Oremus

Our church has one service today so that we can do the God's Work, Our Hands projects together--long story short, my writing time is more limited today than usual Sundays.  Sigh.

I have been listening to the weekly broadcast from On Being, and I wanted to record the last statement by Pádraig Ó Tuama:  " It’s from an essay called “Oremus,” meaning, in Latin, “Let us pray.” “Prayer, like poetry, like breath, like our own names, has a fundamental rhythm in our bodies. It changes, it adapts, it varies from the canon. It sings, it swears, it is syncopated by the rhythm underneath the rhythm, the love underneath the love, the rhyme underneath the rhyme, the name underneath the name, the welcome underneath the welcome, the prayer beneath the prayer. So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us. Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around. The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus. Let us pray.”

I didn't realize that Oremus mean "Let us pray!"  How delightful.

But even more delightful:  the idea that we can stumble over stones that we will use to build altars.  I think that's my favorite part of the passage.  But I also love the idea of digging ourselves out of the very grave we dug for ourselves.

Oh, I love the whole thing.  That's why I posted it here.  And the rest of the show is wonderful too.  Go here to read the transcript or listen to it.