Inspiration
Session 1 • Prayer • Devotional
One of the names for God is Elohim: Creator God. God has given us so much beauty to enjoy, and meditating on the beauty of His creation, inspires us towards awe and wonder. Not only can we worship God through our appreciation of nature - the sky, the stars, the ocean, animals, trees, flowers but we can also experience worship through people, made in the image of God, and the creative work of their hands.
Here you will find some poetry and art. Spend time meditating on what you see, read or hear and invite the Holy Spirit to awaken in you a sense of wonder. Let that lead you into prayer or creative expression.
A Prayer For Your Wild Soul
Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul. Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers. Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life. Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost. Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty. Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.
— Excerpt from Eternal Echoes, By John O’Donohue
Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
— Mary Oliver, Thirst
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry
Christian Icons
