Rev. Cara Scriven, Lead Pastor
Last week, Pastor Melinda talked about how crazy 2020 has been with events like social unrest, a pandemic, and now wildfires. It seems like it can’t get any worse and then it does. With all of these things happening, our emotions are closer to the surface and are often stronger than normal. It is important in these times that we find ways to process these emotions. One way to do this is through the Welcoming Prayer.
This prayer was written by Mary Mrozowski who was inspired by Abandonment to Divine Providence, a spiritual work from the 18th century, written by JeanPierre de Caussade. Many people saw the value of the process Mrozowski developed. Over the years, it was fined tuned and expanded by others. Father Thomas Keating built on this work and created the following prayer:
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within. Amen.
As we pray this prayer, we welcome the situations and feelings we are experiencing. We don’t try to run or fight them. We just allow them to be. As we move through the next section of the prayer, we let go of our desire for security, control, power, and to change the situation which often are behind our emotions. In other words, we let go of the outcome. And we allow what we are experiencing to teach us about ourselves, our relationships with others and with God. When we do this, we can heal and discover our true selves that often exists hidden beneath the person we share with the world.
This year we will be using the Welcoming Prayer each time we gather for worship. Much like we have practiced the spiritual disciplines of Centering Prayer and the Examen, we will pray the Welcoming Prayer at the beginning of service during Listening for the Spirit. We will practice this discipline to prepare ourselves for worship so that we can be more open to experiencing God.
My hope is that over the next year, we all might not only learn a knew spiritual discipline, but we might also heal from our wounds and live more fully into the person God created us to be.