An Eighth Collection of Reflective Prayers

William Flewelling

Description

These Reflective Prayers are the result of permitting a gentle reading of the lectionary texts for a given service to resonate in me and emerge as a searching engagement of the word with my spirit in a mood of settled joy. The ninety samples are the most recent, in order, at the time of publication.

Sujets

• Religion
• Spirituality
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 15 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798823001236
• Langue: English

Extrait

AN EIGHTH COLLECTION OF REFLECTIVE PRAYERS
WILLIAM FLEWELLING
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
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© 2023 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 02/15/2023
 
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0122-9 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0123-6 (e)
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Also By This Author
Poetry
Time Grown Li vely
From My Corner Seat
Enticing My Del ight
The Arthur P oems
From Recurrent Yester days
In Silhou ette
To Silent Disappear ance
Teasing The Soul
Allowing The Heart To Contemp late
As Lace Along The Wood
To Trace Familia rity
The Matt P oems
Elaborating Life
The Buoyancy Of Unsuspected Joy
To Haunt The Clever Sheer Of G race
The Christmas P oems
Life Is Empl oyed
Adrift In Seas Of Strange ness
Composure In Constr aint
An Elegance That Daw dles
The Ash Wind S ighs
Unplanned Obsolesc ence
Savored Once And Once A gain
The Simple Curvature Of W ords
Weave Tapestries Of Naught At All
On Inscape’s C urve
Cacophony Of Sil ence
Playful Courte sies
The Burl Becomes The Blosso ming
Inn-By-The-Bye Stories
Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 , 16,
17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 , 23
Devotional
Some Reflective Pra yers
Reflective Prayers: A Second Collec tion
A Third Collection Of Reflective Pra yers
For Your Quiet Medita tion
A Fourth Collection Of Reflective Pra yers
Cantica S acra
A Fifth Collection Of Reflective Pra yers
A Sixth Collection Of Reflective Pra yers
A Second “For Your Quiet Medita tion”
A Second Cantica S acra
Without A F lock
Hymn Texts To A Welsh Meter – 1
A Seventh Collection of Reflective Pra yers
Writings On The Spiritual Life
Psalms And Selected Canti cles
Directions Of A Pastoral Lifetime
Part I: Pastoral Notes, Letters To Anna, Occasional Pamph lets
Part II: Psalm Meditations, Regula V itae
Part III: Elders’ Stu dies
Part IV: Stu dies
Part V: The Song Of Songs: An Attrac tion
Exegetical Works
From The Catholic Epistles: Bible Stu dies
Paul’s Letter To The Romans: A Bible S tudy
The Book Of Hebrews: A Bible S tudy
Letters Pauline and Pastoral: Bible Stu dies
The First Letter Of Paul To The Corinthians: A Bible S tudy
The Gospel According to Luke 1:1 Through 9:50: A Bible S tudy
The Gospel According to Luke 9:51 Through 19:27: A Bible S tudy
The Gospel According to Luke 19:28 Through 24:53: A Bible S tudy
From The Minor Prophets: Bible Stu dies
all published by AuthorHouse.com
Foreword
In late 1983 I bought a copy of The Prayers of Catherine of Sienna and shortly later read it. The editor, Suzanne Noffke, O.P., in her discussion of the text notes that they seem to have come after Mass and reflected the appointed texts for the day. At least that was the impression I carried with me after my reading of the text. In the following season, I began to muse over a prayer response to the texts I use in worship – I have followed the lectionary since about the beginning of Advent in 1973, near the end of my second full semester in Seminary. I began to experiment with the idea of reflecting this way on the texts for 5 February 1984.
The process took root. In those early years, I would spend Tuesday mornings writing first a For Your Quiet Meditation and then a Reflective Prayer for the second Sunday or service ahead. I recall finding the Reflective Prayers emerging quickly and fervently in those times, often overcrowding the page and taxing the creativity of my secretary, Chris Scott, to get them onto the page! [I produced them on a single page, set so as to be kept on the front and back of a single half sheet of paper.] They quickly became a central part of my dealing with the texts as I headed into preparing sermons and liturgical materials for the upcoming services.
After retirement, the schedule of doing these things altered somewhat but the energy evolved in the process did not. I continue to find the form expressive and alive and vital. The discovery of the prayers at the tip of my pencil remains enticing and exciting to me. I slowly read the three texts – the reader can see they are listed at the heading of the prayer form – and let them mull in my heart and/or mind until an opening emerges, one which propels the ensuing lines. The consistent cadence – iambic in rhythm almost always – provides a sort of drum beat to the prayer and the imagery, either directly or indirectly, comes from the texts or the reading of the texts into my consciousness.
By the time I was settling into the prayers as a more or less mature form, certainly by the time I began collecting them in electronic as well as paper files on 1 November 2009, files subsequently published in Some Reflective Prayers and succeeding collections, the prayers were increasingly expressions of the engagement of the texts with me, my devotional center in the context of my engagement with and experience of God.
I have found the metaphors that play with exposing this interaction to me, to the page, to the reader merging and emerging over the years. They recur, of course, and transmute over years into other suggested ways of heart for dealing with God in this sort of context. And they remain personal even as I put them in a place where they may (or may not, as it often proves) come alive to another, either serially or simply as a single event.
I leave these ninety – each of my collections has ended up with ninety samples, that being the number that accidentally landed in that first collection – to the sampling of my readers in the hopes that they leave echoes in the heart that allow their own sources to emerge afresh, recollected embers come to life for you.
William Flewelling
Note: The Prayers of Catherine of Sienna was published by Paulist Press of Ramsey, NJ in 1983. My copy shows it came in the mail on 8 December 1983. I attribute the impetus to Suzanne Noffke’s work; the development of the form here is entirely mine.
 
