A Concord Pastor Comments: Pause for Prayer: TUESDAY 4/25

Going Home to God

In my prayer today, I'm especially mindful of those who are grieving the loss of a loved one. I'm sure that everyone reading this post is close to someone's grief, if not their own. Here are two prayer poems, the first by John O'Donohue and the second one of my own; and finally, a snippet from a post I wrote many years ago.

For Grief
by John O'Donohue

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.

Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.

More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal

And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

A Solitary Tear
by Austin Fleming

Do you feel the tear I see
move slowly down a crevice
worn by grief
upon your cheek?

Now it stops,
too tired to move on,
one sorrowed drop welled up
from springs of empty ache,

a solitary tear
slowed, stalled,
no place to go;
no sweet hand to wipe away

the dew that slowly seeps
from deep inside
where pain pools
and spills

your hidden secret:
a parched heart's thirst
for a sip
of love now lost.

Lord, we believe
   that all the ties of friendship and affection
   which knit us as one throughout our lives
       do not unravel with death...
for those who believe in your love, Lord,
   death is not the end,
   nor does it destroy the bonds
       that you forge in our lives.
(Order of Christian Funerals)

Let grief not be my home, Lord,
   but the path that leads to you,
the road of faith I travel
   from my sorrow to tomorrow,
   from despair to trust and hope,
   from my loneliness and loss
       to serenity and peace
           -and even joy -
        in your strong and loving arms...