Praying with Bowls
On Sunday we’ll be coming to the Trinity with cadences of Celtic Liturgy and with imaginings of colour and movement and relationship. Circles seem to rise naturally as the worship unfolds itself in me this week. So we will be praying with bowls, acknowledging the circle of their rim, the threshold of our pouring in and from the Triune One. Though the way of our prayer will be quite different I must gratefully acknowledge the spark of this idea from a begging bowl prayer offered in a small group study from The Prayer Bench http://prayerbench.ca
We will come to the communion table bringing our bowls, carrying the desire of our heart, leaving them there, our individual prayers gathered into community, our embodied community gathered in the loving communion that is God.
As we offer our bowls we say:
These are the bowls of our hearts
shaped on the wheel of your grace
coloured in the shades of our longing
fired by your constant compassion
These are the bowls of our hearts
open and offered to You.
Ara, thank you for the link. I love circles and have become more and more nourished by them in the last few years. Circles, in a very particular way have become the foundation of the governance in one of the congregations I am with and that has supported liveliness. I’m glad you’re finding company in your involvement with and pondering of the sacred through virtual communities.
Thank you Catherine. Thank you also for the link to the prayerbench. It is very meaningful to me to be part of a virtual congregation of folks interested in the sacred as I do not belong to an institution of organized religion. I have been contemplating coloured circles, prisms for a week – like the work of the Sonia and Robert Delaunay. see: http://www.eternels-eclairs.fr/images/peinture/tableaux/robert-delaunay-HD/robert-delaunay-relief-disques.jpg