A Place of Prayer

We have a simple prayer on our intercession board outside the chapel:
‘Lord help me to be,
in stillness nailed,
holding all time,
all change,
all circumstances,
in loves embrace’

I have been reflecting on the power of prayer as an act of ‘solidarity’.
What it might look like?

Prayer is another amazing network. A vast complex of tiny candles that are lit intentionally for someone, an event, or an occasion. Lighting candles is an act of coming together in solidarity. At St. Isaac’s we have a commtiment to sink the tap root, to anchor this act of prayer for our world and to be at that still point of Christ’s enduring love for humankind and God’s benevolence.

So many people around the world live in a state of constant fear, where everyone is viewed as suspect and act as if no one can be trusted. Rev’d Rowan Williams in a recent lecture spoke about the need for a renewed awakening of true ‘solidarity’. Not just a feeling of compassion, rather an active investment of our energies in responding to the recognition that we share frailty, we share vulnerability. It is not about the strong should help the weak, it is a simple recognition that the strong are part of the human race. They share fraility and are themselves in need. The deepest form of solidarity is that we are all hungry.

Day after day we are surrounded by buzzwords, networking is often regarded as such and can be catorgorised into biological, informational, technological and social. Whether it is networking with people, with systems, or looking more closely at natural ‘networks’ not of our creating; stars, trees, coral reefs fungi and many other forms of habitation and animals.