Come, Father of the poor, Blessed light Divine, our soul’s welcome guest, open our hearts to the needs of our world and its people as we say: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!
We have all been given to drink of the One Spirit. May we recognize our diversity as your gift, and glory in our divinely appointed differences as a path to peace, we pray: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!
May we hear the sound of the strong driving wind and recognize the Spirit’s voice inviting us to let go of that which prevents us from loving one another, we pray: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!
Teach us to live adventurously, to take the risk of Synodality, to navigate the choppy waters of newness, and to reach out to others in their need, we pray: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!
Help us to overcome our confusion and discord, our sharp tongues, our closed minds, and instruct us in the universal language of love, we pray: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!
You are the source of our peace. Shed your light where there is war and unrest among and within nations that we may all learn the ways of justice and peace, we pray: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!
Let us pray:
To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener.
It is to keep the vigil of mystery,
earthless and still.
One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit,
strange as the wind’s will.
The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows
turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love.
It may lament like Job or Jeremiah,
echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove.
It may rejoice in spaciousness of meadow
that emulates the freedom of the sky.
Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing;
it has cast down forever from its hand
the compass of the whither and the why.
To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.
It is becoming love, and like to Him
toward Whom we strain with metaphors of creatures:
fire-sweep and water-rush and the wind’s whim.
The soul is all activity, all silence;
and though it surges Godward to its goal,
it holds, as moving earth holds sleeping noonday,
the peace that is the listening of the soul.
(“To Live with the Spirit” by Jessica Powers)
