Tag Archives: Catholic prayer

Storing Up

Bare feet in the October afternoon
we peel apart the flowering silks
of season-ending sweet corn;

the scent of sugared earth floats
as we tear the still-green leaves
revealing rows of cobbed kernels.

Snapping free the stalk and
tossing aside the husk,
we lay the ear by for blanching.

The girls yank and pull and tug
at the shucking, laugh, and grasp
a silk or two with the tips of their fingers

and run through the grass.  I boil, blanch, and shock
the loaded cobs, fillet sheets of gold nuggets into the pan,
spoon the bags full of summer’s gifts for winter’s darkness.

I fill these poems with yanking, pulling, tugging,
shucking, laughing, grasping, running,
the sweetness of childhood’s gifts for the winter’s darkness.

A Prayer for Our Children

Lord, you love our children so much.
Thank you for gifting me with them.
They are precious in every way.

Please help me understand them and lead and guide them in the best way.
Let me be a blessing to them and not a burden.
Open my eyes and my heart so that I may see them with your eyes and love them with Christ’s love.
Let me not see them from my own, sometimes selfish, perspective.
Let me love them not as I think they should be loved, but love them as you would have them be loved.

Please bless each of my children in heart, mind, body, and spirit,
that they may know you in faith, in hope, and in love.
Bolster them in their weaknesses, and guide them in their strengths.
Make yourself known to them.
Knock from the inside, and get them to turn around, seeing you for who you are,
the All-Love, All-Light, Creator of Existence, the Everlasting Instant.

Remind them continually to turn to you and to love the people of this world as Christ loves them.
Remind them that they are never restful until they rest in you.
And when they doubt, teach them that doubt is the brother of Truth.
And when they despair, remind them that despair is not necessary, as you are always there, beneath them, to catch them and to carry them on.

Send your Spirit to be with them.  
Let your Spirit reside in their hearts, bursting with all the fruits and gifts they can bear.

May your Holy Spirit be with them.
May your Saints pray for them.
May your Angels protect and guide them.
May your Mother, Mary, keep them in her heart, her prayers, and under her mantle.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Writer’s Prayer

Lord, you know my heart before I do, for in you it has been created. You know my joy and desire, my sadness and fear, and it is you who instills in me this inclination to write it out, you who inspires my songs, my lament and my celebration.

Let your Spirit inspire me again, and always, to write what you would have me share, to describe what you would have me realize, and to explain what you would have me understand. And when my words fail, when they are disordered and poorly chosen, bless the readers so that in spite of my messy page, they will glean what you wish them to find.

In this, and in all things, my gratitude abounds.