One Word
This winter on The Daily Pattern we’re in a series called One Word. Each day we take one word – a feeling or circumstance – and bring a word from God to it. Let the Word of God speak to your life.
Invocation
Make the sign of the cross, and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:5) O Lord, I am lowly and humble. You alone are my inheritance. Amen.
Meditation
“Falling Down and Standing Back Up Again” an excerpt from Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris (prepared by Megan Roegner)
In the memoir Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris explores the concept of acedia: spiritual sloth or apathy, what ancient monks identified as one of the “eight evil thoughts.” As she shares her experiences caring for her husband through his severe depression and cancer as well as her time as a Benedictine oblate, Norris writes of the spiritual practices and Christian community that were “expressing and honoring the utter stability of God’s love” throughout difficult times.
…I know that, in the words of a great hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” my temperament makes me “prone to wander from the God I love.” But if I have forgotten who I am, getting back on the road may help me remember. I am both humbled and exalted by the reception I receive when I make my move: the world itself seems to open and accept me.
Losing one’s way and then finding it may mimic the cyclical nature of depression, but it is also part of the natural rhythm of day and night, of the waxing and waning moon, and of seeding and harvesting. However true and even beautiful this turning of times and seasons may be, I tend to resist it as a necessary aspect of the spiritual life. Monastic writers have always emphasized that maintaining a life of prayer means being willing to start over, after one has acted in a sinful or destructive way. Both pride and acedia will assert themselves, and it may appear that we are so far gone we may as well give up and not embarrass ourselves further by pretending to be anything but failures. It seems foolish to believe that the door is still open, that there is always another chance. I may accept this intellectually, but I have to appreciate its depths only through experience. Just when I seem to have my life in balance and imagine I can remain in this happy state forever, I lose sight of the value of contemplation and prayer, and try to live without it. Soon enough, once again, I am picking myself up out of the ashes.
The early Christian monks staked their survival on their willingness to be as God had made them, creatures of the day-to-day. They regarded repetition as essential to their salvation, and valued perseverance in prayer and manual labor as the core of their spiritual discipline. When acedia tempted them from these tasks, they were admonished to make their way back as quickly as possible. It is all a matter of falling down and standing back up again, no matter how many times. Typically, the desert fathers provide a gnomic commentary on this aspect of their lives: “Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus, ‘Can a man lay a new foundation every day?’ The old man said, ‘If he works hard, he can lay a new foundation at every moment.’”
~Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me
Prayer for Family
· For my immediate family (parents, spouse, siblings).
· For extended family (cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents)
· For close friends that are as family to me.
· For those who don’t have families, or whose families are broken.
· For forgiveness and reconciliation where there is division in my family.
· For provision where there is need in my family.
· For God to be the foundation, and the cross the center of my family.
· For a generation yet unborn, future members of our family.
Closing Prayer
O Lord and King, your Kingdom comes even without our prayer. But we pray that it would also come among us. We are desperate for your reign and rule, for all we see is rebellion. Come into my heart, my home, my family, my work, my church, my community. Rule with justice and with mercy. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.