2021-2022 – Give Thanks and Live In Hope
Give Thanks and Live In Hope
God of the Seasons, and lover of the ages, master of the moment,
You are beyond time yet within all time.
We return to you what you have given to us –
the moments, the minutes, the hours, the days,
the weeks, the months and the year of 2021.
Time has been good to us again,
and we thank you for freely giving us these human bodies,
these events and these relationships.
We have lived another year and we have died another year,
and you are soon giving us the beginning of another.
We now hand over to you the past year,
With all that it gave us and all it took from us,
knowing all are necessary, just like our breath.
We trust you in both the giving and the taking,
the inhaling and the exhaling.
May every breath of 2022 be a breath of the Holy Spirit,
joyfully received and joyfully returned,
beginning with this one right now.
Amen.
(Richard Rohr)
Give Thanks and Live In Hope
Father
I wondered out from know not where
My spirit as the clear morn air
With glint of morning light, I was your delight
I danced with the morning breeze, played the leaves upon the trees
The grass was my pleasured bed the flowers feathered for my head
The clouds were but my cloak, my face shone with the sun
I was your lover I was your son
I was Adam before the deed
I was the tree the sky the breeze
I was the garden I was Eve you the Sower and I the seed
The blackbird entered the wondrous tree in dry branch entwined he
With yellow eye and crack of wing all was lost nothing still
I had become as separate thing
Your seed polluted by that black squawking, squealing, squeaky thing
I heard you weeping for your son Oh! loving Father what I done
On broken branch, I entered time in downward spin
Tumbling bush fly and weed, polluted seed and sprouting horn into spike and thorn I was born
“Father”, You the Breeze followed with the morning dew, promising to make all anew
Before the day was done you would again embrace your son
You nailed your own heart to a dry piece of wood
Bleeding profusely droplets of precious love
Tenderly watering your seeds of love
Blessing the heart that willingly receives that heart too shall surely bleed, scattering fly and weed
Father, I am the new watered seed, lifting me gently with your breeze
The husk shall fall and I shall run with squint of light gleam of morning delight
Tossing feathered flowers from my head
Lifting my cloak from my dewy pleasured bed
Skipping and dancing with the breeze
Frolicking the leaves, hovering above the trees
Again I am Adam also Eve
In the garden with the breeze, with the bright glance of the morning sun
“Father” your song is sung.
kevin your brother
In Christ