A Fourth Collection of Reflective Prayers

By William Flewelling

These reflective prayers are the result of permitting a gentle reading of the lectionary texts for a given service to resonate in me and emerge as a searching engagement of the Word with my spirit in a mood of settled joy. The ninety samples given are the most recent in order at the time of publication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524612900

William Flewelling

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Led by a request from Mildred Corwin of Manua OH when I arrived there in 1976, I long developed and led a series of bible studies there and in LaPorte IN and New Martinsville WV. These studies proved to be very feeding to me in my pastoral work and won a certain degree of following in my congregations. My first study was on 1 Peter, chosen because I knew almost nothing about the book. I now live quietly in retirement with my wife of 54 years, a pair of dogs and several cats.

Book preview

Upon the crest of unimagined grace, my Lord, I find

        that fallow insecurities of my renown advanced

                into the fervent resonance of your capacity

                        for hallowed instances of clarity and life.

        The living on the ebbing crest of wonder lures

                the habit as the habitat of courtesy and blithe resolve.

                You implicate my reticence, my turn asunder, lean

                        aside from all you situate for me to bind.

                I bind unto myself this tide – and thus I take

                        the Breastplate echo into supple subtlety,

                                the implicating certainty of joy

                                        expanding past my terse employ.

        How is interpretation to abide

                within this slurry and root flurry of design

                        that overwhelms in welling kindness my

                                implicit waiting and reserve?

                I tarry on the brink of root revision, all

                        the vision radical enough to sift

                                illusions and confusions for thy freeing lift

                                        into most adequate repair.

I understand the pious litanies of favor owed

        to formal courtesies performed perforce and punctual

                upon the calendar of stated graces, staid

                        and stationary, poised for lean review.

        I comprehend pretension, learned in eloquence

                and mock sincerity, a curdled wax

                        that proves inadequate and waste.

                Yet somehow echoes of responsibility allude

                        in modest hearing to the supposition posed

                                that I become the witness to the closed

                                        reopened in reflective joy.

        Begun in such a narrow scale, my Lord,

                I dally wantonly until you underscore

                        the bathing tide of your insistent character

                                long resonating at the heart

                                of my desire, my votive hearth.

That worthiness beyond my ken, my Lord,

        intrigues. I do not manufacture such a scheme myself

                but learn by yearning how I resonate at last

                        with overtones of your profoundest chords

                                of character and earnest, sheer desire.

        I follow fallow ways unusual in tone,

                or do until I yield to instincts I cannot

                        aspire to muster save by joy

                        in rapt abandon to harmonics roused

                                in aperture of awe.

        Beginning in these certainties espoused

                in circles of impolitic nature, all

                        those elemental themes ignored

                                save with elixir in the breath

                                that breathes in raves of stir

                                        inclining to perdure

                                        in your redounding lure.

                How shall I be inside this energy

                        so alien to proper sorts of things –

                                propriety in lurid profiles set

                                proprietary to familiar themes?

                I do not know. There is, indeed, my Lord,

                        an awkward wonder here,

                        the very sort of pure insouciance known

                                within the splendor of humility,

                                the excess of desire thrown free

                                        into the sheer capacity of you, delight.

Amen.

NB: ‘I bind unto myself this tide’ comes from St. Patrick’s Breastplate in a common hymn version.

Immediately now, as perched upon a crag

        along the precipice, this august face of presence borne

                in tantalizing qualities of grace and hope –

                        a place where, standing to the wind, the face

                                is interceding with abrupt allure –

        I pause in this raw openness to gaze beyond

                the boundaries of my remote dissent

                        until I find the gaping hope strung free

                                into your majesty, my Lord.

                I understand the undermining dalliance

                        with some remote, deceptive play

                                that squanders mystery

                                in order to allay the dread

                                        angst terrifying life

                                        in this abject restraint.

                Yet, even so, my Lord, I dally on the point

                        of sinecure design.

                        I tally my restrictions where

                                imagination falters more and more.

                        There is in this calamity the score

                                revisiting the gentle core

                                        of your conscripting delight.

