The following prayer from the Orthodox tradition is one I’ve used for a number of years. It breathes life into me, and into many contemporary worship settings. I’m looking at putting it to music soon, but many friends are asking for it after a recent gathering in Denver. Here it is, with the book reference.
The prayer can be read by a celebrant, all together, in “repeat after me” form, or responsively (one line read by the leader/celebrant, the next by the community, etc.)
INVOCATION PRAYER FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT
From the book by Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979).
Excerpts from An Invocation To The Holy Spirit by St. Symeon.
Come, true light.
Come, life eternal.
Come, hidden mystery.
Come, treasure without name.
Come, reality beyond all words.
Come, person beyond all understanding.
Come, rejoicing without end.
Come, light that knows no evening.
Come, unfailing expectation of the saved.
Come, raising of the fallen.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, all-powerful, for unceasingly you create, refashion and change all things by your will alone.
Come, for your name fills our hearts with longing, and is ever on our lips.
Come, for you are yourself the desire that is within me.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, the consolation of my humble soul.
I am in Denver, Colorado right now with a few hundred worship leaders from the Vineyard movement in the US.
It’s a rich time of interaction, retreat and renewal for these GreatHearts who weekly lead the saints before the throne of Grace.
If you’d be willing to pray for us as you read the rest of this post, I’d be very grateful.
I speak tonight on the topic of the Elemental Leader, from 7-10′ish, Mountain time. Then I lead worship tomorrow eve, same time’ish.
Renewing many friendships, new and old, is always the greatest gift to me. A packed Starbucks this afternoon was buzzing with friendship, and moments of shared life all around.
I would appreciate your prayers for great connections, and a strong time for these worship leaders. They deserve it. Praying for my beautiful wife and children would be appreciated as well.
I’ll tell the group, and my family, you’re praying for us.
Our students in the class, Leadership In Ancient And Emerging Worship Studies, watched the film Amazing Grace this week as a further study in worship history.
Feel free to join them in answering these questions:
“What role did the song, Amazing Grace, play in ending hundreds of years of slavery (according to the film)?” (100 words minimum)
What influence did the song have on Willima Wilberforce? (100 words minimum)
What influence did the song have on John Newton as the writer, and why did he write it? (100 words minimum)
What influence can modern worship songs have on the Church, and the culture? (100 words minimum)
Our students in the class, Cultivating A Local Worship Ministry, watched the film Amazing Grace this week as a further study in worship history.
Feel free to join them in answering these questions:
“What was the dream of Mr. Holland according to the film?” (100 words minimum)
What elements threatened to pull him off track from that dream? (i.e. what impact did temptation, finances, home life with a disabled son, etc. have on his vision?) (100 words minimum)
What did he have to give up along the way, and what did he keep and finish, related to the dream? How did his dream change? (100 words minimum)
What principles related to godly spiritual leadership/vision, and the fulfillment of your dreams, can you draw from this movie? (100 words minimum)
Sunday January 20th 2008, 11:32 am
Filed under: Brainwaves
It’s good to hear them together, the hammered dulcimer and the hang drum. Both are of a similar ilk; the players must feel the inside rhythms in both cases.
I’d be up to hear a more aggressive linking of the two in addition, but maybe that will happen when a hang drum finds it’s way here….
While creativity is dispersed magnificently among the right and left-brained among us, being part of the right-brained crowd has it’s advantages and disadvantages. On the side of disadvantage, I share this:
The trouble is, when I wake up in the early hours of the morning, I’m not thinking about the day ahead.
I’m sensing the buzz of traffic on a Beijing street,
the smell of strong coffee on a breakfast table in Rykjavik,
the haunting sound of whales off an arctic coast,
the weak tears of a mother in Africa who can’t feed her starving child,
the crisp sound of leaves crunching under the foot of a Papua New Guinean girl,
the incessant burrowing of thin feeder roots from a hungry plant,
the microscopic struggles of a paramecium about to die,
the undulation of millions of cells moving in a heron’s brain,
the subtle changes in atomic relationships in a wooden desk,
the motions of thousands of moons around their mother planets,
the sizzling of starbursts in the Orion Nebula,
the eerie whispers of solar winds and
the sacred silence of uninhabited planets far beyond our telescopes.
This is what I wake up sensing: feeling in my bones, thinking in my head, and harboring in my soul through the rigors of the day.
The trouble is, it makes it hard to just get up and be about daily duties, and to see things through a simple, pragmatic lens.
God becomes far bigger than dogmatic stances and narrow renderings of His nature and preferences. From the vantage point of the sensations above, I awake seeing vast largeness and intricate smallness, pristine order and violent chaos, in His person.
Perhaps the debt we owe the culture is that it will no longer allow us to paint God according to the pragmatic categories of impoverished or pragmatic religiosity, but rather according to our most stunning discoveries as human beings.
