creation
the voice of the earth
the learning of all the world's wide peoples

She is the very breath of God
the beginning and the beauty
the end and the enfolding

She is Wisdom
the heart's desire