How intricate it seems, this posing on the barren cleft

        to gaze across unbounded, restless seas,

                to contemplate the seizing urgency of waves

                        and tide, the vicious swirl of currents cut

                                into an unimagined gnarl!

        Yet here, in gazing so, I find the regnant gale

                the certain wrap of my intention as I fail

                        to muster interest, to avail

                        my mastery of testing sail

                                and tack into the whole desire

                                        of your sublime, intriguing bliss.

        My Lord, I find myself in isolation here,

                pushed lonely on the least of clefts

                        and dandled on the precipice

                        that faces nothingness in hope

                                beyond all nihilistic feints.

                Here, in this solitude, I hasten to abide,

                        unhidden and acutely aware

                                of life beyond the lasting dare.

        Indeed, my Lord, this shorn persistence stays

                the ordinary ways, invites the ripest cure

                        to tantalize and prize the haunt

                                exhausting every waiting, wailing taunt.

So suddenly amiss, my Lord, I entertain your bliss

        in naked awe, abandoned to the thaw

                regaling my entailing mist

                        with favor savoring the grist of your delight.

        Enticing me in such a way, my Lord,

                you find me freely standing at the brink

                        where everything is thine, to thickly think

                                ethereal delight in wonder at this apse

                                        of scintillating glee.

        Entitled not at all, I stay, stay still against the fall

                and wrap the mantle of desire about my thrall

                        until I learn myself again

                        the native of your glen,

                                still readied at the least

                                attention in the breach of time.

                You are the value and the ecstasy that binds

                        in utter freedom every sweep and list

                                observed and savored, bliss-inclined

                                                                                in absolute release.

Amen.

Stark, brazen, sudden, furious and bold: thus comes your day,

        my Lord; thus opens in the gloom the echo of a vigorous,

                exacting doom. For in this entrance lingers long

                        the simple pleasures of desire.

        That old competitive idolatry resigns its names

                and undermines your ways with softened words

                        and pleasures of the mind.

                I know the lure of power, understand the lure

                        fertility exerts on my imagination’s course.

                I comprehend seduction in the face of fear

                        and all along the contours of extorted want.

        You linger yet abundantly; you open vigorous desires

                with gentle ways and humble turns of eye,

                        and opening of heart and ripe compassion’s

                                                                                thriving cup.

                So quickly is your open hand endowing all

                        with open hearted hands of care,

                                the sort that dare your nurture in the lair

                                        of commonplace and common weal.

In find this boundary exhausting; all the energy composed

        to hold imagined threads of power and of pride

                against the tide competitors arrange to rise

                        against the dikes and levees we arrange

                                to quarantine our fear, our dread, our loathed

                                                                        despair.

        Again, again we summon our desires,

                the might of warriors, all the spite of battle proved gods

                        and how we call upon your name

                                with all the attributes of others named in mind.

                How shall this counterfeit survive

                        the wrathful day of your assize?

        And yet I find I must arise and muster something fine

                enough to greet his hoary hour.

                There is so little in my way, a foolishness to squander life

                        in unaccustomed ways, to leave investments lone

                                upon the saturated ways of time and place.

                        There is a gentle face to offer, gleam to rouse

                                in preternatural designs.

                I am exceeding in the fallow time,

                        exceeding mystery upon the numinous, enticing draft

                                of your refreshment, your sublime delight.

I dally slowly over signs and signatures of elemental lures,

        avoiding simulacra that provide the guise

                of old ambitions, old improvements, old intents.

        There is instead this singularity of wild abandon, all

                the instrumental care-stripped openness

                        that rouses as the mien of hope.

                I am indeed installed within these throes

                        wherein I writhe, find wreathed desires

                                become the sinecure of joy.

        How shall these talents tally up the score

                when everything is stable, games are zero-sum

                        and only love in spend thrift mode

                        provides the means for gathering in sowing weal?

                I find I am expended as oblation raised

                        in wanton, prodigal assent.

                I find I understand exhaustion on the means

                        of welcoming the seeds of want

                                into the rife abundance you provide,

                                        my startling Lord.

