A Fifth 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: Feb 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546227618

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.

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© 2018 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.

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Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/31/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2762-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2761-8 (e)

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Foreword

It all began with reading a collection of prayers of St. Catherine of Sienna. They were extempore prayers offered aloud and taken down by her confessor. As I recall the introduction, the analysis of the prayers centered on their being concerned with Christian Unity as that was understood in fourteenth century Sienna and with papal tensions in the era. But the note was that the scriptural allusions leading behind the prayers could be traced to the lectionary at daily mass for the times involved. That book was read in the middle part of the first half of the 1980s.

I had long since developed a quasi-outline pattern in preparing my own sermon manuscripts; I found it easier to follow and find myself again in the pulpit, given that my normal thought patterns and ways of chasing language make it necessary for me to have a manuscript to follow in presenting a sermon. As I began to look at what I might use from the notice about St. Catherine, the writing pattern I had developed for sermons came to my aid, rather different than that used by the confessor of St. Catherine but more to my use.

My process from the beginning of this project in reflection was to read slowly, with attention, the three principal readings offered in the Lectionary I followed. Out of the reading came a rhythmic writing that let my pencil take up the role of St. Catherine’s confessor and pour out in my habitual pattern the emergent prayer. I called them Reflective Prayers from the start, coded in my private use as RPs.

Over time, the pattern developed increasing discipline and force. After the first handful of years, the prayers took on their own dynamic and flowed more compactly. Eventually, I found that the typing of the prayers became my own, rather than my secretary’s, particularly as the availability of word processing made my limited clerical skills more readily correctible! Now, of course, in my retirement, it is all on my own, and mostly handled electronically.

At first, and for a long time, I considered these as one of my initial reflections on the scripture of the day toward preaching. They still do that, but with a little more reserve than before. They have taken on a value of their own, one part of the sequence that evolved in the 1980s and now serves my own attention to the scripture and the possibility of the preached word. I should note that I rarely have the opportunity to enter a pulpit anywhere anymore. Nonetheless, along with hymn texts (my Cantica Sacra) and For your Quiet Meditations, the Reflective Prayers serve to resonate within my mind and heart in the tone of the texts evolving and serve as a mechanism for me in dealing spiritually and theologically with my root material.

As the current product over the last 90 occasions, this collection serves to witness to the movement of the Spirit with my spirit in this perhaps eccentric way. And in this book, I invite you to share in what has become of richness for me.

William Flewelling

26

June 2016                                                                                       1560

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21               Galatians 5:1, 13-25               Luke 9:51-62

Insistently your word, my Lord, accosts me in my day.

       Indeed, it is in you alone I stay

              and by your categorical assertion I must rise

                     into the prize of your ascending joy.

       I entertain what I have failed to comprehend

              and without understanding must I dally yet

                     upon the threshold of desire.

              You came upon me even so; you brush aside

                     my folly for the innuendo laden cry

                            of mystery and you, elixir of my bliss.

                     Shall I then stagger more in due recourse

                            to this recusant yielding on the way?

It is Jerusalem that occupies your face.

       And I am ever lingering in this and that about the way

              of my unknowing, in this cloud engaging me

                     in light of uncreated weal.

              My Lord: I undertake normality

                     as I have ever gleaned normality in time

                            that has escaped desire.

                     Yet in this certain novelty of awe

                            I find I am a servant under call

                                   that by your vision I

                                   must state my culling freight.

       I am confronted by this singularity of cause.

              Here everything is in extreme distortion, wrought

                     into the heading of design

                     as manifold allusions now refine my cause

                            with magisterial aplomb.

              I am in fundamental rearrangement of my heart, O Lord.

                     I entertain this freedom, so august in all auroral flair,

                            intensity of majesty and poise.

                     I am immersed in contemplation now,

                            wrung by participation in ineffable delight.

                     You, O my Lord, begin afresh with me

                            and I find all is sacrificial honesty and joy.

       As awe sweeps to abandon, so I pause

              in pas de deux assertion of the final finial empowered

                                                                      poise

              So paused, I balance breathlessly as one

                     with thee and tantamount to grace

                            of inexpressible simplicity.

              Upon this singularity, the point of gyring joy,

                     I find you passing into me, and I in thee

                            until I am myself alone

                                   configured to your visionary plea.

Brought in this eagerness, I rush to know

       the instant of your fundamental glow.

       There is in this assize of heart

              a size that sighs with incremental leaps

                     and leans, arrests and crests

                            exceedingly exultant in release.

       Ah! Exquisite is this refinement Spirit wreaks

              in me. I pass the understanding, learn ellipsis spread

                     to incubate in my derision everything

                            that is transcending and transfiguring

                                   my rudimentary aplomb.

The ancient simulacra I employed in style

       disintegrate before integrity impelled

              by integral assimilation in the sum

                     of anti-derivative ascent into the sun.

              For in this certainty, in this alacrity, my Lord,

                     I am the entertainment now unlost

                            before the settlement of ecstasy in poise

                                   that pirouettes infinity.

       Amen.

3 July 2016                                                                                           1561

Isaiah 66:10-14                 Galatians 6:7-16                 Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Into the breach of time and temperament, exposed at last

       to this, the least of tribulations, whence the lingering

              and limpid imposition of delight begins the freight

                     of lambs among the wolves,

                     so unprepared and blithe,

                            yet instantaneously alive –

       just now, my Lord, I find the fallow hour,

              the preparation, reparation at the brink

                     as in this situation steeped in life:

                            the kingdom of our God comes nigh.

       Exhaustion at suggestion opens wide the rule

              whence life itself exerts its prize, the bliss

                     of peace and mercy as the unction on the heart.

              How shall I undertake this awe-stung trek

                     into the laden mystery exceeding everything

                            I ever thought or sought to grasp?

