pastor prayers

Yesterday I made a visit to a member of the church who turns 94 today. As I said goodbye we held hands as we always do and I spoke a prayer for her. Sitting there, I was overcome by the realization that the hands I held in mine, knotty and losing their strength, had touched and been touched by people and things all over the world (she was very well-traveled) for nearly a century now. And I left with a little tingle in my hands and a sense that god herself had touched them and offered me a blessing even as I spoke words for dear Mrs. S. This is my prayer to the god present in those hands.

Let me feel you close, embodied One, as you rest in these hands that have felt the fine silk of China, filled white gloves for formal balls, gracefully offered themselves for kisses from gentlemen offering their respect. In the impossible thinness of this skin, help me to be mindful of the tenderness of each soul I encounter. I am washed with awe at the air that has touched this skin, the sun and wind and rain that have danced on it and offered it pleasure and pain. In the countours of veins, the knobs of joints, the arthritic curve of fingers, let me know the grace of living through pain with dignity. In the softness of warm palms train me in humility; help me to yield my certainty so I might greet new insight. In the trembling of arms (moved by sobs or by nerves — it’s hard to know which, and may be none of my business), burst open my heart so that it might embrace the suffering of the world, and feel the warm light of love seep through the cracks in this aged skin. Teach me the wisdom of tradition, the lineage of those in my care, that I may know my own. In the name of life abundant and full and the beauty of age, amen.