Cantica Gaudia

Ordinary Time, Fall: Monday Noonday Prayer

Opening: Open our lives wide to taste and see that you are good.

Psalm:When God restored us to freedom
It was like a dream!

Our mouths were filled with laughter.
Our tongues sang out our joy.

Then they said among the nations,
“God has done great things for them!”

Yes, God has done great things for us,
And we are overjoyed.

Lead us back to our home, O God,
like streams to a thirsty land.
Let those who wept as they sowed their seed
gather a harvest of joy.

Those who went out weeping
Carrying seed to be sown
Will go back home full of song,
Holding their harvest high.

Glory to God, who made us, who bears our pain, and who loves us. 
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.  Amen.

Reading:  Julian laughing aloud, glad
with a most high inward happiness,

Julian open calmly to dismissive judgments,
Flung backward down the centuries –
‘delirium,’ ‘hallucination’;

Julian walking underwater
on the green hills of moss, the detailed sand and seaweed,
pilgrim of the depths, unfearing;

twenty years later carefully retelling
each unfading vision, each
pondered understanding;

Julian of whom we know
she had two serving-maids, Alice and Sara,
and kept a cat, and looked God in the face
and lived –

Julian nevertheless
said that deed are done so evil, injuries inflicted
so great, it seems to us
impossible any good
can come of them –

any redemption, then, transform them…

She lived in dark times, as we do:
war, and the Black Death, hunger, strife,
torture, massacre.  She knew
all of this, she felt it
sorrowfully, mournfully,
shaken as men shake
a cloth in the wind. 

But Julian, Julian –
I turn to you:
you clung to joy through tears and sweat
rolled down your face like the blood
you watched pour down in beads uncountable
as rain from the eaves:
clung like an acrobat, by your teeth, fiercely,
to a cobweb-thin high-wire, your certainty
of infinite mercy, witnessed
with your own eyes, with outward sight
in your small room, with inward sight
in your untrammeled spirit –
knowledge we long to share:
Love was his meaning.

The Lord’s Prayer: Ground of all being, Mother of life, Father of the universe,
Your name is sacred, beyond speaking.
May we know your presence.
May your longings be our longings
in heart and in action.
May there be food for the human family today
and for the whole earth community.
Forgive us the falseness of what we have done
as we forgive those who are untrue to us.
Do not forsake us in our time of conflict
but lead us into new beginnings.
For the light of life, the vitality of life, and the glory of life
are yours now and for ever.
Amen.

Prayer:  For loving the world and knowing our names, thank you God.

For your strength that fills us and your love that heals us, thank you God.

For your presence here with us today and for your hand that leads us into tomorrow, thank you God.

Come bless us, hold us, wrestle with us, warm us in your embrace

For we are your people, and you are our justice and our joy.  Amen.

Going Forth: May the Spirit be the storm that shakes the foundations, the leap of new fire, which turns oppression to ash; may her wildness seduce us with holy desire. Amen.