                     Now, in this singularity, I pose

                            in breathless wonder – O! Suppose!

                                   It is ridiculous, sublime!

Yet in this confrontation with absurdity,

       so barren of necessities, and of necessity the sheer

              exemplar of reliance on the peace divine,

                     that mercy that bends buoyancy in unsuspected hours,

       here, Lord, I find an ample evidence

              of that sublime infusion that transfigures all

                     my simulacra at this singular excess!

       I am entwined in your subliminal allure,

              become the evidence of lithe intensity,

                     that courtesy that flourishes in dance

                            beyond my boundaries of drift.

       My Lord: how shall I undertake prosperity in life,

              this dancing light as we engage upon the stage

                     where history is bated on an urge

                            to satisfy your dalliance in joy.

              Become now this rejoicing! Thus

                     my exultation rattles heavens, weaves

                            fantastic boundaries of gossamer

                                   exceeded by each fainting breath.

Ah, in this turn, this ambiance of past-requiting grace,

       I learn the fresh eruption of that joy

              transporting wonder far past awe

                     into the exultation larks employ.

       Yes, I have understood the taut reserve

              that evermore compounds in grief.

              I have observed the awkward steps that try

                     the interstitial, momentary flail

                            of nothing but anxiety and dread.

              I have curtailed the moment lest

                     I flail incessantly and fail the word

                            of kingdom drawn so nigh       

                            as to entice a livery of sighs.

With staggering asides, my Lord, I suddenly apprise

       myself of bliss that renders every shibboleth

              and manner of complicity and life.

       You wrangle glory in the cross, my Lord,

              and manage new creation as a tide

                     that bathes the unexpected with the flow

                            of never ebbing bliss.

              I am encountering in this surpassing pirouette

                     the entrance to the pas de deux

                            that elevates desire unto the sweep

                                   of your insistent comforting

                                          of my remorseless joy.

       Amen.

10 July 2016                                                                                           1562

Deuteronomy 30:9-14               Colossians 1:1-14               Luke 10:25-37

Wild rearrangement of acute improbabilities begins

       the lean essential burrowing and harrowing of mien.

       I find the rooting consonance of grace

              become the pure irregular design

                     in my recalcitrant approach.

       There always are the logical revisions of the visions

                                                                      of the heart.

              I know them far too well

                     and recognize they dwell and swell

                            inevitably near at hand

                            when everything is murky and so clear.

              I find my stammering is now become

                     the regimen of finding some excuse

                            to pass on recognition of the drift

                                   life manifests before my eyes.

                     As you, my Lord, have noticed my retreat

                            and come, attendant to my fete of fear,

                     so may it now surmise my while

                            that I attend the present in due style.

This fruitful dalliance with rearrangement of my mind

       arraigns my negligence to take the pause and see

              a liminal availability for hope

                     when all is rapt in rattled fear.

              A simple pause, a softened word, a glance

                     that grazes tenderly upon the raw

                            dissention of a soul –

                     this evidence becomes the unction life applies

                            with extraordinary guise.

       Within this mystery of presence, Lord, you bear

              upon the nakedness of time rasped feeling here and there.

              Incredibly, my Lord, you plant the word too gently where

                     I do not understand the flailing fare I find.

              Insistently, my Lord, you plait obtuse awareness where

                     I founder helplessly until you lure my soul to life.

       Parading in the moment plied upon the hour,

              I dally yet again within the lean inclusion you

                     supply as unction to my dalliance with dread.

Acquainted after all with all the open fare

       of your elixir past despair, my Lord,

              I rise within the share you bring,

                     the wild inheritance of gentle things

              that is this gracious pause I find alive,

                     that earnest that is finally mine.

       This simple matter, ample in its ambiance of love,

              begins, conceives, converts in hope

                     a radiance that undermines residual despair.

              I am invested after all, my Lord – invested here

                     within the inner laded mystery of your

                            incendiary peace and love and care.

I hardly know the way to navigate this opulence you spread

       in wonder in the wilderness, the scarcity that fills

              my longing past all surfeit in your weal.

       Yet in this fragmentary instance, Lord,

              you talk of your commandments, all

                     the rigor of your presence, life

                            translated into flesh and blood

                                   where neighbors anguish long.

       Ha: Ah, my Lord: I barely comprehend

              the instance of your limpid lure

                     that lies about to plait in me

                            the constancy that knows to pause,

                                   to lean into a cause

              and undertake the satisfaction borne at heart

                     when simulacra of design turn singularity in grace

                                                                      and mind.

       Amen.

17 July 2016                                                                                           1563

Genesis 18:1-10a                   Colossians 1:15-28                   Luke 10:38-42

Into the mulling insurrection of my soul, O Lord,

       into the culling I endure upon the slaking of my will,

              you interrupt the ordinary fare of days

              that in this monumental pause,

                     as all the regularities of fair facilities

                            are played as in the role of hands,

                     you bring confusion, startle pleasing chants

                            that here might be, become the chance

                                   of your fresh, inexhaustible delight.

       In this admitted urgency of my illusion on the lam,

              I find, my Lord, you entertain precisely here

                     the execution of reversing schemes.

              I find I follow all too often otherwise designed

                     contentions on arrangements of the mind.

                     It is so hard to intervene on dear conventions set

                            in social stone!

              Yet you allure my turn aside to stay

                     and contemplate the wonder of your gift,

                            your presence in my midst.

                     For here I am, attentive at the last –

                            not to my busyness, but you,

                                   not to my anxious wreathing fits

                                          but your intrusive word.

I should have guessed at this, my Lord,

       this habit of delight by innuendo and a wink,

              this way of opening creation, re-creation, all

                     upon the lurking by eruption of desire.

       The fullness, all