In our age, to render the biblical God as ruler and judge in our age must run more beautifully and artfully alongside His image as creator, sustainer, pastor, renewer, gardener, healer, lover, giver and aesthetic designer. In reality, He is all, but in generations and families of humankind, themes must be reclaimed to the de-emphasis of others.
An unwaveringly balanced view of God may not be our end goal, but rather a rhythmic view that flows with the to and fros of human culture and civilization - that gleans from all ages but shimmers with the needs of our our own.
In other words, in the face of these senses with which I personally wake, balance and clear categories seems to me to be overrated in some measure. The theologue within may recoil at such a thought, but the artist within takes in a breath of cool, startling air.
Friday January 04th 2008, 10:02 am
Filed under: Brainwaves
How To Treat A Woman
Dan Wilt
For over 20 years, I’ve made myself a student of marriage, primarily for the sake of enriching my own marriage with my amazing wife, Anita. I’ve carefully watched men’s interactions with the women in their lives, and sought to observe where the build ups, and the break downs, occur on a daily basis.
In the home, at work and at play, married or yet-to-be-married, it seems that men are not always the smartest branch of the species when it comes to relationships. Our God-given drive to work, create, plan, implement, dream and provide is a gift that can get in the way of a healthy relationship if we are not both intentional and careful.
The following are a few tips on how to treat a woman that I’ve distilled from our 20 years of marriage, and from watching men relate to their ladies at any stage of pre-marriage or marriage. I offer them humbly, as yet another man in process - the process of learning to love well for the long haul and to pass on a heritage of marital strength to our children and our family line to come.
1. Cherish her.
In my estimation, this is the most vital relational action expressed by any man to his lady. All the joy and pain that love and marriage can bring, from the man’s end, revolve around our capacity to cherish our ladies. For some personalities, this is easier than others, as some men are by nature more sensitive and relationally aware. For the vast majority of men, however, it seems that being relationally aware of one’s lady takes conscious effort and hourly choices to remember to cherish.
To cherish her is to continually communicate, through spoken words, gentle touches, small gifts and subtle communications that she is more important to you than any other person, business transaction, form of entertainment, professional pursuit or financial opportunity.
Every day, cause her to wake up expecting you to be cherishing her again, and understand her frustrations (and even anger) through the lens of her not getting enough cherishing activity from you. In my estimation, this is the foundation of the man’s job in marriage. As a man who has learned to cherish most days, I can promise you that the rewards relationally far outweigh the energy you expend to express cherishing. When children come along, this same cherishing must be attended to with even greater diligence.
2. Pursue her.
Many men find it difficult to be proactive when it comes to communication with their lady. Because we can be very focused on the next big adventure, the next big pursuit or the next big buzz of progress, we tend to expect others to pursue us “if they really need our attention.” This will break down our intimacy, friendship and marriage over time, especially if the only time your girl is pursued is when you want to either be physical or to download pain from your day.
A woman needs to hear from you with regularity and consistency. Some of our greatest moments as a couple occur when I seem to randomly call in the middle of a busy day just to say “I love you,” and to share two minutes of banter about the day’s events thus far. A woman needs to feel like she is a mystery worth exploring, a gift worth opening. She also wants to hear about the details of your day. You can do this through a simple regimen of frequent phone calls, notes sharing both affection and information about your activities while apart, and brief “debriefing” sessions at the end of every day. You can also begin the day by pursuing her with a hidden love note somewhere she is sure to find it. When away, you can do this through email, or better yet, snail mail.
3. Find her.
When love and friendship blossoms into marriage, and marriage blossoms into family, life can get beautifully complicated. Relationships abound everywhere: your marriage relationship, children relationships, family relationships, work relationships and more. Sometimes as a couple you do these relationships together, and sometimes you don’t.
In the overgrowth of all the relationships that can and will occur, make sure you find her, and repeat steps 1 and 2 above. You will have to look beyond the meals and logistics of life to find her - her life may be hidden behind her duties and the family calendar, just as yours may be hidden behind your own. She needs to be found; life can be a series of “losses of self.”
Men these days, it seems to me, are continually “finding themselves,” and redefining themselves, well into our 40s. Caught up in our own driven desire for success (however our inner child defines it), we forget to find our wives as we are too busy finding ourselves. Men must grow up, and make decisions to stay rooted for some time in order to create a peaceful garden in which a mutually “finding” life can be shared. My wife has been told many times that at any point, she is more important to me than “the dream.” Even if I think that dream is God’s will, or the next big step to our future, if my wife is not on board, she knows that she will always win. I can trust God to take care of the dream, if I take care of my wife.
Remind her who she is. A woman can lose herself along the way of work and family and friendships. She will need you to champion her, elevate her, and call her forward when she wants to shrink back. Carve out time to just relate to one another (in fact, some couples build bi-annual getaways into their calendars), and decide now that your marriage (even if you’re not married yet) is worth the planning in of “finding time.”
