A Prayer for Artists
This Advent season, I asked my friend, author and poet Judith Deem Dupree, to write a prayer for the artists and writers and readers of Ruminate—the body of people who make up this community. Judith has been with Ruminate from the beginning, and her prayers have helped carry us through our darkest and brightest places. So, it seemed fitting to ask her to “nudge a prayer in words,” as she put it. We join Judith in praying this collective prayer of light and thanksgiving, and we wish you all moments of peace and rest during this season. ~ Brianna Van Dyke
Dear Father Creator, you have created within us a yearning that is never fully satisfied, a longing that leaves us ever hungry. A spaciousness that is often cramped by life. Sorrow unhealed and joy beyond describing. It is You, oh Holy One, author and crafter of Life, Whom we seek—Whom we forever hide from and always search for beyond our heart’s own rubble and the world’s afflictions.
Find us, where we hide. Coax our wizened souls out of the half-dark of our own thoughts. Grant us that inner Sabbath which was wrapped in the flesh and timeless consciousness of Your beloved Son.
Teach us, oh Holy One, with the fine probe of Your Thought, that our very neurons will hum with the inner Life that Your Spirit solely bestows. In Him Who came in Your Name, solely for Your purpose, we see the fluidity, the audacity, the precocity of that hidden Life! Truly, we are meant to stand in the flow of such a steady and illimitable understanding. This is Your promise . . . genesis and fulfillment.
This, this is our Genesis—to live in that endless Creation which flows from your heart. To be wrapped in the warp and weave, the seamless robe of Your Son. To lay our smallness against His brokenness, and grow large with His humility, great with His passion and compassion, timeless with His understanding. When we see more wholly, the gifts of Your imagining will become—will engender and struggle up within our own soul’s soil. We will not be afraid of life, nor death. Our pulse will hum with Your artistry and purpose.
Here, Father—hear my own plea for my own completion: Oh, grasp my reluctant hand, and draw me into Rest! I pledge to forfeit all my heap of sin and sorrow, and to become a part of the Word spoken, an image of the Image of the Living Christ. Draw my portrait as You see it. Out of this great bestowal I choose to live and move and have my being. Cloaked in this comprehension, I will to walk into the world again, readied for life. Readied for giving more than is mine, purposed to evolve and evoke and to recreate Life in His Image, and yearning with your Father-heart over the broken earth.
Amen.
Read more about prayer on The Waking.
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The Waking is an online literary magazine and a part of the Ruminate creative community that houses high-quality literary writing about what it’s like to be human. We are interested in short-form prose and image-text hybrid work. This art can be beautiful, it can be strange, we just ask that it feels true.