Prayer of Dedication
By The Rev. Claire Keene
Holy places are where,
like a wick within a flame,
we burn away with God, into God–
a union that dissolves us.
Holy places are the cliffs
where the Wind blows our graven souls
to finest sand,
a vast blowing powder of light.
Holy places are the dark naves,
the arks, the bellies of whales
where, as if within a vacuum,
we expand into ourselves.
Gentle Ravisher,
make me a holy place.
Yours is the fire
like that within paper
to curl back the layers and scatter me,
a rose whose petals are become flame.
In Silence
by Thomas Merton
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.
O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.
“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”