A Sixth 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: Sep 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728328966

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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© 2019 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/24/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2895-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2896-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019914932

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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Some Reflective Prayers

Reflective Prayers: A Second Collection

A Third Collection Of Reflective Prayers

For Your Quiet Meditation

A Fourth Collection Of Reflective Prayers

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A Fifth Collection Of Reflective Prayers

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Part III: Elders’ Studies

Part IV: Studies

Part V: The Song Of Songs: An Attraction

Exegetical Works

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Paul’s Letter To The Romans: A Bible Study

The Book Of Hebrews: A Bible Study

Letters Pauline and Pastoral: Bible Studies

The First Letter Of Paul To The Corinthians: A Bible Study

The Gospel According to Luke 1:1 Through 9:50: A Bible Study

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all published by AuthorHouse.com

Foreword

The first of these Reflective Prayers, as I have called them from the beginning, appeared at the back of the First Christian Church sanctuary in LaPorte, IN on 5 February 1984. The idea behind them came from reading The Prayers of Catherine of Siena, edited by Suzanne Noffke, O.P. The book was published in 1983 by Paulist Press. I received my copy in December of 1983. Sr. Noffke noted in her introduction that Catherine’s prayers – all of them extempore, said aloud after mass, taken down by her Spiritual Director related to the texts of the day for Mass. They tended to concern unity in the Church, a theme of importance in Catherine’s day.

My thought was to see what would happen if I tried to reflect on the readings for a service where I was to preach. At first, I wrote them only when I was going to preach. At first that was every Sunday, or nearly so. Later, more Sundays were skipped as I had an associate for a couple years. And later yet, I had no regular preaching arrangement. I found I missed doing these prayers when I did not preach regularly and began to do them weekly anyway. Like everything I continue to do – writing sermons that do not get preached, doing Quiet Meditations that fill no bulletins, writing hymn texts in anticipation of preaching – writing these gets done so regularly because they are satisfying to me. They started as an experiment after Catherine’s apparent process and ended up as a satisfaction.

I have come to think that something being satisfying is a valid reason for doing it, barring the act being violent or illegal. As a result, these get published, self-published through AuthorHouse.com. This volume joins five earlier sets of ninety reflective prayers, those included in the previous sixty-one volumes I have published. Most of the volumes mine the archives of poems and stories and the like. By now, the quiet meditations, hymn texts and reflective prayers are simply accumulated until they reach a critical mass where I decide to publish them.

The Cover picture is taken across a hollow to catch the view of St. Joseph’s Church in the St. Joseph community in northern Wetzel County West Virginia. I have long admired that view and recently procured the equipment that allows me to take the picture. I confessed to my wife that I have dreamed of such equipment – a SLR Camera with a telephoto lens – for nearly fifty years, but only last winter gave in to the urge and have been having fun with it since then.

I hope the exploration implicit in these reflective prayers, meeting the texts involved on the inscape of me in the ferment of what I am discovering of myself in faith – I hope that the engagement invites you to the prayers and through the prayers into your own discovery of life where faith is fertile along the manifold of your own inscape.

William Flewelling

Upon the brink of blithe frustration, in the sink of rote repair,

        wherein the face of innocence is shorn with dissonance,

            O Lord, I am resilient by the welling tide of hope.

        Ah, Lord, this hope accosts my dread, reforms despair,

            contends with momentary anguish lest I rise

                inchoate at the vain assize of loathed despondency.

            Indeed, my Lord, I hear the word of passion, how

                the vortex of contented rummaging afflicts

                    distress on lithe distressing visions formed

                        within the pattern of desire.

            I have begun to come to know thy tryst

                and all its rudimentary re-twisting liens

                    by which I find fragmented trust

                        the fractal certainty of love.

                How shall I undertake this passage, Lord,

                    this thoroughgoing mingling in the grist

                        of moments lost for finding hope

                            surprising at the last?

Pretending answers formulate provisions leads revision toward

        the coping mechanisms I could once employ.

