Let us Pray...

GOD GUIDE ME

God guide me with Thy wisdom
God chastise me with Thy justice,
God help me with Thy mercy,
God protect me with Thy strength.

God fill me with Thy fullness,
God shield me with Thy shade,
God fill me with Thy grace,
For the sake of Thine Anointed Son.

Jesu Christ of the seed of David,
Visiting One of the Temple,
Sacrificial Lamb of the Garden,

Who died for me.

Eli Jenkins' Prayer Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood

Rev Eli Jenkins' Prayer - Dylan Thomas (from Under Milk Wood)

Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die

And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say, good-bye - but just for now!*


Under Milk Wood is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, later adapted for the stage. A film version, Under Milk Wood directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released in 1972.

An all-seeing narrator invites the audience to listen to the dreams and innermost thoughts of the inhabitants of an imaginary small Welsh village, Llareggub (which is bugger all spelt backwards).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Milk_Wood

Prayer for the Japanese People 日本の人々のための私たちの祈り

This is for RedKruzer's Concert to Benefit the Japanese people at the ImaginAIRium in Spring City, Pennsylvania Sunday, April 10, 2011.
Please accept our prayers and gifts. The flowers grow to heal your heart
私たちの祈りと贈り物をお受け取りください。花はあなたの心を癒すに成長する

Music Athair Ar Neamh (Enya), orchestra version by Talieson: on their album "Orinoco Flow: the music of Enya"

Athair ar Neamh, Dia linn
Athair ar Neamh, Dia liom
M'anam, mo chroí, mo ghlóir,
moladh duit, a Dhia.
Fada an lá, go sámh
Fada an oích', gan ghruaim
Aoibhneas, áthas, grá,
moladh duit, a Dhia.
Móraim thú ó lá go lá.
Móraim thú ó oích' go hóich'.
Athair ar Neamh, Dia linn
Athair ar Neamh, Dia liom
An ghealach, an ghrian, an ghaoth,
moladh duit, a Dhia.

Father in heaven, bless us
Father in heaven, bless me
My soul, my heart, my voice,
praise you, O God.
A long and peaceful day
A long night without gloom
Beauty, joy, love,
praise you, O God.
I praise you from day to day.
I glorify you night after night.
Father in heaven, bless us
Father in heaven, bless me
The moon, the sun, the wind,
praise you, O God.

天の父は、神が私たちと一緒に。
天の父は、神がわたしを祝福
私の魂、私の心は、私の栄光は、
称賛するために、神。
ロングは平和な一日です
ロングは、暗がりのない夜です
喜び、喜び、愛、
称賛するために、神。
私は、あなたが来る日も来る日も讃えなさい。
私は夜の後で夜を讃えなさい。
天の父は、神が私たちと一緒に。
天の父は、神がわたしを祝福
月、太陽、風力、
あなたは、神を称賛する

Tiger Eye Prayer Beads

Tiger's eye (also called Tigers eye or Tiger eye) is a chatoyant gemstone that is usually a metamorphic rock that is yellow- to red-brown, with a silky luster. A member of the quartz group, it is a classic example of pseudomorphous replacement by silica of fibrous crocidolite (blue asbestos). An incompletely silicified blue variant is called Hawk's eye.

http://www.ramshornstudio.com/beads_2.htm

One decade Prayer bead set in Tiger Eye and Bronze. The beads are 10mm. The Cross is two inches long.
by Beth Maxwell Boyle

$40.00

corgijim@windstream.net

Lent: Our Pilgrimage of Faith

I have never really observed lent with such depth like I am this year. Somehow it has taken on a greater meaning in this time of world economic crisis, especially following a very hard winter here in Western, NY. The following is a lovely piece about Lent as our pilgrimage of faith.



The season of LENT is the most penitential period of the Church Year. It is a time for Christians to focus our attention on human redemption through Christ’s suffering and death. The word LENT means springtime. It is from the Old English word “lengthen” recalling the lengthening of days as the dead of winter gives way to the renewing of life in spring. In the northern hemisphere we move closer to the sun, the source of life. As Christians we move closer to the Son during Lent for he is our source of life everlasting. LENT lasts 40 days and is part of the 93 day PASCHAL CYCLE, which also includes Triduum (3 days) and the 50 days of Easter. The number 40 is significant because it reminds us of the 40 days Noah, his family and God’s creatures were saved from the flood. It is the period of time that Moses, Elijah and Jesus spent in fasting as they prepared for the ministries to which God called them. It is symbolic of the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness. In the early church, a 40-day period of preparation was observed for the baptismal candidates who would study, fast and otherwise make ready for baptism and entrance into the Holy Communion on Easter. It is therefore meet and right for us as Christians to observe the forty days of Lent as our preparation time for the
celebration of Easter. The tradition of the Church and the mandate of the Gospel call us to turn away from our sins, which alienate us from God. Self-denial is one way that we can remind ourselves of the great sacrifice Jesus Christ made on our behalf. The 6th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew advises penance in three forms: Giving of alms (works of charity toward others), prayer, and fasting. Matthew is quick to point out, though, that we don’t do these things to be praised or noticed by others, but to praise God who has already rewarded us by his grace. Lent asks us to discipline our lives by praying and meditating on God’s Word.



