Cantica Gaudia

Ordinary Time, Fall: Monday Evening Prayer

Opening: I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the Lord."

Canticle: Listen to me, you islands
And hearken you peoples from afar.
My servant, in the time of my favour I will answer you,
And in the day of salvation I will help you
To restore the land
And share out afresh its desolate fields
To say to the captives, “Go free”
And to those in darkness, “Come forth into light.”
They will feed beside the way
And find pasture on every barren hill.
They will neither hunger nor thirst
Nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them,
For the One who loves them will guide them
And lead them besides the springs of water.

Psalm: Blessed are the man and woman
Who have grown beyond their own greed
And have put an end to their hatred
And no longer nourish illusions.
But they delight in the way things are
And keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
Which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither.
Everything they do will succeed.

Glory to God, our Creator, to God’s most Holy Word, and to the Spirit, indwelling; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

Reading: Doctor, you say there are no halos around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames? I will not return to a universe of objects that don't know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water, becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it. To paint the speed of light! Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and change our bones, skin, and clothes to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

It is a dance. Heaven pulls earth into its arms and in turn our own heart expands to claim this world. Joy. "Joy arrives when divinity dances in us." May we be ready for the invitation?

The Lord’s Prayer

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
Sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
Now and for ever.  Amen.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you told great stories. They helped people make sense of their lives, they revealed God in ordinary things, they encouraged and changed people.

Make us more ready to share our stories. Give us words where we are tongue-tied, confidence to know our stories matter, tact to know the right place to tell them. Also, most importantly, make us ready to listen. Amen.

Collect: Searching God, finding faith in unexpected places: free us from the contempt of what is familiar and the horror of what remains foreign that we might celebrate your presence, intimate and other and wholly alive; through Jesus Christ, friend of strangers. Amen.

Going Forth:  May God, who is present in sunrise and nightfall, and in the crossing of the sea, guide our feet as we go.

May God, who is with us when we sit and when we stand, encompass us with love and lead us by the hand.

May God, who knows our path and the places where we rest, be with us in our waiting, be our good news for sharing, and lead us in the way that is everlasting. Amen.