        But here, the reaming by necessity of all I meant to hold

            becomes the overwhelming, weaning grist

                that grinds into a meal and flour the main

                    grains of the evidence of your

                        insistent focus, Lord.’

            Ah yes: I undertake unknowing’s break

                within the breach of all inadequate attempts

                    to try this balance act

                        where everything is lean and tack.

        The task of my continuing approach, my Lord,

            involves thy legacy, the cross that leans,

                is borne into the savor of desire

                    and follows lanes of dissonance

                        and failure to repair.

        Yet in this moment, Lord,

            I entertain unusual desire, the life

                of root abandon unto you, your way,

                    the won oblation of the heart

                    unto your perfect norm,

                        contention of the heart.

        In this obsessive moment, Lord,

            I find the life of hope is honed

                upon the strop of suffering, release,

                    attention to the resonance of life

                        in resident acclaim

                            by your enticing life.

Within the season of impossibility thy word, my Lord,

        insists its entrance at the breach of time

            wherein you instigate again the life

                beyond the shadow of the past.

        New-named as Abraham, against trust logic’s fame,

            the opening refrain begins the means

                to catapult desire unto the wide

                    and deep, the cavern rent,

                        the breach of all,

                        in which I find my thrall –

            here, Lord, where everything is brought

                into confusion, here you break illusion’s grip,

                    alluding to the sinecure of hope

                as my impossibility within the throes

                    of anger, rage and dissonant despair.

        Yet, now, just now, my Lord, upon the trail beneath the cross

            I find my wandering explicitly alive with you,

                reformulated in thy cross and mine,

                    to be the blossoming of hope’s

                                            impossible delight.

        Amen.

Against the tide of rude necessity, O Lord, I find my stand

        becomes inviolate in sheer oblation, rife delight.

        There is in this occasion folly fully formed

            that I may undertake a conformation here

                intrinsic to the scandal of the cross.

            O Lord: how might I learn this yearning’s cusp,

                the way my lean meniscus cups

                    to implicate the boundaries of grace

                        I had not thought to greet?

            Yet in this episode of wonder, past the role of rue,

                I find I am the emptiness of folly’s flair

                    beguiling nevermore less likely fare.

        Well instigated in your style, my Lord,

            I yet design less culpable arrangement here

                or there, or somewhere in elusive lairs

                    of happenstance demurring whiles.

            Quite to the point, I must suppose, is this repose

                where wisdom too divine rakes folly as to shine

                    intrinsically refined into the gilt

                        exhaustion of the ripe repast.

So scattered in illusion here, the commerce of the cult

        accumulates the officers of deals and change and mien-

            alerted mysteries, an answer to an ancient past

                become adapted to contemporary wiles,

                    the scheme that seams the past and now.

        Invested in the deconstruction of articulated sighs

            become the profiteer of interface of rule with zest

                is all the interlude accommodating drifts

                    of momentary lifts before

                    destruction implicates the cause.

        At this illimitable junction of desire and hope,

            where avenues remit, demit, refrain ins style,

                I join to cope with adequate delight

                    to situate my posture at the cross

            I intimate my folly, all moria in lithe scandal’s form,

                that I may own by follow wisdom of another bourn.

            Ah, Lord: how shall I calculate the transference of life

                into the situated cross,

                    destructive of the Temple seen,

                    awaiting three days’ rising to assent?

                        The offering is thine, is mine,

                        is overt elegance exhausting mien.

My Lord: your passage into this ellipsis on the day

        becomes the tripping form of my reforming stay.

        There is, it seems, a seemly lay

            sung at the seams of everyday and thy

                eluctable allure, impeccable and pure,

                participated in the emptiness I find,

                    oblation of a keening kind

                    that is refined in every way

                        upon the scheme of Golgotha.

        Yes, Lord: I dally as I tally, lose my count

            and ferret methods to allow

                the abacus of needs to oversee the list

                    of this sublime assertion: bliss.