6 June 2021
1830
Genesis 3:8-15
2 Corinthians 4:13-25
Mark 3:20-35
 
O Lord, your Spirit infiltrates ineffably;
and I imply thy thoroughgoing teeming joy
has come to percolate my hidden heart.
Inside the disappointments of this hour,
discouragements that batter so my battened soul,
your gentle, fond caress incites the Deep
to savor your address.
I so know how the naked feeling lies assured
among life’s ill-accustomed ways.
Yet, in the courtesy of shy and latent, subtle pleasures, I
retain my heart with unexpected ease.
Ours is a supple world that, willow like, absorbs
the rancor and the storm
to savor better peace
than bitter hearts can ever know.
Inside the aftermath of afternoons’ ill ease,
when, in the hidden shades a garden plays about,
awareness strains the boundaries of ease
and reaps embarrassment instead.
I knew the underlying leaps of fear
that turn ‘I hid’ into ‘I was induced’
unnecessarily.
But folly is so natural, a bend in time
to situate a sheltered clime
wherein life may pretend.
Pretending is so fable-full, a sliding from the Spirit’s soar
into some fantasy that limps erratically
about the necessary truth.
But no, my Lord, this battened soul,
protecting, as it were, against the throes of peace,
insists it owns a readied mist,
a cautious time of hiddenness.
And, all the while, your Spirit is in style
abjectly current in the inner reaches of despair.
You play that earnest amply, Lord,
so adequate that fear must well deplore.
My Lord, they said you are beside yourself,
quite out of step with those who only know
the landscape of adjusted guile.
They say your Spirit is unclean,
inadequate to dominate the scene.
They speak as if Beelzebul adorn
your inscape haughtily.
My Lord: you yet instill my breath and will,
your Spirit in my midst,
unwitting though I be.
It is as you, inside yourself with peace,
contend with raw affliction here
to settle hope from fear.
Incorrigible as time must be, my Lord,
I entertain your singularity and leap
as joy induces awe, and keep
as incidents must circulate in Spirit’s maw.
Within this thoroughgoing while,
I find my style revamped to hold
the steeping of your joy
in ample days as I employ
your gracious undercurrent sway.
Is there a residue in my decay,
a breach where I may lie away
or stand in isolated plan –
a strait to stay the hour?
I must suppose despair disposes love
what you, as Spirit thrives in love,
unwind, a nurtured soul like mine.