        How am I now to dally on this day of yours,

                the day of your becoming in the throes

                        of wanton eagerness to join the rising from the mire

                                and undertake the generosity

                                        of your exuberance and bliss? So be it:

Amen.

This sorting, gathering, attendance on the lam-induced

        provision for the tryst of scattered lambs

                within the shepherd’s care and constancy –

        this passion for restoring equity and ease

                to please propriety and quicken secret hopes

                        beyond the limes of hope

                                where once demise is righted, set

                                        to restoration of delight –

        this marks the throes of wonder, all the fare of awe.

                And here, my Lord, I dally with the last

                        forgotten company, now new-remembered

                                                                                in your will.

        Included in this mystery of misery, confusion and desire

                are all the questions of perplexity and urgency

                        confounded in the writhing mystery

                                wherein this coming into pasture thrives.

I parry metaphors in want of understanding, lean

        my literal devices on the clear dissention of the mind.

        Yet in this play of shepherds gathering to care

                and sorting in display of measures lost to mind,

                        I find I swirl on cold symbolic latency.

                I am, at last, a loss; this rough construction costs

                        of comprehension all deceits and ponderous receipts.

        I am the lost and losing all at once

                I know establishment of prejudice,

                        the construct of unsettling thoughts

                                upon the arbitrary judgment of the heart –

                I know these tests of sheer unknowing – how

                        they seem obtuse in abject themes.

                        I am indulgent of the means – and yet remain diffuse.

        It seems unlikely now that I could contemplate the gentle lilt

                of your incredible allure, my Lord.

        I lumber long, confused and found in utter disarray,

                yet – always yet – I dally on the contours of delight,

                        that singular implosion of desire upon

                                the singularity of your imposing tryst with awe.

        My Lord, this fresh initiative to draw

                into the satisfaction of delight

                        the multitude within Messiah’s sight –

                this plan and function of the Spirit spins

                        into the seining efforts of your hope,

                                the throwing open of the boundaries

                                        imagination builds,

                                that future be delight in you.

New opening in eyes, in inner-dawning awareness brings

        into my bated moment this arraignment – that I prize

                abandon in the hope you bring

                wherein my lasting lost containment fling

                        into a Highland dance

                        spent in exacting trilogies

                                of wonder, awe, delight: of bliss.

        I entertain beyond my ken

                a world no longer keening in the throes

                        of brute uncertainty.

                For in this sanctuary of your will

                        I learn the yearning passion for your touch,

                                a lissome brush of ecstasy,

                                a winsome hint of hand beneath a finger hush.

                        Indeed, my Lord, I am the gathered in,

                                the separating grist of sheep and goats alike.

        Yet in this bounding hustle on the mind and heart

                I blunder into satisfying wish

                        to find it is with you, my Lord, all satisfactory.

Amen.

Awaiting in expectant lore, across some lengthened spans

        for that which is the taste in time, sublime enough

                to learn of bliss that yearning that abides

                        within the warp of weal:

        I dally, then, in earnest, tarry on the lien of hope,

                exaggerate pretension lest the vain abyss

                        begin a tryst with vanity beyond my ken.

                So, wishful now, I will observe the pungent grace

                        that lingers on my lips, the taste of more

                                than I am ready to embrace.

                        Yet in this wonder at the trace of awe

                                fresh brushed upon my days,

                                        I must remain upon the cusp of hope.

        How shall I entertain this readiness in plain

                precision? Nothing more is said than I may try

                        until I find the faithful fullness here

                                within the grasp of living zeal.

Beginning in the wait upon ecstatic flairs of joy, my Lord,

        I find innocuous resolve the fundament of my repose.

        You culminate this whirl within the throes of patient life

                as sheer elixir, pure oblation poured as lithe

                        libation, spent as spending on the lore of love.

                Above my slow continuing in pace

                        I find acquaintance in the place

                                of your insistent generosity, your grace.

                        There is, indeed, a subtle quality that thrives

                                within the continuity of lives

                                        immersed in humble joys, expended ploys.

        Indeed, I undertake afresh the lively lode

                of your immediate resolve.

                I find