A Prayer for Today
One of my favorite theologians is Stanley Hauerwas, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina. I'm particularly fond of a small volume entitled, Prayers Plainly Spoken. Anyone who has read (or heard) Hauwerwas would readily agree that he is, at times, painfully plainspoken. He challenges the squishiness that is so often a part of Mainline North American Protestantism. He has little truck with "political correctness", yet he is overtly political (not to be confused with partisan).
Anyway, I've been leafing through Prayers lately. As I have reaquainted myself with some of Hauerwas' words to the Almighty, I'm both strengthened in my efforts at prayer, and I am challenged by how often I can drift toward the whirlpool of verbiage that leaves me saying very little of substance -- to others, to myself or to God.
Here's an offering from Prayers by Hauerwas that I've been living with today:
Free Us from Self-Fascination
Lord Almighty, we say we want to serve you, we say we want to help others less fortunate than ourselves, we say we want justice. But the truth is, we want power and status because we so desperately need to be loved. Free us from our self-fascination and the anxious activity it breeds, so that we might be what we say we want to be --loved by you and thus capable of unselfish service. Amen.
(p. 49)
One of my favorite theologians is Stanley Hauerwas, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina. I'm particularly fond of a small volume entitled, Prayers Plainly Spoken. Anyone who has read (or heard) Hauwerwas would readily agree that he is, at times, painfully plainspoken. He challenges the squishiness that is so often a part of Mainline North American Protestantism. He has little truck with "political correctness", yet he is overtly political (not to be confused with partisan).
Anyway, I've been leafing through Prayers lately. As I have reaquainted myself with some of Hauerwas' words to the Almighty, I'm both strengthened in my efforts at prayer, and I am challenged by how often I can drift toward the whirlpool of verbiage that leaves me saying very little of substance -- to others, to myself or to God.
Here's an offering from Prayers by Hauerwas that I've been living with today:
Free Us from Self-Fascination
Lord Almighty, we say we want to serve you, we say we want to help others less fortunate than ourselves, we say we want justice. But the truth is, we want power and status because we so desperately need to be loved. Free us from our self-fascination and the anxious activity it breeds, so that we might be what we say we want to be --loved by you and thus capable of unselfish service. Amen.
(p. 49)
posted by FrGaryB | 2:55 PM
1 Comments:
It really is packed with good stuff for such a short book. I think that what makes it a good change of pace is that he is saying very orthodox things, just using non-liturgical language to get there.
My top three, in no particular order, are:
"Humble Us With the Violence of Your Love"
"Stuck With a God Who Bleeds"
"The Terror in Our Neighbors' Lives"
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