The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: PRAYERS

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

PRAYERS

I grew up in the Episcopal Church where the same prayers are repeated during the service each Sunday. (available in the Online Book of Common Prayer) While I no longer attend church, I can remember verbatim many of the prayers I heard so often during my childhood – and those words never fail to bring me comfort and joy. I also remember with great fondness our family's tradition of holding hands around the table and someone (usually my father) saying a prayer before the meal. This year during ARTSPEAK: Happy! I wrote an "Autumn Prayer" that reminds me of my childhood. And here is a prayer (from the Book of Common Prayer) that I remember so fondly:

62. A Prayer attributed to St. Francis
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is
in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.