Monday, August 16, 2010

Prayer for Self Discovery

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Then I said, "Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."

But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a boy'; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. . . " 1:6,7 (NRSV)

God save me from creating myself
out of the sludge of my own imagination,
and if you are so good to spare me such mischief,
go ahead and ream out this beating heart as well
to course with the blood
that you long since sanctified to yourself.

Teach me to trust the voices who have named me in my baptism,
the quick and the dead, both, wise,
and avoid the others
who, handy to flatter or castigate,
have no clue to the mystery of who I am - we are - in Christ.
They are commandeered by the mores of the age
that would silence what cannot be summed up,
and, with it, the promise in which I was sealed 
since first heaved aloft for all to see
dripping all over the world.

When I, like the prophet met by God,
called out of the deep from which I was first summoned,
piddle something about “I am only . . .”,
poke me in the side and make me laugh
at my disabused self
that pines to be small forever.

Amen.

© 2010 Andy Gay