This piece on lent was taken from:
http://www.feautor.org/uploads/contributions/11962136933/pilgrimage_of_faith.pdf

The old English word bede or bead

The old English word bede (Anglo-Saxon bed ) means a prayer, though the derivative form, gebed , was more common in this sense in Anglo-Saxon literature. When, in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the use of little perforated globes of bone, wood, or amber, threaded upon a string, came into fashion for the purpose of counting the repetitions of the Our Father or Hail Mary, these objects themselves became known as bedes (i.e. prayers ), and our modern word bead , as applied to small globular ornaments of glass, coral, etc., has no other derivation. In middle English the word bedes was used both in the sense of prayer and rosary. Thus Shakespeare could still write (Rich. III, iii, 7)
When holy and devout religious men
Are at their beads [prayers ], 'tis much to draw them thence,
So sweet is zealous contemplation.

While of Chaucer's Prioress we are told
Of smal coral aboute hire arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene.

The gauds, or gaudys, were the ornaments or larger beads used to divide the decades. The phrase pair of beads (i.e. set of beads — cf. pair of stairs), which may still be heard on the lips of old-fashioned English and Irish Catholics, is consequently of venerable antiquity. With such speakers a pair of beads means the round of the beads, i.e. the chaplet of five decades, as opposed to the whole rosary of fifteen. Again, to "bid beads " originally meant only to say prayers, but the phrase "bidding the beads ", by a series of misconceptions explained in the "Historical English Dictionary", came to be attached to certain public devotions analogous to the prayers which precede the kissing of the Cross in the Good Friday Service. The prayers referred to used to be recited in the vernacular at the Sunday Mass in medieval England, and the distinctive feature of them was that the subject of each was announced in a formula read to the congregation beforehand. This was called "bidding the bedes". From this the idea was derived that the word "bidding" meant commanding or giving out, and hence a certain survival of these prayers, still retained in the Anglican "Book of Canons", and recited before the sermon, is known as the "bidding prayer ".

The words bedesman and bedeswoman , which date back to Anglo-Saxon times, also recall the original meaning of the word. Bedesman was at first the term applied to one whose duty it was to pray for others, and thus it sometimes denoted the chaplain of a guild. But in later English a bedesman is simply the recipient of any form of bounty; for example, a poor man who obtains free quarters in an almshouse, and who is supposed to be bound in gratitude to pray for his benefactors. Similarly, bedehouse , which originally meant a place of prayer or an oratory, came at a later date to be used of any charitable institution like an almshouse. It has now practically disappeared from literary English, but survives provincially and in a number of Welsh place-names in the form bettws , e.g. Bettws y Coed. Finally, bede-roll , as its etymology suggests, meant the roll of those to be prayed for, and in some sense corresponded to the diptychs of the early Church. The word is of tolerably frequent occurrence in connection with the early English guilds. In these associations a list was invariably kept of departed members who had a claim on their prayers. This was the bede-roll.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02383b.htm

Paternoster Prayer Beads

The beads I made for Jim with large, crude, garnet beads. On the ends a bronze, Celtic cross and a small, quartz, skull bead.

There is an old Medieval practice, older than the Rosary known as "Pater Noster" beads. Before the Rosary, for those who could not pray the 150 psalms, it was considered just as good to say 150 "Pater Noster's," which is the "Our Father" or "The Lords's Prayer" in Latin. The beads had such a close association with the Our Father that they were commonly known as Paternoster beads. Many customs of reciting Paternosters existed in the Middle Ages. The monks at Cluny were urged to recite 50 Paternosters at the death of one of their fellow monks (Udalric, 1096). The Knights Templar, from a rule dating from about 1128, were required to say the Lord's Prayer 57 times if they could not attend choir, and on the death of any of their brethren they had to say the Pater Noster a hundred times a day for a week.

Rick Warren's invocation

Rick Warren's invocation at the inauguration was such a big deal for allot of people before it happened and in the end it was simple and not really anything to get all stirred up about. I like it. Rick Warren is not my favorite minister but he did just fine with this. Here it is:

"Let us pray.

Almighty God -- our Father. Everything we see, and everything we can’t see, exists because of you alone. It all comes from you. It all belongs to you. It all exists for your glory. History is your story. The Scripture tells us, ‘Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.’ And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.

Now today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge-point of history with the inauguration of our first African-American president of the United States. We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where the son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King, and a great cloud of witnesses, are shouting in heaven.

Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice-President Biden, the cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders.

Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race, or religion, or blood, but to our commitment to freedom, and justice for all.

When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us.

And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes -- even when we differ.

Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all. May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation, and a peaceful planet. And may we never forget that one day, all nations and all people will stand accountable before you.

We now commit our new president, and his wife Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.

I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life -- Yeshua, Isa, Jesús, Jesus -- who taught us to pray:
Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen."

Here is a little about this man if you care to learn more. He is too conservative for me and I do not agree with allot of his teachings but one thing he says really rings true for me, "Divorce is a greater threat to the American family than gay marriage"
Read more about this preacher here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Warren