Tag / Daniel Burka

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

As this month closes, I want to be open to what’s next. I want to notice what I haven’t. I want to capture what I sense but don’t quite see.

I want to feel my senses open. I want to have my heart expand. I want to love and not hate. I want to bring good and not evil to this world.

I want to connect with others and be a connective person for others. I want to help people who can’t help me in return. I want to be larger and not smaller.

I want your help because these things are impossible for me. My motives are so complicated that they stop me. These desires are impossible to cultivate. They aren’t impossible for you.

Grant me what I need, especially the vision to see deeply within, to pull up what’s in me. These roots didn’t come from me. I didn’t plant these hopes within myself.

Do your work. Make me what this murky vision tells me I am.

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

There are needs beyond your servant’s, and her need today reminds me of how long you’ve been healing before now. You are accustomed to saving and reclaiming and making whole. Do your work as you often do, even when we don’t notice or watch or praise or acknowledge it.

Be the most competent physician during today’s surgery. As each nurse and doctor tend to her, be present in each touch, word, and gesture, making healing happen. Bring recovery when all is done and may strength be in the body of your child and friend and servant.

Grant her family all the courage they need. May they know your mercy, be enveloped in your lavish grace. These things are not difficult for you. In the name of the One who made healing his work. Amen.

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

Place these words inside all our unsettled parts so that they may be gentle, God-given counter words to what we hear so much.

Transform us in our listening until we believe differently about ourselves, until we believe more.

Open us to your reality and not just our own.

Turn us to this blessing and may it echo within.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

(Numbers 6:24-26)

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

For some of us countless ideas run around our heads. For others of us the struggle is to start seeing anything at all. We think too much or we don’t grasp enough of your thoughts about us.

Grant us the ability to see when our heads are clouded, the ability to hear when the story is being told somewhere just beyond our ear’s grasp, and the ability to put enough form to that thing so it feels.

May we know your love in bone-deep ways. May you shed light upon dark places in us that haven’t been loved. May you reach us completely.

Help us hold your truths gently. Help us appreciate and respect the people you’ve given our world, the idea generators, the storytellers, and the prophets whose words impact, disappear too quickly, or stay and sustain.