            My Lord: I am inclined to entertain the past

                while you insist my strides begin

                    the hoary trek into the wreck

                        of your divine severity of love.

        Shall I, then, hold this moment to the test?

            No: all is in the folly here, the cross

                that markets loss and measures voids

                    with elegant precision spent at last

                    in regulation delight, the metric of your life.

        Amen.

NB: eluctable: attainable with great effort. compare ineluctable: not attainable, even with great effort.

Against the tide of dissonance, my Lord, you entertain

        the signal that arraigns demise for lifted eyes.

        And unto this esteemed assize I rise to yield

            as I might wield save in this weal

                embroidered here upon the rest of life.

        I am enjoined upon the cusp of measurement,

            for here the measure of delight is well embossed

                and couched upon my soul.

                I find this whole, this rife embrace of joy

                    that you invite my dalliance

                        to enter and engage.

            Into this moment entrance rouses care

                and careful daring, free oblation raised

                    ineffably, indelibly into the praise,

                        the prize enticed of me.

                I am, my Lord, caught inexplicably

                    into the flux, the flushing rush,

                        the rampant ecstasy of joy

                            you bring unto employ.

Shall I then take the glance on high in casual appraisal of the time?

        Or shall I dally here in intussusception wonder plied

            into the gracious knowing flow, gratuity

                of your allowance on my soul?

        Ah, yes, my Lord: I am induced unto my yield,

            unto your transformation wielding grace.

            I will engage my spin and leap in your

                alluring chance adjustment of my will,

                    engaging my release in pas de deux

                        intensity, a swirl and leap,

                        a tensive ploy employed to be

                            your lithe engagement, blithe delight.

        Ah, Lord, I am, as this renewal of the hour entails,

            to grasp, be grasped, released into release, to turn again

                upon the point to pause in rapt desire

                    until you are the mystery of life.

            How shall I train exaction till I find

                your intussusceptive approach

                    my intimate release to fly

                        in dancing eminence

                        unto your pleasing gyre?

Ineffably intent upon this monument release,

        I linger in your pleasure, Lord,

            your tantamount delight in mercy’s plight.

        I am drawn from the wilderness into the throes

            of wilderness deceits, into the writhing mystery

                that cultivates my wariness

                    unto incalculable grace.

        Shall I then troll the rocky clime

            and tarry on deception, all the grind

                of otherwise aligned intents?

            No: no: my Lod. I am instead

                invested in your call to be

                    faithed into thee

                    with absolute affinity

                        and resolute in joy.

        I am become the partner in the dance,

            a pas de deux with you where each is as

                the other, paired as one

                    inserted in the bond

                        of majesty and me.

            I dance in wonder, lose my balance as

                your catch and answer, join

                    your mystery within the glee

                        of your inclusive presence’ hold –

                        ah, yes, as all that witnesses the bold.

        Amen.

As startled in beginning, Lord, I rise to pause upon your gift,

        this stunning presence so inscribed upon the heart

            that your own inscape majesty accepts

                the fractal imagery of heart that stirs

                    sufficiently in me.

        I stammer at the bold abyss. I hear the words

            announcing how the throes of mystery

                upon the cross, the raised affront

                    sure-manages provision for the seal

                        of inscape’s radical aplomb.

            I have no words sufficient; so

                I patter out revisions of desires

                    I hardly recognize in style.

            I stutter helplessly escaping hopeless realms

                as I am suddenly immersed

                    in your insistent grace.

How shall I entertain the vigor of your plain

        insistence at my heart, O Lord?

        I know inscription in the flesh is ripe

            with your incipient delight.

            And yet I comprehend the mission of the cross

                as that provision on elixir laden cost

                inducing in these sheer inclusive ways

                    the high priest’s vantage on your life.

        In this acknowledgement, O Lord, I yearn to find

            the intimate expenditure of time,

                the offering, oblation in my clime

            that finds surcease and echo in your apt design

                wherein